Roman's Product Management Podcast

Product teams play a key role in solving user problems and achieving product success. But who should lead the team and manage its work? The Head of Product, the product manager, or someone else? In this episode, I explain why product teams should be self-managing. I describe the benefits this approach offers and what it takes to succeed at self-management.

AI has significantly impacted product management. But so far, most product teams have used it to create new features and discover and deliver products faster. While helpful, this approach overlooks the area that most determines product success: strategy. In this episode, I’ll explain how to move beyond execution and use AI as a strategic partner—helping you create a product strategy that achieves lasting success.

Stakeholder management is as important as it is challenging: Without the support of the stakeholders, it is virtually impossible to achieve product success. Aligning them, however, can be tricky. In the worst case, you experience endless meetings, conflicting opinions, and bad compromises. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this episode, I share five practical measures to help you succeed with stakeholder management.

Product strategy, OKRs, and KPIs are popular product management frameworks. But how can they be applied successfully together? What comes first, strategy, OKRs, or KPIs? Can OKRs describe or replace strategy? And what should you do when a senior stakeholder tells you what OKRs and KPIs to use? Listen to this episode to hear my answers.

The product vision can be a powerful vehicle for creating a shared purpose, inspiring people, and galvanising them. Unfortunately, I have seen many visions that did not fulfil their potential, as they suffered from a number of mistakes. In this episode, I discuss five common issues and explain how you can avoid and correct them.

Strategy and product teams are both key to achieving product success. But what exactly do we mean by strategy, and to what extent should product teams shape strategic decisions? These are the questions I discuss in this episode.

What do incremental enhancements of a legacy app and the development of a new AI product have in common? Both have to create value and innovate to some extent. In this episode, I discuss the Innovation Ambition Matrix, a tool that helps you understand your product’s innovation type and, based on it, make the right strategic decisions and optimise your product portfolio.

AI has significantly impacted software-based products and has started to change how product management is practised. But how is it affecting product strategy? Can AI-powered tools lead to better strategies? Can they even make strategic product decisions on their own? In this episode, I discuss the benefits and limitations of using AI to create a product strategy, as well as the foundations you should put in place to take full advantage of AI tools.

Product teams are key in enabling product-led growth and offering successful products. In this episode, I explain what product teams really need to do a great job and how you can best support the teams you work with.

As helpful as they can be, product roadmaps are not always enough. To closely align a group of products and ensure that they all move in the same direction, you’ll benefit from a portfolio roadmap. In this episode, I explain what a product portfolio roadmap is. I share a template to help you build your own outcome-based portfolio roadmap. I show how you can connect your portfolio roadmap to the portfolio strategy and use it to direct the product roadmaps, and I describe who should be involved in developing the plan.