Dr Bart Jaworski

Do you feel anxiety when looking at your Product backlog with those 1014 tickets? What if I told you there is another way? Here are 8 ways to keep your backlog clean and actionable:

1) Differentiate between a backlog item and an idea - It's ok to have a notebook, Figma, mural, whatever, where you collect all ideas and requests. However, the backlog should only contain items you aim to work on FOR REAL within the next 1-3 quarters.

2) Set a hard limit of tickets - In my experience, only the top 20-30 tickets will actually have any chance to ever be closed as completed. There are too many new directions, opportunities, and urgent tasks coming in overriding the priority of tasks further in the backlog. Just close the items that will never happen or at least move them to your ideas space.

3) Don't make it a BUGlog - bugs are tasks like all others. They need value and effort estimation and have to be prioritized against any other product opportunity. If they don't make the cut, they don't make the cut, sorry. No point collecting bugs - they are not Pokemon!

4) Keep the tickets high quality - However, if there is something in your backlog, let it shine! Make sure to include the user story, impact hypothesis, requirements, and links to design and tracking specifications. The tickets should be able to speak for you when you are not around.

5) Try to have 3 months' worth of refined items ready to go - It might be hard (try daily refinements!) to achieve and it's worth it! With items ready for the next 3 months for the team can pick up, you will have so much time to do proper long time planning and assessment. It's worth the initial effort!

6) Introduce visual cues - It's much easier to look at the backlog if you can easily tell apart a new feature task, improvement initiatives, bugs, and research. If you add other color cues to represent item status, you will be able to tell everything at a glance.

7) Add key stakeholders to their tickets of interest - A personal update email may work. Automated status updates work too and keep relevant people in the loop with no time investment on your end!

8) Create a task document associated with a backlog item - This is basically an extended version of the ticket, where you can collect all the pre-development research and post-development results and observations. Collecting this info in one place saves you hours when it comes to writing progress updates and presentations. At the same time, your tickets remain clean and hold only the relevant information.

There you go! Here are my 8 ways to keep the backlog neat and functional. Will those work for your backlog and if not, why? Or perhaps you can contribute more pieces of advice? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagment #productmanagers #backlog

P.S. Having a clean backlog is one thing. Having great tasks to put there is another challenge every Product Manager faces. To be well equipped to face that challenge, check out my courses at drtbartpm. com :)

Product Management is NOT about adding new features to your product! It's about adding VALUE! 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝟴 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗱𝗱 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁:

1) Direct metrics’ growth
This most basic, business-driven aspect of the “value” concept. It will often drive your product goals, and it’s easy (and mandatory!) to measure. New features will mostly fall under this category!

2) Preventing a probable future drop in metrics
Any product is like a house; if not maintained and fixed, it will eventually collapse. This aspect translated into quality that the client/user often doesn’t get to appreciate until it’s too late. To achieve this kind of value, you will have your development team fixing bugs, making products scalable, and introducing/replacing old technologies in favor of newer ones.

3) Ability to track the impact of the work
Measuring stuff is often not easy and straightforward. How do you for example measure if a call was “fun” on Skype? This aspect of value is not only about investing time into creating tracking dashboards and implementing tracking software but also figuring out how to measure in the first place.

4) Growing stakeholders’ trust
If you do not have your stakeholders’ support and people in your company don’t understand your decision, your work will be misunderstood. Thus, you need to dedicate time to ensure your efforts are transparent and it’s easy to trace your steps and support your decisions.

5) Increasing the speed of development
Encourage your development team to investigate any process bottlenecks and propose solutions. It’s up to you if you accept the investment! It might work out and bear fruit later or the change might be hardly noticeable.

6) Improving morale and joy at work
The best thing you can do for a product is to make sure people who shape it, enjoy what they are doing and each other’s company. Skipping the obvious elements of empathy and being an honest man, a team that likes their work will act as junior Product Managers! They will contribute great ideas, warn you about possible dangers, and will be passionate about their work.

7) Complying with regulations
You might need to work with legal and make the product worse to secure its future.

8) Finding the right perspective
Any creative, brainstorming work, and SWOT exercises: when done at the right time, can unravel great new ideas and perspectives.

Do you agree with these 8? Are there any other ways PM can improve the Product? Sound off in the comments!

P.S. It's my birthday and until the end of the week, on my website: www.drbartpm .com all courses are discounted 70% with the code Drbart3870 on checkout! Additionally, to get as many of you as possible going successful through those Product job interviews, the course “Win your Product Management job interview“ is now available for only $10 with the code InterviewPMbirthday23 on checkout :)

#productmanagment #productexperience #productdevelopment

😵 The role of a Product Manager can be expected to hold far too many responsibilities,
especially in early Start-ups :) When I was working in one, I often joked the only thing I didn't do was accounting*... I recall I did:

- code development for internal CRM,
- planning roadmap and tickets (Product!),
- project management,
- bugs debugging,
- email and server maintenance,
- 3rd line of client support,
- onside client management,
- SPAM filter manual management,
- UI design,
- sales calls and training,
- and probably many others...

That was too much. Too much responsibility, too much stress, too much everything...

Nowadays, I try to keep my head clean and stick to these by-the-book responsibilities:

- shaping Product vision, strategy and goals,
- deciding what to build in the product (what problems to solve) and in which order,
- conducting research that justifies his/her choices,
- setting and measuring the success criteria of the developed items,
- listening to users and clients and reacting to feedback,
- being on a constant look for new market opportunities,
- leading teams without authority,
- carrying for the financial health of the product.

