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Product Leadership

Product Leadership

My Personal Approach to Balance

My changing thoughts on work/life balance

Recently, there has been another surge of discussions around the “right” approach to work/life balance in tech companies. Personally, I think these discussions are moot: I don’t think there is one right approach for how to achieve work/life balance.…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

27 Oct 2024

PM Hiring Practices

Recent changes to my hiring process

I've written in the past about hiring the team as a product leader. In this short article, I want to share some practices I've recently adopted and liked in my hiring processes.…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

16 Aug 2024

The End of Software?

Musings on today’s take

This article was making the rounds on Twitter today: It’s a good take – in the sense that a good “take” is something that half of readers will vehemently agree and the other half will vehemently disagree, and I can’t help but share my thoughts.…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

1 Jun 2024

Year 3 as RevenueCat Head of Product

Takeaways and lessons learned

Managing up is one of the most underrated skills as a product manager. Product managers spend a lot of time managing laterally: designers, engineers, and stakeholders across the organization. Therefore, it can be appealing to treat your manager as…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

10 Jan 2024

My Product Leadership Reflections on 2022

Some things I learned last year

It's been a while since I wrote a year-in-review post – five years, after my first full year as a product manager at Yammer. 2022 was not my first full year as Head of Product, but it was momentous for me in my role at RevenueCat. I went from managing…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

1 Jan 2023

I Interviewed ChatGPT for a PM role, and it almost got the job

How to detect the AI's confident but shallow answers

I've interviewed a lot of product manager candidates, and one of the regular interview formats (which is pretty standard in a PM interview loop) is the product sense interview. Inspired by the recent launch of ChatGPT…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

7 Dec 2022

Interviewing Product Managers for Product Sense

Evaluating “hard” product skills

I’ve been involved in interview panels for a lot of PMs, and have set up hiring processes for product managers in two different startups. One of the critical components of the interview loop should…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

30 Apr 2022

Take-home assignments for product management candidates

The pros and cons of requiring written homework

I've recently gone through the process of designing a product management interview process for RevenueCat. This is not the first interview process I've set up from scratch, but one of the questions that comes up every single time is whether…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

13 Mar 2022

Defining teams for a product development organization

Four interesting ideas about product org design

Recently I've been again thinking a lot about setting up product development teams, since we are working on growing the product and engineering orgs at RevenueCat. I've written before about what I consider the best in class principles to follow…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

13 Feb 2022

What is a Product Vision?

Often mentioned, rarely understood

One of the trickiest concepts to grasp in product development is that of a product vision. I have written about the topic before, but my conclusions in that article, that a product vision should describe the customer benefits and the world…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

19 Sep 2021

Looking for Best Practices? Try Best Principles.

Why implementing hyped frameworks won't get you far

The product development world is enamored with best practices and frameworks. Hardly a week goes by in which there isn't another set of processes and practices being discussed and at times even hyped: from the Spotify model to Basecamp's Shape Up…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

29 Nov 2020

The Case for Empowered Product Teams

Why you should let your teams figure out what to build

One of the central best practices of modern product development is the empowered product team. An empowered team is a cross-functional team, composed of product, design, and engineering, that is tasked with solving specific customer problems in ways…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

15 Nov 2020

You are not Focusing Enough

Delivering as many good ideas as possible doesn't create great products

In many product organizations, quarterly goal setting exercises and roadmaps discussions amount to a negotiation between product leadership and/or product management and the rest of the team, how many features can get built in a given time frame…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

1 Nov 2020

The Discomfort of a Great Product Team

Why teams without conflicts don't tend to produce great products

One of the most counterintuitive aspects about great product teams is that being a part of them isn't always comfortable. It's not all smooth sailing: there are frictions and disagreements between team members, differences in working styles, and…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

18 Oct 2020

Why “Outcomes Over Outputs” is Flawed Advice

Outputs? Outcomes? Even considering both is insufficient.

“Outcomes over Outputs” is a mantra that has swept the product management and product development community over the last couple of years, even leading to a major book outlining the concept. At the core of the paradigm is the insight that just pushing…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

4 Oct 2020

Bring Me Problems, Not Solutions

Counterintuitive advice for product development

It is an often-repeated piece of management advice to demand that team members “bring solutions, not problems”. The reason for this advice is to empower employees to solve problems they encounter, reduce management bottlenecks, and thereby to improve the…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

19 Jul 2020

Setting up Product Development Processes

How product leaders can help their organization effectively execute

One of the essential areas of responsibility for product leaders is setting up the processes of the product development department. For an overview, read my high-level article on product leadership responsibilities, or continue reading for a deep dive…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

5 Jul 2020

Establishing a Product Organization Structure

Product teams and functional leadership

One of the essential areas of responsibility for product leaders is setting up the organizational structure of the product development department. For an overview, read my high-level article on product leadership responsibilities, or continue reading…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

24 May 2020

Developing the Team as a Product Leader

Growing your people to build the highest performing team

One of the crucial areas of responsibility for product leaders is building the team, and one crucial part of that is developing your team members. For an overview, read my high-level article on product leadership responsibilities, or continue reading…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

1 May 2020

Hiring the Team as a Product Leader

Achieve leverage through hiring the right people

One of the crucial areas of responsibility for product leaders is hiring to build up the team. For an overview, read my high-level article on product leadership responsibilities, or continue reading for a deep dive on recruiting and onboarding.…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

15 Mar 2020

Owning the Product Direction as a Product Leader

From vision to roadmap, from 1:1 feedback to evangelism

One of the crucial areas of responsibility for product leaders is owning the product direction. For an overview, read my high-level article on product leadership responsibilities, or continue reading for a deep dive on product direction.…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

16 Feb 2020

The Three Responsibilities of Product Leadership

What the heck does a product leader do, anyway?

In the past years, a lot has been written about product management: about the role definition and how it varies between industries and companies, the skills required, best practices and so on. Product leadership is much less well covered…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

26 Jan 2020

Should Your Product Have a North Star Metric?

One metric to rule them all?

Product “north star” metrics provide benefits in team alignment and product improvement. However, boiling down all stages of the user lifecycle to a single number also has the risks of lack of ownership, disempowerment, and metric “hacking”…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

28 Apr 2019

How Do You Create a Product Roadmap?

Moving away from a GANTT chart of features and dates

I was recently asked, “How do you create a product roadmap?” In a world where we want to prioritize outcomes over outputs, run a continuous discovery process, and iteratively deliver while constantly learning, the answer to the question is…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

20 Apr 2019

Most Product Improvement Attempts Fail

What should product organizations do about that?

One of the most fascinating and least discussed facts about product development is that most attempts to improve the product fail to deliver value. Notably, depending on the source, between 2/3 and 3/4 of A/B tests do not lead to an improvement…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

2 Mar 2019

Product Vision, Strategy, Roadmap

We keep using these words, but what do they mean?

Product organizations often discuss needing a (new) product vision or strategy, or will talk about what is on their roadmap. However, what is sometimes lost in these discussions is the unfortunate fact that none of these terms have clear definitions…

by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

13 Feb 2019