Book description
Empower Product Teams to Rock the World by Uncovering and Overcoming Dangerous Traps
Untrapping Product Teams guides you to simplify what gets unintentionally complicated and equips you to overcome dangerous traps while steadily driving customer and business value. This isn't just another book about product management. It's a thought-provoking guide filled with simplicity, encouraging you to act today for a better tomorrow.
This book is for anyone facing the challenges of working on or with product teams. It lays out leading best practices, combined with "secret ingredients" crafted by the author based on years of experience. Learn what makes or breaks product teams so you are ready to do what it takes to thrive with digital products.
Learn the differences between coordinative and collaborative workflows
Recognize dangerous traps and the strategies to overcome them
Explore the product journey: simplify decision-making, apply mindful product discovery, use delivery to accelerate value, and measure results beyond outputs
Craft product principles and set solid foundations for product teams
Benefit from proven product health checks to uncover where to act today for a better tomorrow
"This is my new favorite book on product management. Untrapping Product Teams covers everything you need to know to lead a product team and be successful as a product manager. Author David Pereira does an excellent job of pointing out biases and thinking traps that doom products. The book is full of many insights and tools that will be useful for years to come."
--Mike Cohn, co-founder of Agile Alliance
"David's book shares several hard-earned lessons of what happens when product leaders, product managers, and especially product owners are not trained to succeed in their jobs, and they go on to make predictable and avoidable mistakes. This book can help you avoid some of these pitfalls."
--Marty Cagan, partner, Silicon Valley Product Group
"This book touches on all the daily essentials for a product person. It's a practical guide and a meta-analysis rolled into one, serving as the 'Greatest Hits' album of Product Management. Ideal for newcomers and an excellent refresher for those already immersed in the field."
--Petra Wille, author of Strong Product People
Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.
...
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- About This eBook
- Praise for Untrapping Product Teams
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Foreword by Ash Maurya
- Foreword by Jim Highsmith
- Preface
- About the Author
- Introduction
-
Part I: Facing Dangerous Traps
- 1. How Common Ways of Working Trap or Untrap Teams
- 2. The Mindset Impacts on Dangerous Traps
-
3. What Distracts Teams from Creating Value
- Facing the Real Enemy: Bullshit Management
- Gathering Requirements: A Distraction to Value Creation
- Extensive Product Backlog: When the Past Limits the Future
- Output Reports: Wasting Time
- Consensus-Driven Decisions: Slowing Down Progress
- Output Approval: Limiting Team’s Accountability
- Meeting Marathon: Long Days with Little Value Created
- Fear of Saying No: The Art of Getting Overwhelmed
- Bridge Communication: Becoming the Bottleneck
- Opinion-Driven Decision: Ignoring Evidence, Creating Waste
- Failure Avoidance: Killing Innovation Chances
- Bullshit Management Check
- Key Takeaways
-
Part II: Overcoming Dangerous Traps
- 4. Using the Right Ingredients for Product Teams
- 5. Crafting a Meaningful Product Strategy
-
6. Forget What You Know to Get Ready for the Unknown
- My Unforgettable First Date with Product Discovery
- Biases: Blocking Learning Opportunities
- Confirmation Bias: The Art of Missing Opportunities and Creating Waste
- Commitment Escalation: Making a Bad Situation Even Worse
- Sunk-Cost Fallacy: The Fear of Losing Triggering More Losses
- Bandwagon Fallacy: Following the Masses Without Knowing Why
- Value Drivers: Doing What Matters for Customers and the Business
- Do What’s Right, Not What’s Easy
- Key Takeaways
-
7. Embarking on a Journey to Discover What Matters
- Understanding the Discovery Journey
- Clarify the Goal: Know What Success Looks Like
- Understand Your Audience: Know How Customers Use Your Product
- Uncover Value Drivers: Identify What’s Worth Pursuing
- Prioritize and Focus: Take One Value Driver at a Time
- Reinvent the Future: Diverge and Converge
- Deal with Assumptions: Drop Bad Ideas Fast Enough
- Use Evidence to Progress: Experiment, Learn, Decide
- Key Takeaways
-
8. Enabling Product Delivery Beyond Outputs
- How the Wrong Approach to Product Delivery Leads to a Feature Factory
- Product Backlog: Organizing What Drives Value
- Refinement: Building Shared Understanding
- Alignment: Setting the Next Goal
- Getting Things Done
- Using Tech Debt: Accelerate Learning to Avoid Poor Investment
- Review: Getting Business and Product Aligned
- Improve: Strive to Continuously Become a Better Team
- Key Takeaways
-
9. Defining and Measuring Actionable Metrics
- Data Traps: Avoid Common Traps
- Leading versus Laggard Metrics
- Input versus Output Metrics: Understanding Control and Influence
- Defining Metrics: Focus on Signs While Ignoring Noise
- Measuring Results: Be Careful, You’re Not a Stockbroker
- Sharing Results: Spread the News about Outcomes
- Pro Hints: Saving You Hours per Week
- Usual Metrics: The Bread and Butter of Analytics
- Key Takeaways
- 10. Getting the Teams Right
- 11. Building Solid Relationships
- Part III: Remaining Untrapped
- Wrap-Up
- A. Untrapping Lessons
- Bibliography
- Index
Product information
- Title: Untrapping Product Teams: Simplify the Complexity of Creating Digital Products
- Author(s):
- Release date: May 2024
- Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
- ISBN: 9780135335376
You might also like
book
Practical Product Management for Product Owners: Creating Winning Products with the Professional Product Owner Stances
Hone Agile Product Owner Behaviors that Lead to Marketplace Winners! Organizations pour vast resources into building …
book
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
The authors of the international bestseller Business Model Generation explain how to create value propositions customers …
book
Product Management in Practice, 2nd Edition
Product management has become a critical function for modern organizations, from small startups to corporate enterprises. …
book
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback
The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The …