It doesn't mean your PM role has to be 1:1 like this list above. Just make sure you ask about your responsibilities during the job interview and also later, you won't allow your managers to make you do almost everything!

*and that's only because I would then realize how little I was paid :P

#productmanagment #humour #responsibilities

Don't you just envy the Product Managers of the early 2000s? Everything was so new and undiscovered. Is it so hard now because of their mistakes or...

Let me start by saying it's like I blame the Product Managers “of old“. You have to learn to walk before you run. Just because in the early days there was no emphasis on long-term technical excellence or user privacy, it doesn't mean that problems that those answered weren't there.

Truth be told, Product Management and the entire IT industry, used to be a niche, a boutique industry really, where different sins and omissions would be accepted because they would affect a limited number of passionate users. Early user data leaks from Google or Microsoft would basically go unnoticed, as no one cared, and the whole ordeal wasn't even regulated properly.

The reason I have to spend weeks and months before sending anything new to the product live is the fact that our little niche industry has become more than mainstream. People's lives and livelihoods are at stake even for the smallest of products.

Thus, as the industry matured, so did Product Management, making it so much more complicated...

However...

Is it just me, or even though we invested tons of time and resources into automated and manual testing and QA procedures, written privacy laws, and came up with better development practices, not much has really changed? Bugs slip to production on a regular basis, data leaks (are breached), and the development of the simplest of the components takes far too much time.

That's why I often romanticize the times when Product Management was more about creating a wonderful painting rather than building a pyramid of epic proportions.

How about you? Do you also dream of simpler days while still understanding why things are the way they are? What's the most convoluted product development story you would like to share? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #development

P.S. To become a Great Product Manager of today, be sure to check out my courses on www .drbartpm .com :)

Does your roadmap change every 2 months and it's impossible to kick off any larger project, not to mention maintain a steady vision and strategy? Is there a way out of this madness? Well...

Probably all books or courses about Product Management teach about the importance of keeping a single vision and strategy and maintaining it for long stretches of time. This allows you to tackle complex issues, focus on users, and create synergy between different releases. The product will be coherent and you will be able to plan your work months in advance.

On the other hand, the same books and courses will tell you to pursue the biggest opportunities within Sprint. You will be encouraged to regularly reprioritize your backlog and invest in items that will bring the most value, quickest, with the smallest risk.

Already sounds like a tad of a contradiction on the “ideal theory“ level, right?

Reality can be even worse...

In my experience very often strategy and goals are there to be on paper for leadership and big meetings. In reality, you have to work on those and:

• Fix bugs
• Enable sales
• Ensure stability
• Support other teams
• Answer market demand
• Keep certificates updated.
• Keep tech backbone stable
• Keep the user rating very high
• Accommodate marketing needs
• Update all SDKs and other components
• Stay up to date with the company's branding
• And probably many different things I simply forgot

This means each and every sprint is a survival challenge, where you decide what is most likely to break first.

Thus, I ask again:

Is there a solution to this madness?

Nothing rock solid, but there are a few things you can try:

• Dedicate some of the roadmaps to “Keeping the Lights On“ tasks, so that investment is visible
• Keep your resolve when challenged for more strategic investment. Have data ready to show the potential cost of neglecting certain priorities.
• Add ALL types of tasks to the backlog, prioritize them in the same framework, and indeed choose the top priority tickets every sprint.
• Make the prioritization process result transparent and easy to understand. This way you will have data to back up your decisions.
• Accept you can not do everything and focus on what's most important. You will upset someone, so choose your battles
• Have no regrets. You always make the best decision given the data you have. You can't consider what you don't know
• Include a hidden prioritization parameter: your career. While users should be most important for Product Managers, secure your position and career progress first and foremost.
  
Do you agree with my observations? How does your company deal with ad-hock development and strategic direction? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #prioritization

P.S. Always choose the best updates to implement. Head onto www.drbartpm . com and begin your Product journey with me today :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

You know what the thing is that Product Managers get mostly wrong? They chase details while they should focus on the big picture. How to escape this trap?

Listen, I get it. A product manager is responsible for the end shape of any product and release, so no wonder you may feel compelled to micromanage every detail.

Even worse, your stakeholders might force you to do that, by putting a lot of pressure on you (after all, if you fuck up, it's like they did as well).

But it's simply not the way, not the proper way. At least, unless you prefer to be a product manager in title only, and instead focus on project and engineering management.

At the same time, it's not like I will tell you this and magically you can shift your attention from detail-oriented to high-level. You need to set this up properly.

How?

1) Delegate the responsibility for quality to your team
Your engineers and designers are professionals. Trust them to deliver quality work. Set clear standards, provide context, then step back. Create systems where quality is everyone's job, not just yours. Regular code reviews, design critiques, and testing protocols should run without your constant oversight.

2) Ensure you won't proceed without a stellar strategy and goals that you can monitor with metrics
No initiative moves forward without a crystal-clear "why" and measurable success criteria. Before diving into features, nail down the business case, user problem, and specific metrics you'll track. This becomes your north star when everyone else gets lost in implementation details.

3) Secure the support of your manager
This part is political, and it matters more than you think. You need air cover. If your manager expects you to chase Jira tickets, you’ll never have the space to think strategically. Fix that first.

4) Put extra care into product requirements and background for any initiative
Invest heavily upfront in comprehensive PRDs that capture context, user stories, and success metrics. The more thorough your requirements, the less you'll need to micromanage implementation.

