Roman Pichler

What do incremental enhancements of a legacy app and the development of a new AI product have in common? Both have to create value and innovate to some extent. In this episode, I discuss the Innovation Ambition Matrix, a tool that helps you understand your product's innovation type and, based on it, make the right strategic decisions and optimise your product portfolio.

AI has significantly impacted software-based products and has started to change how product management is practised. But how is it affecting product strategy? Can AI-powered tools lead to better strategies? Can they even make strategic product decisions on their own? In this episode, I discuss the benefits and limitations of using AI to create a product strategy, as well as the foundations you should put in place to take full advantage of AI tools.

Product teams are key in enabling product-led growth and offering successful products. In this episode, I explain what product teams really need to do a great job and how you can best support the teams you work with.

As helpful as they can be, product roadmaps are not always enough. To closely align a group of products and ensure that they all move in the same direction, you'll benefit from a portfolio roadmap. In this episode, I explain what a product portfolio roadmap is. I share a template to help you build your own outcome-based portfolio roadmap. I show how you can connect your portfolio roadmap to the portfolio strategy and use it to direct the product roadmaps, and I describe who should be involved in developing the plan.

When it comes to product strategy, people often focus on templates, tools, and frameworks. While these matter, they are only a small part of what's needed to develop a successful strategy. In this episode, I take a holistic approach and discuss product strategy from a system perspective. I consider people, processes, and principles in addition to tools, I share the strategy system I have developed and explain how you can take advantage of it.

It may not be pleasant to experience, but conflict is necessary to innovate successfully. Without competing ideas, it's virtually impossible to create great products. Unfortunately, many conflicts are handled poorly; they are hidden or result in personal attacks. In this article, I explain how you can skilfully navigate conflict and use it as a source of creativity and innovation for your product.

Developing a winning product strategy is hard. Keeping the strategy relevant and achieving product success on a continued basis is even harder. In this episode, I discuss how you can use the product lifecycle model to address this challenge. I explain how the model can help you make the right strategic choices, focus and evolve the product strategy, and proactively progress and grow the product.

The product roadmap is a popular product management tool that communicates how a product is likely to evolve. But despite its popularity, it's not always applicable. In this podcast episode, I share three scenarios in which using a roadmap is not advisable. I explain why not using a roadmap is the right course of action, what you can do instead to plan ahead, and which steps you can take to get closer to developing a realistic, actionable roadmap.

The product strategy is probably the most important artefact in product management. But how do you come up with an effective strategy in the first place? How can you minimise the risk of offering an unsuccessful product and instead maximise the chances of achieving success? In this episode, I introduce product strategy discovery as a systematic, disciplined approach to help you develop a winning strategy for your product.

A product team is a cross-functional group whose members work together to achieve product success. Most people would agree that the person in charge of the product, a UX designer, and one or more developers should be on the team. But if stakeholders should be included, is more contentious. In this podcast episode, I discuss two types of product teams, core and extended ones. I explore the benefits and challenges of using a larger team that includes the key stakeholders, and I share practical tips to make this approach work.

The most amazing product strategy and product roadmap are ineffective if the stakeholders don't support them. Without their buy-in, you'll struggle to execute the strategy and find it hard to deliver the roadmap. But it doesn't have to be this way. This podcast episode shares my tips to help you secure strong stakeholder buy-in to strategic product decisions, align people, and achieve product success together.

Outcome-based product roadmaps offer many benefits over traditional, feature-based ones including a strong focus on the value a product should create. But how can you introduce this new approach when an organisation is used to feature-based plans and stakeholders find it difficult to trust an outcome-based roadmap? To address this challenge, I introduce a four-step process in this podcast episode.

Markets, products, and technologies change at an ever-faster pace, and product strategies are in danger of becoming quickly outdated if they are not being adapted. To help you address this challenge, I discuss continuous strategizing in this podcast episode—an approach that looks at strategy as an ongoing process rather than periodical work. What's more, I offer practical advice on how you can implement continuous strategizing and ensure that your product strategy is truly adaptive.

OKRs—objectives and key results—are a popular goal-setting technique. But can and should you use OKRs on product roadmaps? What benefits does this approach offer and are there any drawbacks? These are the questions I'll answer in this podcast episode.

For any business to succeed, it is crucial to make the right strategic decisions. To achieve this, you'll benefit from using four different types of strategies: business, portfolio, product, and technology strategy. But that's not enough. You'll also have to successfully align the plans. To help you address these challenges, I have developed a new framework, the Strategy Stack, which I introduce in this podcast episode.

