Part of the Process

A while back I shared a version of this rough and ready systems diagram looking at a system to manage new product development priorities where the situation of interest is the need to create new revenue streams to diversify.    Note: It doesn't fully follow the conventions of Systems dynamics and is firmly grounded in a B2B SaaS context.  This formed the basis of a Systems Thinking assignment that I did, so sharing a bit more here in case anyone has any comments or suggestions on my exploration of this space. It kinda felt right, yet the focus felt it was off. So, I then used the 12 boundary questions from Critical Systems Heuristics ( CSH ) to think about the system again from other viewpoints. Source of in fluence Who should be the stakeholders? What’s at stake? Stakeholdings: constraining or developmental? Motivation (beneficiary) Business owners   Business sales team Software users (purpose) Maximise profits from customers   Solve the business problems of t...

Photo by  Sasha • Stories  on  Unsplash This is a follow up to my post on roadmaps and themes . I wanted to talk about experience in a B2B context with a platform product and SaaS-style model a bit more. Most articles out there tend to be from B2C or app products. So about the time I wrote about theme based roadmaps, I was using a combination of spreadsheets, Trello, and JIRA ... all OK for their intended purpose, but all have limitations around use and structure for product people.  Limitations that possibly are blockers in increasing flow and transparency in the product development process. S o, why are flow and transparency important? I think this tweet by John Cutler sums it up PM tip: Help foster an environment where great/better decisions are made...not where you are the decider.  #prodmgmt   #ux   #design — John Cutler (@johncutlefish)  October 4, 2018 The flow aspect allows feedback and course alteration as n...

Photo by  Annie Spratt  on  Unsplash I never used to see the point of "end of year round up" blog posts. But the journey that I've been on during the past year has lead me to reflect on what I have learned. The beginning of the year started off with me thinking about being data informed . This was balanced by a survey that showed this work had paid off . Since then I have put in processing to help collect and report on what we guided us to detect changes. Learning R and creating a repo to share the data processing recipes  has been the culmination of this. Data isn't just an important topic for product management, combined with ethics it's a topic that is increasingly touching our lives. My interest was first piqued in my reading during April .  Later in the year as GDPR started to loom on the horizon I took a course on Ethics and Law in Data and Analytics . This was a great course that covered not only some philosophical exploration of what it m...