5) Define your future focus outcomes
It's best to translate your future-focused efforts into something tangible. Otherwise, you may end up working a lot with nothing to show for it.

Only with this will you find the proper space that will fall into place naturally and will allow you to do proper product management. After all, you are there to secure a stable and prosperous future for your product, not just the next sprint.

Are you able to focus on the big picture right now?

Let me know in the comments.

Do you want to have a great strategy to land your next product job? Get a new PM job in 2026 with Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job". We're starting the 2nd cohort next week, after already getting many people hired from the first one. Check it out here:

www.landpmjob.com

#prodcutmanagement #productmanager #strategy

If you’ve ever tried to evaluate translation quality in your product, you know the pain.
However, there is a solution:

Actually, it's best to use MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics), the gold standard for evaluating translation quality, adopted by major localization teams. In practice it often means spreadsheets, manual setups, or heavyweight enterprise tools that slow everything down.

Not anymore!

Alconost, my ongoing partner and patronm, just released a free MQM Annotation Tool that makes translation quality evaluation actually usable in real workflows.
What it does well:

• Allows you to evaluate human or machine translations using the full MQM error taxonomy
• Supports custom error weights and pass/fail thresholds aligned with business quality goals
• Visualizes error distribution and segment-level scores
• Exports results as CSV, TSV, JSON, or PDF for reporting and vendor discussions
  
Works instantly in the browser, no setup, no install needed.

This is especially useful for:
• Multilingual products
• Localization managers benchmarking
• MT quality LSPs documenting quality in a structured way
• ML and NLP teams are building annotated datasets
• Product teams that need objective, explainable quality signals
  
If MQM ever felt 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦, this tool is worth a look.

👉 Check it out and support the launch on Product Hunt:

https://lnkd.in/dN4eA8zF

What's the best translation failure you have ever seen that this tool could have prevented?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #localization

It's depressing that so many areas of your product can blow up cause you don't have the manpower to watch over them. Here's a solution:

Funnels break, conversions dip, dashboards quietly stop working, and real user anger is lost somewhere in the tons of emotionless data.

Not because your team is bad.
Not because you don’t care.

Modern products simply have too many areas and aspects to monitor manually.

Even if you have automated reporting, there are so many warnings and alerts that hardly anyone can tell the noise from an actual disaster, pending any more.

This is where Amplitude, partner of today's post, comes in with the work they are doing with AI Agents.

What are they?

They are AI-powered teammates that continuously analyze behavior data, surface meaningful changes, explain why they happened, and help you act. They do that either via Amplitude UI directly or using... Slack!

So rather than being "If only I..." after something goes wrong, you have AI scanning your data for any signs of mischief or important insights.

To achieve this, Amplitude introduced 2 layers of such teammates:

Global Agent (formerly Ask Amplitude)
Here, you can ask complex questions in natural language, explore funnels/cohorts/replays, and take action directly from answers (create cohorts, start experiments, launch guides). It understands your taxonomy, journeys, and business context. Just like an actual human Data Analyst,

There are also Specialized Agents with more narrow tasks:

• Dashboard Agent: It auto-generates insights from any dashboard, deep dives into interesting trends and anomalies, and runs proactive monitoring on a schedule so issues surface before they become problems.

• Session Replay Agent: This one reviews hundreds of sessions on a scheduled basis to identify friction and patterns costing conversions. Recommends specific fixes with quantified impact.

• Website Conversion Agent: This agent proposes experiments, generates variants, and creates experiment configurations. With your permission, it will execute launches and share results along with rollout decisions.

• Feedback Agent: It generates scheduled summaries of top themes from unstructured feedback (e.g., surveys, tickets) and surfaces actionable insights teams would otherwise miss.

In other words, you are no longer reactive or looking for issues like needles in a haystack. Problems are found and come to you, explained.

Therefore:
Less dashboard babysitting.
Faster detection.
Faster decisions.
Faster experiments.

Your product doesn’t need more people staring at charts.

One of the best AI implementations I've seen since the AI era began.

Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dHmSjt6V

Do you feel you'd need such AI teammates in your line of duty?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #dataanalysis

Following user feedback is a Product Management virtue. Is there an actual way to implement it, between all the noise, bugs, and stakeholder requests? Well…

Most teams claim they are customer-driven. Yet the moment you open Zendesk, App Store reviews, survey results, and Slack threads, you instantly remember why everyone quietly avoids this work.

Feedback is everywhere, contradictory, emotional, duplicated, and nearly impossible to turn into decisions. 
It is chaos disguised as “insights.”

This is why the new Amplitude AI Feedback release caught my attention and made it all the easier to decide to partner with them on this update.

It successfully connects what users say with what they actually do, in one workflow.

No extra tools. 
No extra tabs.

You see their words, frustrations, and praise. You see their behavior. And AI transforms it into ranked themes, rising trends, top requests, and complaints.

Noise turns into clarity. Opinions turn into patterns. Patterns turn into action.

And because it is native inside Amplitude, it kills the biggest problem in feedback work: Fragmentation.

Everything flows into analytics, session replay, and cohorts, creating a full loop from insight to fix. You can trace why an issue matters, how many users care, how it impacts behavior, and which actions you should take.

Finally, a single source of truth for PMs, UX, CX, and marketing.

I’m also genuinely impressed with the supported sources of feedback: App Store, Google Play, Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Salesforce Service, Gong, Trustpilot, G2, Reddit, Discord, and X. Slack arrives in Q1, and there will be more!

If you ever felt overwhelmed by feedback, this is one of the first attempts I have seen that genuinely solves the operational pain, not just the reporting part.