Being empowered can make all the difference in doing a great job. Sadly, not all product people have the authority they need. This observation is hardly new, though, and just wishing for more empowerment isn't enough. In this podcast episode, I explain what empowerment in product management really means. I help you determine how empowered you are, and I share specific tips to increase your empowerment.

Products often don't exist in isolation. Instead, they are part of a product portfolio. Think of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which belong to Microsoft Office. Such a portfolio benefits from having a dedicated strategy—a product portfolio strategy. But what information should it contain? Which template can you use to describe it? How does it relate to the overall product portfolio management work? And who should create and update the strategy? Listen to this episode to find out my answers.

Product discovery has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way to determine the right solution. In this podcast episode, I explain why you need a product strategy to succeed with product discovery, how the strategy helps you determine the right outcomes and opportunities, and how you can use the Product Vision Board to build an Opportunity Solution Tree.

Strong product leadership is crucial to offering successful products and enabling product-led growth. Unfortunately, there is disagreement and confusion about what exactly product leadership is and who should exercise it. Is product leadership limited to someone working as a head of product? Or can—and should—others lead in product management too? In this podcast episode, I share my advice to help you effectively practise product leadership and and become great at leading others.

The GO Product Roadmap is a simple yet effective tool to help teams create goal-oriented, outcome-based roadmaps. Despite its simplicity, I find that it's not always correctly applied. To address this challenge, I've created a checklist, which I share in this podcast episode and which you can download for free from my website.

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team,” Steve Jobs once said. This insight also applies to product management: As product people, we can't achieve product success on our own—we rely on the support of others including stakeholders and development teams. This episode shares my advice on how to foster collaboration and form an effective product team in order to maximise the chances of offering a great product.

The product strategy is an important product management artefact. But despite its significance, it is not always effectively used. In this episode, I discuss ten common strategy mistakes I see people make so you can avoid them and successfully leverage the product strategy.

The product vision plays a crucial part in achieving product success: It sets a shared direction and helps create strong alignment. Despite its importance, there are two competing views of what a product vision is and how it should be captured. In this podcast episode, I discuss the different approaches and explain which one I recommend.

To create value, product people, stakeholders, and development teams have to work together. But when people collaborate, things don't always go smoothly, and problems emerge. As the person in charge of the product, you should address these issues and offer constructive feedback. That's often easier said than done, though. Asking people to change their behaviour can be difficult, especially when you are not their boss. To help you with this challenge, I have developed a new framework, which I describe in this podcast episode.

Change seems to be the only constant when it comes to software technology. Over the last ten years, microservices, cloud-based computing, augmented reality, blockchain, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have emerged—to name just a few new technologies. But as product people, we are often so busy with getting new and enhanced features delivered that we risk overlooking new tech trends and being overtaken by competitors. In this episode, I share three tips that help you spot new and potentially disruptive technologies early on so you can take full advantage of those that will benefit your product.

The head of product role and the product strategy are often linked. But should a head of product make strategic decisions for individual products? Or would it be better to empower the product people to own the product strategy? These are the question I discuss in this podcast episode.

The product strategy is possibly the most important product management plan. But what exactly is it? Which information should it contain? Do you need a strategy for your product? How can you ensure that it is likely to result in a successful product and how do you keep it up to date? Listen to this podcast episode to hear my answers.

Scrum is not a product management framework. But it can be tremendously valuable for product people: It can help you make the right product decisions and deliver great products if it's correctly applied. In this podcast episode, I share ten tips to help you maximise value delivery with Scrum.

As the person in charge of the product, you have a rewarding but challenging job. A key challenge is leading the stakeholders and development teams without being their boss, without being able to tell people what to do. In this podcast episode, I offer my advice on how to overcome this challenge, guide the individuals, and create value together.

The product roadmap is a great product management tool. But it can cause significant issues when it is not used appropriately. In this podcast episode, I discuss ten product roadmapping mistakes you should avoid to fully leverage your roadmap.

The product backlog is a simple yet powerful tool to capture tactical product decisions and direct the work of the development team. To take full advantage of it, it's important to set up the initial backlog in the right way. This episode offers five practical tips to successfully stock the product backlog and lay the foundation for a successful development effort.

Making the right strategic decisions is crucial to achieve product success. If it's not clear, for example, what a product's value proposition is and what its stand-out features are, then it will be difficult to create the desired business value. But I find that many product teams do not use a systematic approach to create and evolve a product strategy. To put it differently, they lack a product strategy model. In this podcast episode, I describe the model that I have developed.

I was recently asked at a product management conference what superpower product people should have. I didn't have to think twice and replied, “empathy.” This podcast episode explains why empathy is particularly important in product management and how you can strengthen your ability to empathise even with seemingly difficult stakeholders, customers, and team members.

