Part 1 of a series on how to communicate to executives, stakeholders, and developers at the right level of detail — It was February and the roof of the home we’d recently purchased was leaking. The snow on the roof was melting and a steady stream of water was dripping out of my kitchen cabinets, all over my countertops and onto the floor. The conversations I had over the next few…

How asking this simple question changes team dynamics — A habit my family has recently developed is to ask one simple question at dinner every night, “What did you learn today?” Answers have included: My husband learned from our daughter’s teacher that she has a very special job at school Our daughter learned you can’t hum with your nose…

Three ways simple, collaborative story sketching can help your team be more innovative — This activity works best in groups of five or less with 15–20 minutes to spare, but can easily be adapted for teams much larger or smaller and be condensed down to under 10 minutes if needed. To do this activity, you will need One sheet of blank paper for every…

Several years into my Product Management career, a mentor advised that I needed to stop working for the company and start working on it. I needed to shift from requirements and launch management to the vision of where my product was headed. …

Don’t let a world of deadlines and distractions drown out the magic of disrupting your roadmap — As a Product Manager, sometimes a thought or idea will make you pause. An opportunity arises that requires deviation, but would truly delight your customers or solve a critical problem in your business. …

If you’ve read my first article on getting started with No-Code tools, you’ll remember that I was trying to build a proof of concept of a new SaaS business concept. My requirements were: Users need to be able to authenticate. Users need to be able to build and maintain an…

I have a business idea for a new SaaS application, but I’m a busy mom with a full time job as a Senior Product Manager at a well-known Silicon Valley SaaS company. While I have a tech background, I haven’t coded full-time in years. Rather than dusting off my Rails…

A status report template to prevent middle management from costing your company millions — The Process Every Friday, my engineering manager writes a detailed status report. He even takes time to find a random “fun fact” to make them more interesting and encourage people to read to the bottom. On Mondays, my job as Product Manager is to take that report and condense it down into…

Is that team offsite in Mexico worth sacrificing family time? — I was recently invited to speak at DevOps Days Chicago, several hundred miles away from my home. This will be my first multi-day business trip since my daughter was born almost five years ago. As I’ve been preparing my slides, I’ve also been preparing my child care arrangements and realizing…