Speaking / Workshops

Fundamentals of Product Creation 1 – Understanding Product Management

Format
workshop
Runtime range
~2 hrs as a module

Part of the Product Development Fundamentals workshop series (19 independent workshops across 6 modules; 5–20 participants). Each sub-item below is deliverable standalone or as this full module.

1a. What is Product Management? (30–45 min)

Product Managers represent the customer and define the problem — they don’t build, design, or sell, but they make everyone else’s work matter. This session covers the PM role vs. Project/Program Management. Three questions: Who is this person? What’s their problem? How many people have it?

1b. Understanding People (20–30 min)

People-centric PM mindset. Understanding human behavior before writing a single requirement, and how to ask the right questions before you build anything.

1c. Goal Setting (30–45 min)

SMART framework, opportunity hypothesis formation, and an overview of the Product Development Lifecycle: Identify → Plan → Design → Develop → Launch → Assess → Repeat. Closes with the MVP-is-a-process framing.

Related

Related talks & storiesmore speaking on this theme
Keynote

Kaizen

The historic origin of Kaizen — Japanese ethos meeting American management methods not in favor in the U.S. at the time.

Osborn’s top-down brainstorming, inverted into a bottom-up method by Prof. Jiro Kawakita — build structure on top of disparate ideas.

Nintendo’s 30-year pivot from playing card company to video game leader — the oldest continuously operating corporation on Earth.

Related essaysthe written companion

In December 2023, I was in year 5 of my CPTSD therapy. I weighed 361 pounds. I’d been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I had trapped myself in a miserable story of self-destruction. And worse? I spread the misery around me.  I needed to change my story. I read everything I could find about what happens to […]

This is obnoxious. But also?

Nobody should care about this, but one of the reasons I haven’t focused on ‘The Dragon in the Basement’ is because my dad died a few days after we wrapped the pilot in October 2022. Spotify also told me soon after that the kids and family program was cut so there’d be no pickup for […]

Book this talk

Ask about this talk for your event.

Ask about this talk →

Opens the contact form on the homepage — mention this talk and I'll take it from there.

Just here to read?

Get occasional notes instead — no schedule, no noise.

Subscribe →

← Speaking