Agile and Development Blog Posts by ProductPlan

ProductPlan’s Approach to Product Design

Adam Seubert — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 14:11:47 +0000

Adrian Crabtree, ProductPlan's Director of Product Design, shares our entire product design process from inception through delivery.

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What Does a Lead Engineer at ProductPlan Do in a Day?

Adam Seubert — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:00:38 +0000

I’m writing for the first time on the ProductPlan blog! Long-time reader, first-time writer. I’m currently a remote Lead Software Engineer at ProductPlan, where I head up a team of four engineers focused on bringing you List View, among other things. Our team is distributed throughout the United States and Central America, making my workday […]

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I’m Predictable in an Agile Environment

Adam Seubert — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 00:21:26 +0000

“Being Agile” and “being predictable” may seem mutually exclusive, at least when it comes to product management. A good sprint cadence creates a predictable frequency of software releases but divining what’s actually in them feels harder. Isn’t the whole point of Agile that we can continuously adjust, making on-the-fly tweaks to seize opportunities? Contrary to […]

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When to Declare Backlog Bankruptcy

Jim Semick — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 23:52:15 +0000

A few years ago, I was the acting product manager at a startup, developing an enterprise software product. Building the product was hard: it was taking longer to develop than everyone expected (of course). The complexity of what we were trying to accomplish became more evident as each day passed. The product backlog I managed […]

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3 Things Product Managers Owe to Internal Constituents

Adam Seubert — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:00:59 +0000

If you’re a product manager, then you probably have a lot on your plate. Meeting deadlines. Making customers happy. Keeping your team on track…all while trying to stay one step ahead of the competition can be draining. With everything competing for your time and attention, it’s easy to forget those inside of your organization who […]

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Making Sense of Planning in an Agile World

Adam Seubert — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 17:00:51 +0000

“But we’re agile. We don’t plan.” If you’ve ever worked with an agile team, chances are you’ve heard this excuse. However, even agile teams need a disciplined approach to planning. Teams who invest time in proper planning tend to have a better understanding of long-term goals for the product, and more realistic strategies for achieving […]

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Why Transparency Matters When Prioritizing Product Features

Adam Seubert — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:00:50 +0000

Product management is about making informed, strategic decisions and ensuring product aligns with organizational goals and customer needs. But a product manager’s duties don’t begin and end with building a product roadmap. Successful product managers know even the most foolproof product strategies can fall flat in the absence of one key element: Transparency. True transparency […]

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Product Management Lessons I’ve Learned From Cave Diving

Adam Seubert — Thu, 10 May 2018 16:00:11 +0000

After working in the product management space for a few years, I realized that I needed to take some classic product management advice and apply it to my own life—nothing good happens in a vacuum. I’d been spending far too much time living strictly within the small bubble that was my comfort zone and not […]

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Getting to the MVP: 5 Tips for Launching New Products

Jim Semick — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 15:00:49 +0000

There’s no universally effective plan for launching new products. So, here are the five most valuable lessons I’ve learned.

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#prodmgmt: 2017’s Most Interesting Product Management Tweets

Adam Seubert — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 17:00:58 +0000

At ProductPlan, we’re lucky to work with product managers on a regular basis. One thing we’ve noticed is that product managers are pretty avid consumers of content: books, blogs, podcasts, etc. Often, they’ll distill their learnings and insights from all these sources into 140 (or 280!) characters and tweet it out to the product community. […]

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Agile Roadmap Planning: How to Balance Long Term Uncertainty

Jim Semick — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 23:48:50 +0000

At ProductPlan, I frequently get questions about agile roadmap planning. How should you balance long-term strategic planning with short-term agility? This was an especially hot topic on a recent webinar we hosted. I thought I’d elaborate on some of my answers in this post. Here are 3 questions on that topic I’d like to highlight. […]

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Can Product Squads Improve Your Agile Development Process?

Adam Seubert — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 00:03:46 +0000

Product squads are a relatively new methodology for product development popularized by Spotify. Actually, popularized might be too strong a term for it. Since 2012, when Spotify restructured its development organization into functional, eight-person squads — developers and a product owner — much has been written about this novel approach. But it seems few organizations […]

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