It launches… Today!

Take a look: https://lnkd.in/dAJKeTez

What was the most successful update you know that came from the product’s users?
Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #userfeedback

Everyone talks about doing user research, but hardly anyone actually does it. What if I told you you could have your research for every project in minutes?

Let’s be honest: Everyone talks about talking to users, as there simply isn’t enough time and manpower (and budget) to run too often.

Is there any other way?

There is! Today's post's partner: Articos !

Articos is the AI-first user testing and research platform that delivers human-like insights in a few minutes, powered by virtual users.

I will admit, initially, I was skeptical about AI tools that promise to “simulate users” or “run research for you.” The idea of AI interviewing itself didn't sound like one that would bring useful results.

Still, since it is free while in Beta, why not give it a shot?

I am about to run a workshop, timelines are brutal,  and so I gave Articos a try to see how it matches against insights, research, and user interviews I already collected.

The result surprised me positively and provided genuinely useful insights. I knew they were correct as they appeared in different human-to-human research I knew about similar topics, but I failed to connect those dots.

Articos forced me to challenge my own assumptions. I believe my workshop will be better because of the insights provided.

Is this a replacement for real interviews?

No.

Nothing truly replaces talking to humans who live the problem.

But here is where it shines:
• You have an extremely limited time
• You cannot find users to talk to
• You have no research budget
• You need fast directional clarity before doing the real thing
  
In those situations, something that delivers Pareto-quality at speed, for free, is simply a smart move.

So while I will never advocate skipping real conversations with users, I am absolutely adding Articos to my early discovery toolbox. If we cannot always do perfect research, we should at least avoid flying blind.

Want to try it yourself?

Here is the link: https://lnkd.in/gSbQYnYM

Afterward, be sure to come back and let me know in the comments section if you found its findings useful.

I know I did for my project.

#productmanagement #userresearch #productdiscovery

Controversial opinion: Product Managers don't need a roadmap. They needs goals to achieve with a deadline. How to find a realistic middle ground?

Here are 7 actions to consider:

1) If possible, commit to working on goals, not features
This is the ideal situation: Your roadmap is showing how you will timebox different challenges and goals over the coming months. However, let's be honest: Hardly any management will accept such a roadmap. In that case, you will need to supplement this with a set of proposed deliverables that you MAY work on that should address your challenges.

2) Show how your propositions fit into the wider narrative
If you can highlight how your proposed changes address your goals, but also fit into product/company vision, and strategy, and answer market/user needs, you will be a Product Management GOAT (Gen Z readers, how I used that correctly ;)? ). Trust me, this is a roadmap masterclass in this single paragraph.

3) Don't go too granular
You want to impress and inspire your stakeholders. The roadmap meeting will be a long one, and if you dive too deep, you will confuse your audience and lose the narrative. Do it Hollywood style: show, not tell! In any case, you should focus on the details over the course of the year, not when you are launching.

4) Include visualizations
If you have any wireframes or early designs, show them! They might change 1000 times later, but showing early concepts will show that you are nicely progress with your plans. This will build confidence that the presented outcomes will land when you say they will land.

5) Make it easy to access and check the progress
This will save you time on updates - either stakeholders will be able to check your progress on their own, or it will be easier for you to create a "check-in" presentation.

6) Involve the team
Before showing the roadmap to stakeholders, show it to your team for input. Make them a part of the roadmap, not receivers. They should feel proud to follow it and feel co-responsible, not be surprised by your propositions.

7) Stress that it's always only a draft, not a commitment
That's right! If you make this a commitment, it will make it harder for you to change direction later if, say, another ChatGPT pops up out of nowhere. You, as the Product Manager, should always pursue the best value for your product, and no roadmap should stop you from doing that!

How do you craft your roadmap?

Let me know in the comments.

Do you want to have a great strategy to land your next product job? Get a new PM job in 2026 with Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job". We're starting the 2nd cohort next week, after already getting many people hired from the first one. Check it out here:

www.landpmjob.com

It's only this weekend to sign up!

#productmanagement #productmanager #roadmap

P.S. Thank you 🥞 Carl Vellotti for another inspiring visual :)

Is it just me, or are most of the Product Discovery efforts a waste of time? In theory, the agile process should handle what the discovery aims to deliver. Let me explain:

Let me just say, I'm not an enemy or hater of Product Discovery. I'm actually a big fan!

When used right and with common sense, discovery will allow you to literally create a very cheap MVP that will allow you to successfully prove (or disprove) your product hypothesis and thus save a lot of development budget.

That being said...

I feel that Discovery can turn into something that becomes a mandatory "process extender" just for the sake of following the Product Discovery trend. Thus, it all starts to resemble walking in circles and second-guessing oneself as a Product Manager for WAY too long.

This is not agile, this isn't effective.

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg's motto "Move Fast and Break Things” is taking it a step too far in 2024, but "Released is better than perfect" should be something at the back of your Product head all the time!

So, when is Discovery helpful, and when is it an overkill? Let me give you my personal list, but I hope to hear back from you, dear reader, in the comments if you agree with my points and what you would add to it!

