What Does ‘Inclusive’ Mean in 2021?

Inclusive product design is an absolute must in 2021. If you’re planning to build a product at scale, you need to keep the door open for as many potential users as possible.

But our understanding of inclusive design has evolved over time, as product design itself has evolved. Inclusive design used to just mean breaking down physical barriers, such as allowing users to zoom in or make text larger.

Now, inclusive design means building products that anyone can feel comfortable using, regardless of their physical abilities, feelings, and cultural perspectives.

Inclusive design is disruptive, as products need to find innovative…

Sometimes, to outsiders, the tech industry and cool Silicon Valley startups are synonymous. That’s not the case at all, but there’s a little nugget of truth in there. Cool startups are a huge perk of working in tech. And Product Managers are perfectly positioned to help them succeed.

Maybe your goal is to have your own company one day, or maybe you live on the thrill of helping to build something new. Either way, we’re here to help you land that dream Product Manager role with startups.

What’s different about startups?

Startups work differently to giant corporations inside and out. The startup environment seems…

Most of the advice you’ll see in relation to building great digital products focuses on how to retain users. User/customer retention is often the lifeblood of a business, especially in the software spaces. If your product or service cannot keep the customers it attracts, it cannot grow.

So what can we do when we have a high churn rate? First, we have to understand it…

What Is a Churn Rate?

We’re well overdue a conversation about Product Managers and technical skills. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times the industry tries to reassure newcomers that you don’t need to be a full stack software engineer to be a good Product Manager.

Successful Product Managers come from a huge variety of backgrounds, and bring all kinds of skills to the table. And yet…we all seem to stay hung up on technical skills. So, once and for all, we’re doing a deep dive!

Here we’re going into asking the age-old question: do Product Managers need technical skills? Why does learning new…

Something that’s been buzzing around the industry for a little while is the notion of ‘no code’. It seems to be somewhat of a divisive topic, with some who are all-in and believe this will completely change the way we build, some who sit on the fence, and some who think it just another fad that will come and go.

So what is it, and why is everyone talking about it?

What Is No Code?

What Does Design Have to Do With Product Managers?

Product Managers sit at the intersection of technology, design, and business. Did you spot the design in there?

Now, Product Managers are not expected to do all of the heavy lifting of product development. You’re not expected to do any coding or UI design or launch any PPC ad campaigns. Your job is to manage the development team and direct them towards a common goal: realization of the product vision.

However, even the Product Management team needs to have at least a general awareness/rudimentary skills in most of the disciplines involved in software development. …

We’ve talked about cross functional collaboration a lot on this blog, but only ever in passing. It’s such an integral part of a Product Manager’s job description, that it’s just kind of a given that everyone knows what it means and how to do it well.

But it’s not just newbies who can benefit from re-examining our understanding of cross functional collaboration. In 2015 it was discovered by Harvard Business Review that 75% of cross functional teams were dysfunctional. Unless things have dramatically changed in the last 6 years, we’ve clearly got to re-open the conversation about how we work…

We’ve talked about cross functional collaboration a lot on this blog, but only ever in passing. It’s such an integral part of a Product Manager’s job description, that it’s just kind of a given that everyone knows what it means and how to do it well.

But it’s not just newbies who can benefit from re-examining our understanding of cross functional collaboration. In 2015 it was discovered by Harvard Business Review that 75% of cross functional teams were dysfunctional. Unless things have dramatically changed in the last 6 years, we’ve clearly got to re-open the conversation about how we work…