Becoming a head of product is a career aspiration for many product managers and product owners. But what exactly should a head of product do? Which are the responsibilities the individual should fulfil? Listen to this podcast episode to hear my answer.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that measure how well your product is doing. As useful as they are to proactively manage a product, they are not always effectively applied. In this podcast episode, I discuss six common KPI mistakes. I explain how you can overcome them and leverage key performance indicators to maximise the value your product creates.

Scrum is a powerful framework that connects the person in charge of the product with the individuals designing and building it. But it offers limited advice on how to collaborate with the stakeholders and involve them in strategic product decisions. This issue can be addressed by forming a product team that extends the traditional Scrum team, as I explain in this podcast episode.

Meetings are essential to align the stakeholders and development team members and make the right product decisions. But we've all been stuck in bad meetings that lacked a clear objective, didn't have an agenda, were dominated by a few vocal individuals, started late, or overran. Such meetings are unproductive and demotivating. It doesn't have to be this way, though. The tips I share in this podcast episode will help you run successful product management meetings that engage the attendees and help you achieve the desired outcomes.

The product vision can be a powerful tool to align stakeholders and development teams. When used effectively, it acts as the product's true north, and it inspires and guides people. This episode helps you create such a vision. It describes six essential qualities that a compelling product vision has to have.

When you consider who is an important partner for you as the person in charge of the product, your thoughts might turn to the stakeholders and development team members. But having an effective Scrum Master is crucial for product owners, as I explain in this episode.

Working in product management can be very rewarding. But it can also be very challenging. One of the reasons is the diverse skills that are needed to succeed as the person in charge of the product. To acquire and deepen them, you will benefit from a focused learning plan. In this episode, I discusses such a plan in the form of a learning roadmap. I explain what a learning roadmap is, how you can create one, and how you can effectively put the plan into action and become an even better product professional.

Our ultimate goal as product people is to achieve sustained product success: to ensure that our products do a great job for their users and customers and that they generate value for our businesses on a continued basis. While achieving product success cannot be reduced to a simple formula, there are four factors that have a profound impact on it, as I discuss in this podcast episode.

As the person in charge of the product, you rely on the development team to do a good job. But some teams are held back by performance issues and fail to reliably deliver working software. This episode shares my advice on how product people can deal with an underperforming development team and help the group improve.

The product backlog is a simple yet powerful tool to capture and revise detailed product decisions and direct the work of the development team. Unfortunately, effectively using the backlog can be challenging. This episode discusses seven common product backlog mistakes to help you recognise and fix them.

The product roadmap can be an incredibly useful planning tool that aligns the stakeholders and development teams and communicates how a product is likely to evolve. Sadly, that's not the case for all roadmaps. To ensure that your product roadmap is effective, you should make it goal-oriented or outcome-based, shared, and actionable, as I explain in this episode.

The product vision can be a powerful instrument to inspire and align stakeholders and development teams. But in practice, it is not always effectively applied. This episode shares questions about the product vision I am frequently asked together with my answers.

Becoming a head of product and managing a group of product people is a significant career step. In this podcast episode, I share my recommendations to help you get ready for the new job and be off to a great start.

I am a big fan of making decisions collaboratively, as it leverages the expertise of the stakeholders and dev teams; it creates a shared understanding; and it generates stronger buy-in. But deciding together can be challenging: The most senior stakeholder might try to dictate the decision, the group might shy away from difficult conversations, or people might get stuck in endless debates without knowing how and when a decision will be made. This episode shares eight practical tips to help you avoid these pitfalls and harness the full power of collaborative decision-making.

I am a big fan of involving the stakeholders and dev teams in important product decisions. But deciding together can be challenging: The most senior stakeholder might try to dictate the decision, the group might shy away from difficult conversations, or people might get stuck in endless debates. This article shares eight practical tips to help you avoid these pitfalls and harness the full power of collaborative decision-making.

The product owner is a role which is often misunderstood and frequently misapplied. In this article, I address five common product owner misconceptions. I explain why they are wrong and how the role can be effectively implemented.

The product owner is a role which is often misunderstood and frequently misapplied. In this podcast episode, I address five common product owner misconceptions. I explain why they are wrong and how the role can be effectively implemented.

A key challenge of working with KPIs is to select the right indicators: There are so many different metrics to choose from including daily active users, net promoter score, and profit, to name just a few. What's more, senior managers and stakeholders can have strong views on which indicators should be used. This episode helps you select the metrics that really matter and are truly helpful for your product.