You can hire a hit man and whack your co-founder, but it might be less messy just to figure out how to slice things up. For a project I’m working on, I needed to figure out what share would be assigned to my collaborators, and had no idea how. This…

As far as I can tell, a product manager’s daily job isn’t doing roadmaps, prioritizing, etc. It’s managing everything coming at the team from every direction. That’s why “manager” is in the title! — This article is for anyone who ever wondered, “how do people juggle it all?” Well, I’m nobody special, but this is how I do it. Hopefully you’ll get some ideas from me, or just validate what you do :)

Government program naming schemes gave me an idea. Have Blue, Pave Low, Cobra Dane, Compass Call These are the names of military programs generated by NICKA, the Pentagon’s classified random naming program. Two random words strung together, with two numbers at the end and/or beginning, is also a strong password…

For about six weeks, working at a small company, I composed all my emails in rhyme. That would not have been a smart idea at my next job. — This article started as a personal learning exercise. I’d transitioned from a little company of friends to a big company of wildly diverse personalities and levels of familiarity. In a big company, even an imperfect email might get you in trouble. I’ll admit to much of this being more valuable…

Is your product to be used by consumers or producers? It makes a difference. Biology and economics both use the concept of Producer and Consumer. In economics, it’s as simple as it sounds: Producers create the products that Consumers use, a distinction that’s useful for designers too. This is a…

A dive into all things innovation, from on high all the way down to theory. For many years, I was deeply engaged in R&D alongside product management. …

If you get paid to decide, wouldn’t you want to make your decisions better? — However you use your brain, your biases shape your thinking. While bias was a useful feature of evolution and still serves us well in a variety of ways, it also leads to poor decisions, even if you have data. Learn how to overcome the unknown unknowns in your thoughts. First Things First Don’t…

You might believe Design Thinking is something special. After all, there are some very expensive paid courses showing how to do it. There are job listings that seem to think it’s a special skill. And there are lofty professors extolling its virtues. What if you could learn most of Design…

Years ago I visited the Visio offices in downtown Seattle shortly after Microsoft acquired the company. In the front entrance was a glass display case absolutely stuffed with awards. There is a reason so much acclaim was given to flowcharting software. — While everyone knows what a flowchart is, I’ve sensed a lack of love. Flowcharts elegantly communicate processes, are a powerful design language, can be applied strategically to guide architecture and not least, should often be the first step before coding. Flowcharting is such a Zen exercise, why wouldn’t you?