We help product teams succeed through skill building, coaching and organizational design.
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One insight I had, one great article I read, one amazing person I met, one question I need your help with, one product job that needs someone awesome. Sign up and I promise never to waste your time.
Services We Provide
We believe that best practices, tools, courses, and books keep evolving but a product culture is what makes for happier customers, more effective teams, sustainable business results, and a healthier community.
Advising - we advise companies on best practices in product development, product management, outcome-based planning, and organization design.
Coaching - we provide coaching for executives and teams to help them grow their careers and drive their businesses forward.
Online Roadmap Course - we lead an on-demand masterclass in product roadmapping that works
Workshops - we provide public and private workshops to help individuals and teams learn and practice critical skills such as roadmapping, OKRs, prioritization, and stakeholder management.
CPO Forum - we hold intimate, invitation-only gatherings for product leaders. Forum members meet quarterly for a full day with peers. They collaborate to address timely, member-specific issues by using the most relevant, proven growth frameworks and tools.
FOR CPOs
Managing Stakeholders to avoid Roadmap Derailment
After aligning everyone around a roadmap, you might think the task is complete. Very often, however, maintaining alignment on a roadmap over time is more difficult than establishing it in the first place.
Most roadmaps require not only longer-term strategic changes, which can be planned ahead of time, but also urgent changes to the current priorities, which require trade offs and difficult decision making.
Coach Melissa Appel will lead an open discussion for CPOs on this topic, Thursday May 30 @ 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET.
Register now for Managing Stakeholders to Avoid Roadmap Derailment.
THE BOOK IS HERE
Aligned
Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders
There are many books on the hard skills of product management, but not much on the soft skill of stakeholder management. In our experience, driving alignment is the most critical tool for the success of your product — and your career.
Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel have written the missing reference manual on this critical topic. Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders will show you how to:
Build trusting relationships with the people who can make or break your product
Optimize your communication for different audiences
Get buy-in for your ideas and roadmaps
Have stakeholders appreciate you when (and because) you say no
Published by O’Reilly. Get the Book…
PRODUCT CULTURE ACADEMY
Online Roadmap Course
In the 5 years since we wrote Product Roadmaps Relaunched, our outcomes approach to roadmaps has become the acknowledged best practice.
I’ve distilled everything we’ve learned from teaching thousands of people how to do roadmaps right into an online masterclass. It has updated and expanded content, exercises, templates, and help when you need it. Self-paced, with a live component.
Need Help with your Product Culture?
Contact us for a free consultation.
THE CLASSIC
Product Roadmaps Relaunched
How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty
A good product roadmap is one of the most important documents an organization can develop, publish, and continuously update. Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty teaches you how to create an effective product roadmap, and demonstrates how to use the roadmap to align stakeholders and prioritize ideas and requests.
Steve Blank said about the book, “It’s about time someone brought product roadmapping out of the dark ages of waterfall development and made it into the strategic communications tool it should be. McCarthy and team have cracked the code.”