When to invest in Discovery (to name a few):
• When you have several ways to address a product problem, you can quickly organize a larger group of users to pitch in on which solution to prioritize.
• When you want to better understand your users/market (as a process parallel to the actual development pipeline).
• Also in this parallel pipeline: when you are working to pivot to create new products/verticals
• When a solution is high risk/high reward, you need arguments to convince senior leadership to take a chance.
• When a discovery process is way shorter than the development process, and you can learn early on if the investment is sound.
• As a vector/type of Product brainstorm
  
When is Discovery an overkill?
• When you can quickly build an MVP that can be tested on your real users
• When you are not sure what UX to use -> just choose one and use data and heatmaps to improve it later.
• When you are implementing something that is a well-known, successful solution copied from, i.e., your competitor.
• When you need a quick win, especially if the Discovery processes aren't mature and can be used easily.
• When you can produce data/research that also gives you confidence in your Backlog item.
• When you are not sure which Discovery technique will work for a particular project.

Did you ever feel like you were losing time while doing discovery?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #productdiscovery

It can be extremely stressful when an authority figure, like a manager or CEO, comes to you with a bad idea. Here are 8 ways to say "No" effectively:

1) Force the CEO/manager into a discussion
Don't just say "yes" or nod. If the CEO/manager wants you to do something, you need to do your due diligence. Having a conversation is the first reasonable step.

2) Ask for the reasoning
You need to understand what user/business problem the CEO/manager wants to solve. Perhaps you can offer a better alternative? Or at least understand that the request is not that stupid from a wider perspective.

3) Ask for data
To have the request added as a task to the backlog, you need data to allow prioritization and to estimate the impact hypothesis. If the figure of authority gave you the request, perhaps it comes with some handy data. You wouldn't act on an opinion, now would you?

4) Ask for time
If there is no data and no good reason, you will need time to look into this. Anything stupid on the surface can be a hidden gem (say, the original premise of Twitter: Who would want to run a microblog with only 160 chars to work with?), and you need time to evaluate.

5) Perform your research
Is there any data on the request? How did competitors solve the same problem? Did science tackle it? Was it tried in the company before? You know, the usual backlog item stuff :)

6) Prioritize the request in your backlog
Now that you can assess the impact, certainty, risk, and perhaps the effort needed, it's time to see where the CEO/Manager mandate items rank in the list of priorities. If it's a round the bottom or middle, time to:

7) Arrange a follow-up meeting
You are now able to speak with the stakeholder again on a more equal footing. This should be set as soon as possible. Perhaps you will need to timebox your research phase to adjust to the other side's calendar.

8) Demonstrate the cost of prioritizing the request
Show the CEO/Manager all your other plans, the problems they solve, and the expected impact. The stakeholder will have a clear visibility of where his/her request ranks in comparison.

Afterward, you shouldn't even need to say "No". The CEO should withdraw her/his request!

Would you be able to say "No" to a high authority figure?

Let me know in the comments.

Are you sick and tired of a role that forces you to say "No" too often? Time to land your next product job. Get a new PM job in 2026 with Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job". We're starting the 2nd cohort next week, after already getting many people hired from the first one. Check it out here:

www.landpmjob.com

#productmanagement #productmanager #leadership

Original meme template: shencomix

I've seen corporate Product Managers dreaming of working in a start-up and vice versa. Which side is better, though? Let's settle this once and for all:

I've worked in both types of companies, and here's my breakdown:

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁-𝗨𝗽
Working in an early company can be appealing. You have the real power to shape the product, and only the CEO can stand in your way. You are free to take risks and move fast. Your small team will feel like brothers in arms, and you’ll often have direct access to users, enabling quick iterations.

But that freedom comes with stress. Start-ups are unpredictable. You carry the weight of the product’s success on your shoulders. It can be exciting, but also exhausting, with long hours and few processes to guide you. That is no 9-5 job - it's an ongoing battle for survival.

If you prefer to relax and calm over a stressful roller-coaster ride, perhaps you should consider:

𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲
Big company PM jobs, especially at big names like FAANG or MANGA, offer structure, stability, and opportunities to focus on your core Product Manager responsibilities. You’ll have clear processes, a system of benefits, and room to grow within different teams or levels of seniority.

However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Decision-making is slower, takes almost forever, and is bogged down by dependencies and approvals. You might be far removed from users, relying on analytics and aggregated feedback rather than direct insights. And let’s be honest, not every team in a big company has the same passion or drive you’ll find in start-ups.

That said, there’s a built-in safety net. Even if your project fails, you’re less likely to lose your job. And great managers (if you’re lucky enough to work with them) can turn this structured environment into a growth powerhouse for your career.

With all that, a question remains:

𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲?
Neither start-ups nor corporates are universally better. It boils down to the people you’ll work with and the culture of the company. The best environment is the one where you’ll feel supported, inspired, and empowered to succeed. It's also not universal: Some start-ups will just develop nicely without you sacrificing your soul, and some corporations will keep you at night with deadlines.

Thus, focus less on the size of the company and more on the vibe and reputation. If the people are passionate, the process is reasonable, and the vision excites you, go for it! Ignore whether it’s a scrappy start-up or a corporate giant, great people make all the difference.

Which one would you prefer?

Let me know in the comments :)

Also, if you want to get a new PM job in 2026, Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job" started enrolling for the 2nd edition, after already getting people hired in the middle of the first one! Enroll here:

www,landpmjob.com

#productmanagement #startups #corporate

You are an experienced and talented Product Manager, yet you struggle through painful job interviews.
Why? How to overcome this? Here are a few tips:

First, let’s get one thing straight: There is nothing wrong with you.

Being good at PM interviews is a different skill from being good at product management. Just like discovery, stakeholder management, or roadmap thinking, it’s a muscle. If you don’t train it intentionally, it will fail you under pressure.

I can’t give you time. But I can give you guidance.

