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Judo Strategy
In the age of disruption incumbents with decades of history get swept away by startups at an alarming rate. What allows these fledgling companies to succeed? What is their strategy and how can you...
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Nine Product Management lessons from the Dojo
Are you kidding? a chance to add the Matrix to a blogpost? As I am gearing up for the belt exams next Saturday I couldn’t help to notice the similarities of what we learn in the dojo (it’s where the...
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Nobody cares about your product (Part 1)
There are so many takedown techniques in Jūjutsu. By the time you reach your first belt you have learned at least 4 different throws, 3 different joint-locks and a variety of hooks that you can apply...
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Nobody cares about your product (Part 2)
In my previous blog we looked at how customers look at your product. In essence, they don't care about the product, they care about the problem they have and how your product can make it go away. If...
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Five leaderships lessons from the Samurai for Product Managers
We have covered several topics in the Product Samurai series that should make you a better product manager. But what if you are leading product management or run innovation within your enterprise? Here...
View ArticleThe Product Samurai Strategy Canvas
"May you live in interesting times" said Feng Menglong in 1627, and it's never been a more fitting expression than today. With companies leapfrogging in the age of disruption to change the way they...
View ArticlePitch your product using the 3x3 framework
When pitching innovative product ideas, you only get between five and fifteen minutes of attention. To make those minutes count, you should be able to define your product vision in a simple but...
View Article7 Agile Practices You Can Apply in a Controlled Environment
So your teams want to do Agile, perhaps have even started doing so. Now your project managers run around wondering what story points are and why any number of people seem to be attributing hours to...
View ArticleBehind the Scenes: A Minimal Viable Setup for Creating Video Scribe
I'm getting a lot of questions about my previous blog post. Fortunately also about the content, but mostly about how I created the video. So in this episode we will look at the MVP (Minimal Viable...
View ArticleThe Purpose Alignment Model
When scaling agile / Scrum, we invariable run into the alignment vs autonomy problem. In short: you cannot have autonomous self directing teams if they have no clue in what direction they should go, or...
View ArticleVerbal Aikido for Product Managers
"Well eh ok, I guess so" mumbled the student in the training exercise where he was practicing how to say no to feature gluttony. I decided to give the class an additional exercise to awaken their inner...
View ArticleSeven Reasons why Dark Vader is a Terrible Product Manager
It’s not that I have run out of Samurai parallels but I ran into this blog called: “Darth Vader - The Best Project Manager in the Galaxy” and since it’s my sincere belief that this sword wielding (see...
View ArticleThe Legend of the 5 Monkeys, the Doctor and the Rose
As Product Managers people look up to us to carry the vision, to make sure all the noses are aligned, the troops are rallied and that sort of stuff. But what is it that influences behavior? And what...
View ArticleHelp Me Create a Better Way to Prioritise Features
Do you remember the legendary PID? the Project Initiation Document. The famous big binder that we used to create in the beginning of a project to satisfy governance and then bury in a drawer so we...
View ArticleThe 3 Pillars of Successful Products or Why Project Ara was Cancelled
Google managed to surprise both the market as well as the fans by cancelling the Project Ara modular phone. But from a Product Owner point of view it was no surprise. Ara phones lack a fundamental...
View ArticleThe Five Belts Of The Product Owner
One of the cool things that Europeans added to Judo is the belt system. Japanese are patient by nature, they either do or don't. In fact they distinguish only the black belt, you either have it or are...
View ArticleISO/IEC 27001:2013 and Scrum 5 Ways to Make it Less Painful
At some point, you get a nose for things that don’t feel right. Things that sound reasonable when explained, yet you get that gnawing feeling it sort of goes against nature. Working with Scrum and...
View ArticleGuest blog: in response to "The Five Belts of the Product Owner
This is a response to Chris Lukassen's excellent post titled, "The Five Belts of the Product Owner." If you haven't read it, my post won't make much sense, so go read it before you delve further into...
View ArticleThe Customer Pain Map
“Ouch, that really hurt.” “What was it?” my sparring partner replied. “The choke or the overstretching of the elbow joint?” “The quick throw, I had no time for proper fall breaking.” I replied. It...
View ArticleThe Best New Years Resolution: Agile Product Management
Agile Product Management is grounded in the Jobs to be done theory and Lean startup principles. In my book “The Product Samurai” I described how you can effectively apply these techniques to be a...
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