Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers, developers, and innovators be heroes.

 

Product manager as mini-CEO or coach? A lot of people get involved with product management because they want more influence over product and the organization. Their motivation is not wrong – product managers do have influence. However, thinking of the role as the min-CEO of a product may lead to a less influential career. Instead, what if the role was that of coach? Read this article to explore the perspective… http://bestthenews.com/article/ego-product-leadership-thu-07072016-2125.html

How the practice of A/B testing makes you a better product manager… and manager. Product managers face decisions frequently, such as changing product messaging or choosing new features to add or a thousand others that come up developing and managing a product. The practice of A/B testing is basically conducting a quick experiment to test ideas before making a decision. Even if you can’t do A/B testing, are you running experiments? Read how this helps product managers at http://firstround.com/review/how-a-b-testing-at-linkedin-wealthfront-and-ebay-made-me-a-better-manager/

7 ways continuous delivery helps product management. (1) It Will Help you Get Feedback Sooner. (2) It Increases Responsiveness. (3) It Reduces Waste and Risk, and Saves Money. (4) Continuously Deliver Small Chunks of Value. (5) It Facilitates the Creation of Higher Quality Products. (6) It Leads to Releases That Are Sane and Calm. (7) It Makes For Better Teams. Read about each at http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2016/07/continuous-delivery-devops-product-managers-new-bff/

Why now is the right time to develop product management skills. This year I have seen more articles with similar titles in well-known sources like the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. They describe the importance of the product manager role in companies. While product management has existed for decades, 2016 is the year the role reached new popularity. This articles is focused on India, but product managers are everywhere… http://www.iamwire.com/2016/07/product-management-training-india/139223

6 myths about engineers product managers should break through. Stereotypes of engineers and developers abound, but often engineers are much more diverse than stereotypes suggests. Product managers should know the engineers they work with and not assume they are all the same. Read about the myths at http://blog.aha.io/6-common-misconceptions-about-engineers-debunked/

10 ways managers stifle innovation – which are you doing? (1) Insisting on short-term goals. (2) Constraining employees to job descriptions. (3) Rewarding consistency. (4) Creating individual wins, not team wins. Read about these and the other six at http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/06/25/ten-ways-weak-managers-stifle-innovation/

Who’s better at innovation – startups or big companies? Traditionally innovation in big companies is thought of as incremental improvements to what they do and not the disruptive leaps in innovation that startups can make. A recent model was proposed in a paper that looks at this differently. The incremental innovation of established companies may add up to more total innovation. Further, their motivation is to innovate at a faster rate to avoid being disrupted. Read a summary of the paper at http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-05/innovation-doesn-t-always-start-in-the-garage