Here’s what actually helps:

1) Learn and improve with every interview
Treat interviews like another chance to practice them. After each one, summarize what aspects still need work. Patterns show up fast if you look for them. Most candidates repeat the same mistakes for months because they never do a proper retro.

2) Practice common interview questions
This way, you will have your best answer at your fingertips rather than making it up on the spot. You will also avoid common pitfalls, for example, “Tell me about a failure” is rarely about failure, but about learning and improving from it.

3) Product Management fundamentals > jumping to solutions
Strong PMs often lose points by skipping framing. They rush to solutions because that’s what real work rewards. Interviews reward the opposite. Problem definition, user clarity, constraints, and success metrics. If you don’t anchor there first, even a great idea sounds random.

4) Use a visual aid to help structure your long answer
A simple mental model works wonders. “I’ll walk you through this in three steps,” immediately calms the room. It signals control, not hesitation. You’re not thinking out loud. You’re leading the conversation.

5) Start with a short, 1-sentence answer and add a summary at the end
Interviewers get lost. They always do. Open with your direction in one sentence. Then explain. Then close with a crisp takeaway. This isn’t redundancy. It’s empathy for a tired human on the other side of the table.

6) Keep relaxed, smiling, and confident, even if it is just an act
Interviews are emotional theater. Confidence is often perceived before competence. You don’t need to oversell, but you do need to look comfortable owning your decisions.

Listen, following those pieces of advice might not land you a job at your next interview. It is a process to follow and improve with every try, until it's your second nature, just like it is to find the right product solution to the hardest of challenges.

Did you ever struggle through a job interview?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #jobsearch

While being a Product Manager can be an amazing experience, landing this job has become incredibly hard. Here's what to do to improve your odds:

1) Revamp your LinkedIn for inbound offers
Your LinkedIn is no longer a CV. It is a landing page. Recruiters spend seconds, not minutes, scanning it for relevance, seniority, and clarity. Your headline, summary, and recent activity should clearly signal what problems you solve, at what scale, and in which domain. If you rely only on applications, you are already at a disadvantage.

2) Grow your contacts here
Most PM roles are filled through networks long before they hit job boards. That does not mean spamming connection requests. It means intentional networking with recruiters, hiring managers, and peers in your space.

3) Improve your resume, weekly
A resume is not a static document. Every interview, rejection, and feedback loop should improve it. You learn which bullets resonate, which metrics matter, and which experiences confuse people. Small weekly tweaks beat massive rewrites once every six months.

4) Apply a lot, in a bespoke way
Volume matters, but only when paired with relevance. A tailored CV and a short, thoughtful message dramatically increase your response rate. Hiring managers can spot generic applications instantly. Your goal is to make it obvious why you fit this role, not why you want any role.

5) Practice the craft, especially in the AI space
PM interviews are no longer just about frameworks. You are expected to reason about tradeoffs, data, ambiguity, and increasingly AI-driven products. That means practicing real case studies, not memorizing answers. If you cannot clearly explain how AI changes discovery, delivery, or risk, you will fall behind.

6) Upskill
The market rewards relevance, not tenure. Learning never stopped being part of the job, but now it is brutally visible when you do not keep up. Whether it is AI, analytics, experimentation, or stakeholder management, deliberate skill building pays off fast. Courses, side projects, and writing are all valid paths if done seriously.

7) Post on LinkedIn
Posting is not about vanity metrics. It is about proof of thinking. When you write, you demonstrate clarity, experience, and perspective at scale. Recruiters and hiring managers read silently long before they ever reach out.

8) Keep this up methodically
None of this works if done for two weeks. Job searching is a long game that rewards consistency and discipline. Set a cadence you can maintain without burning out. The people who win are rarely the loudest, but almost always the most consistent.

If you are looking to land a PM job in 2026 and would like to learn more, be sure to register for my live event on January 15 at 12 pm CET. Register here:

https://lnkd.in/dXp_mCrX

Shall you join me?

What is your biggest hurdle in landing your next Product job?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagment #jobsearch #aipm

The best way for a product manager to attract new roles passively is to become a product content creator. However, where to start? Well...

User-generated content is only going to get bigger from here, so there hasn’t been a better time to start.

I have partnered with folks at Power 20 bootcamp to bring FREE strategy calls for 20 of you, exclusively for my LinkedIn network.

Check out the link to the training in the comments :)

Begin your creator journey today!

#creator #partnership #productmanagement

Is the life of a Product Manager really that stressful? If so, how do you deal with that? Well...

It depends!

Some PMs will have a walk in the park most days, while others will lose their hair by the minute (Poor Homer...)

If you are not a career-chasing PM, but rather one who would enjoy working in peace with moderate pressure, prioritize these actions:

1) Make sure your work doesn't defy you

You're a human being, not a backlog processor. Set boundaries, build confidence outside of work, and stay grounded in who you are beyond your title. Find pride in who you are, not what you do.

2) Don't ignore your vacation days

Seriously. Rest is part of the job. Tired minds make bad decisions and no roadmap benefits from burnout. Holidays are part of your compensation and you are doing no one a favor if you are stressed and overworked!

3) Don't forget to eat healthy, sleep, and exercise

It's not a wellness cliché! It’s your core productivity stack. You can't lead with a foggy brain and zero energy. At least try to walk or bike to the office a few days a week.

4) Choose established companies rather than start-ups

More structure.
Slower processes.
More support.
Less chaos.

If stability helps you thrive, don’t chase the hype: opt for healthy systems. The bigger they are, the slower they move, and the less excessive stress.

