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

Lean product management and design thinking take shape in design sprints. There is a good deal of overlap between Lean Startup and Design Thinking concepts. Philosophically, they start in different places – Lean with a problem to solve and DT with a market to serve. This article looks at integrating DT into Lean through design sprints… http://bigdata.rutgers.edu/news/design-sprint-the-link-between-lean-product-management-and-design-thinking

Project Management vs Product Management – how the frameworks differ. PMI provides a project management framework of process groups that includes initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing. AIPMM provides a framework for product management that stretches the spectrum from conceive to retire. This article provides a useful comparison of project and product management… http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/4/project-management-vs-product-management

More tools for product management – roadmaps, wikis, virtual brainstorming, …. Lists of tools have been popular in the last few weeks. If you haven’t seen one, check this out… https://productcoalition.com/the-ideal-product-management-tool-bfebc7257081

Create an agile release management strategy to align product owners and business stakeholders. Release management becomes complicated when key stakeholders want a hotfix, users need an improvement fast, a marketing event necessitates a change, and more. Learn how to avoid these problems and get stakeholders on the same page… http://blogs.starcio.com/2017/04/aligning-product-owners-release-management.html

4 pillars for software product management – expectations, ideas, constraints, and timelines. Read about each at https://medium.com/unfounded/product-managers-and-the-iceberg-of-ideas-c4ca88964127

How product managers can contribute to creating Minimum Viable Bureaucracy. This article addresses project management, not product management specifically, but the content applies to our work. It is the organizational bureaucracy that can stand in the way or slow product management and innovation efforts. Keeping it at a minimum is needed. Get the details at http://by.dialexa.com/minimum-viable-bureaucracy-a-practical-approach-to-scaling-agile-project-management

The secret to how product managers can create meaningful product roadmaps. Products are focused on delivering value to users. Roadmaps should do the same. Read how here http://imanageproducts.uk/2017/04/25/the-secret-behind-meaningful-product-roadmaps/

How to make innovation everyone’s day job. Innovation doesn’t work well when it is a project in an organization. It needs to be part of the culture. Read more at https://singularityhub.com/2017/04/25/how-leaders-can-make-innovation-a-part-of-everyones-day-job/