5) Don't be afraid to ask for a different team/project if your manager is a career chaser

Some folks run on adrenaline and weekend slides. If that’s not your vibe, speak up. You deserve a healthy environment. Your boss might not be a bad person, but if your goal is to do great work without heart issues in the future, perhaps a more chilled manager will be better aligned with you.

6) Perform Severance on your private and work lives

Okay, not full-on Lumon style, but close. Shut down Slack. Turn off notifications. Protect your space outside of work. What happens at work, stays at work, ok?

7) Find something you enjoy that isn't in front of a screen

Climbing, painting, running, cooking, whatever. Get away from pixels and into your body or senses. In that case, your relaxation looks too much like your work, which risks blurring the line, even if you don't work remotely.

8) Enjoy boredom from time to time

Not every moment needs optimizing. Let your brain idle. That’s where creativity and calm often begin. Plus, your brain comes up with great ideas if left alone every now and then.

Hope this helps! Enjoy your day and work :)

Do you feel stressed as a Product Manager?

Please share your stress levels in the comments.

Did you like this post? If so:

• Make sure to follow me and get a notification every time I post (use the bell icon on my profile page: Dr Bart Jaworski)
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#productmanager #productmanagement #mentalhealth

You may think that product vision is a cringy phrase that serves no purpose. In that casem you are wrong. Let me change your mind:

Here are 7 reasons to invest time in a proper vision:

1) Defines your target
If you know what you want to achieve with your Product, it will be way easier to achieve! I have a vision both for my coursework and my video calling portion of Skype!

2) Helps you focus your efforts
Having a vision will help you prioritize your backlog as a Product Manager. When deciding, just ask yourself whether this will get you closer to a Product Vision!

3) Prevents feature creep
Like in the picture below, many features should never make it to your product. You need to decide what brings the most value to the Product; often, a new feature is not the answer!

4) Let’s you own the vision that will appear regardless
Trust me, the Vision will appear on its own in the company, and you want to establish one before that happens. For the longest time, I used to work with a company with a vision to be a cheaper alternative to a competitor. That wasn't too inspiring.

5) Highlights your professionalism
Product Managers are expected to provide a Product Vision. Even if you don't believe too much in it, do it to meet expectations and amaze your colleagues and managers!

6) Aligns stakeholders before they misalign themselves
Without a clear Product Vision, everyone brings their own version of “what good looks like.” Sales optimizes for deals. Tech for elegance. Leadership for optics. A shared vision gives you a single reference point and saves you from endless opinion wars disguised as strategy.

7) Makes trade offs defendable, not personal
Saying “no” is much easier when it is the vision saying it, not you. Instead of arguing feature by feature, you can explain why something does or does not move the product toward its intended future. That shift alone can dramatically reduce friction and burnout.

There you go! A vision for a product can be summarized as a point of focus that allows you to avoid creating something disjointed and not lose time on pointless features.

As a PM who used to work for a product whose vision was "We are a cheaper alternative to a leading industry player", I know first-hand how damaging a lack of real vision can be.

What is the vision for your product?

Let me know in the comments!

Also, if you want to get a new PM job in 2026, Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job" started enrolling for the 2nd edition, after already getting people hired in the middle of the first one! Enroll here:

www.landpmjob.com

#productmanagment #productexperience #productvision

How to be a Product LEADER, not Manager:

- Be honest
- Be patient.
- Be curious
- Be humble
- Smile often
- Stay relaxed
- Avoid politics.
- Be data-driven
- Accept criticism
- Lead by example
- Show confidence.
- Always keep calm.
- Keep the promises
- Communicate well.
- Encourage feedback.
- Avoid public disputes.
- Find time for everyone.
- Listen more than speak.
- Socialize with your team.
- Share feedback in private
- Be able to learn and adapt
- Show business perspective
- Show the human side often.
- Don't ignore broken promises
- Trust in the people around you.
- Be brave and take responsibility
- Set ambitious, but realistic goals.
- Keep inspiring those around you

And to close the list: Be yourself, don't pretend to be someone else. Instead, learn and grow to be the leader you'd like to be. It's not a "fake it until you make it" situation. It's about knowing your weaknesses and overcoming them; i.e. An introvert PM showcasing a relaxed and confident state at the 5th meeting of the day!

What does it mean to be a great leader for you? Tell me a story of great leadership skills you saw in your career!

Looking forward to your comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #leadership

All your product efforts and communication will fail if you fail to provide the right context. Why?

Anything a Product Manager does has to be justified by any set of the following:

• OKRs
• Goals
• Vision
• Strategy
• Deadlines
• PM's Career
• Politics (yuck)
• Legal Situation
• Users Feedback
• Financial Situation
• Impact Hypothesis.
• Competitors' moves
• Current market State
• Product Technical State

The more of those you can show for your idea, the stronger the case to pursue this.

Why?

Cause a Product Manager has to make the important call on where to allocate rather expensive development resources. A wrong decision can make or break a product. If you can provide a lot of decision context, you can build more confidence and trust. You really need it!

Why?

Because it's not the context that uses your product, but real users. All the preparation and discovery may completely miss the mark when it comes to actual Product usage.

Why?

Users aren't really reliably predictable. Building a case for an update that you hope will achieve success is just putting more "estimation" to the "guesstimation" every Product Manager should conduct for any initiative. This can be really helpful later.

Why?

If an update fails, the PM's reasoning can be traced. It's OK to fail after long and convincing due diligence, it's not OK to make a reckless decision that costs the company lots of cash.

Why?

As sad as it is, Product Managers aren't primarily in the business of serving users with a product solving a specific problem, but to earn money because of that. If you serve without an overall return on investment, you fail as a Product Manager.

Why?

Cause a product with a bad financial situation will eventually have to close down, leaving its users afloat. Thus, serving only users while ignoring business is ultimately harmful to users who rely on your product.

Why?

Ok, I think I need to stop the Why game.

Why?

Answering the question above will make a loop, and I'm running out of characters for this post.

Anyway, dear Product Manager, take care to build a strong case and context for any initiative you and your development team undertake. This is the only right way to do it!

Have fun creating great products that consider users and businesses alike :)

Do you always know why you are doing what you are doing?

Let me know in the comments.

#productmanagement #productmanager #agile

I have many times fallen into the trap of seeing myself as a typical user of my Product. This was always a giant mistake. Why is it bad? How to avoid it?

As the hilarious picture shows, the product creators may understand their market, but still not capture the real needs of the users. You, the Product Manager, are to be the user and business ambassador, not the actual user.

Why is your perspective likely wrong?

• Lack of diverse points of view: single perspective
• You can't possibly know all your users' challenges
• You will miss the innovation that only users can uncover
• Being in tech gives you instincts that no tech users miss
• Being an expert makes you blind to beginner challenges
• You carry inherent biases and assumptions
  
...and likely more.

"Ok, smart guy, - you may say - but how do you ensure you design the right product for your users?"

Way ahead of you!

Here are a few actions a typical Product Manager can invest in, to ensure it's the users' perspective driving product development, not the limited PM ones:

1) KYC (Know Your Customer) client research
With the work done by a dedicated company, you will deeply understand your users' needs, behaviors, and motivations.

2) Building user personas:
Create detailed profiles representing different user types to guide design and development decisions. Use data to identify usage patterns that can be labeled as specific types of users.

3) "Jobs to be Done" workshop
With this, you will identify the tasks users aim to accomplish, focusing on their goals rather than features. This is the ultimate way for PMs to identify the right problems to solve!

4) Dealing with data, not opinions
Goes without saying that base decisions on analytics and user data instead of personal hunches. Especially your own.

5) Quantitative discovery
Use surveys to gather measurable user insights. If you ask the right questions, you will get a representative number. You can also look for those in your reporting suite.

6) Introducing MVP quickly to understand users' reactions
You can always launch a Minimum Viable Product early to collect feedback and iterate. Even embed some polls with it to gather live feedback!

7) Qualitative discovery
Engage directly with users to gain an in-depth understanding of their experiences. They will tell you whether your prototype resonates with them, and they can complete assigned tasks easily.

There you have it, many ways to keep your opinion away from good Product decisions.

So, have you ever assumed you knew what your users wanted, only to be surprised by their actual needs?

How do you understand your users in the end?

Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you want to get a new PM job in 2026, Aakash Gupta and my cohort "Land PM job" started enrolling for the 2nd edition, after already getting people hired in the middle of the first one! Enroll here:

www.landpmjob.com

#productmanagement #productmanager #userexperience

You may think you hate Jira, but it's only a tool that spotlights all the PM absurdities. Here are 7 of them with ways to deal with them:

1) Infinite backlog full of stuff that will never happen
There is nothing more depressing than looking daily at hundreds of tickets, knowing well that only a few top items will reach the product.

Solution => Keep a limit of 50 tickets in the backlog. Only keep stuff that is likely to happen. Say "No" more often to stakeholders. Especially when:

2) Tasks are taking forever
No estimation is ever correct; things take ages, and nothing is released bug-free on time. It's even more irritating if the PM is getting roasted for that rather than the team,

Solution => Understand the reason for this on the retro with the team. Maybe there is too little lead time?  Too many sprint goals? Is the tech too old and needs updating? Find the cause and invest time to apply a remedy. Perhaps you and they suffer from:

3) Complicated processes with lots of paperwork
If you work in a big company, everything needs a lot of approvals, double checks, and document submission. It can take weeks for a completed piece of code to reach clients/users.

Solution: Break the full process into stages and start timing the steps. Find the biggest offenders, and show it to management with proposals on how to cut down or automate some stages. Time spent needlessly on procedures is not dedicated to providing real value to users and the company!

4) Lack of clear, long-term direction
Rather than work on a long-term vision under a good strategy, you take out fires and work on ad-hoc requests, everything in chaos and rush.

Solution: If the vision and strategy are ignored, bring it to your manager. If they are simply missing, take the initiative, prepare proposals for those, and bring them upstairs.

5) Impossible goals
What you are to achieve is simply impossible. Period.

Solution: Negotiate goals while they are drafted, then focus on the 1-2 most important and try not to connect your value with achieving those goals. Just do your best!

6) Misaligned team members
If the team is no managed, they do not follow your instructions and nothing gets done.

Solution: Work with their team leader to grow responsibility. If you micromanage your team, stop. They won't grow and be creative unless they are required to deliver results without supervision.

7) Competing teams
You need other teams to be too busy to help you achieve progress, or other resources are not always available.

Solution: Prioritize those tasks that have no dependencies. Escalate upstairs where those are unavoidable and unavailable.

Here are my 7 points of a typical PM's frustrations.

Did you ever have a true "I HATE JIRA" moment?

Let me know in the comments.

Did you like this post? If so, please make sure to follow me and hit the bell icon on my profile page ( Dr Bart Jaworski ) so you never miss a new release!

#productmanager #productmanagement #jira