Articles by Jens-Fabian Goetzmann
Establishing a Product Organization StructureJens-Fabian discusses how product organizations should structure their teams as the company grows. In startups with just a few people, little formal structure is needed as coordination is easy. However, as the number of employees increases, more structure is required so people are not overwhelmed managing relationships. Without subteams, a 100-person company would result in nearly 5,000 individual relationships to coordinate. Therefore, larger product organizations need defined substructures and teams so employees can focus on their work instead of communication. The organizational structure determines who works together on what aspects of product development.
Take-home assignments for product management candidates: The pros and cons of requiring written homeworkJens-Fabian covers: • The drawbacks of take-home assignments • The benefits of take-home assignments • Alternatives and mitigation • What we ended up deciding at RevenueCat
- PM 101: Working With Product Designers
Jens-Fabian provides 7 tips for how to work effectively with designers: 1. Agree on responsibilities and ways of working 2. Start with why 3. Focus on the user, educate about the business 4. Define the problem before the solution 5. Provide space for creative chaos 6. Be crystal clear about expectations 7. Make only promises you can keep
- Why PMs Need Qualitative Research
Jens-Fabian provides 6 reasons why qualitative research needs to be a core workflow for PMs: 1. To get to the “why” 2. To generate hypotheses to test 3. To validate features you can’t A/B test 4. To open up new opportunities 5. To get answers faster 6. To keep your feet on the ground
- Product Vision, Strategy, Roadmap
Jens-Fabian provides an introduction to Company Vision and Mission, Product Vision, Product Strategy, and Product Roadmaps, and how they all fit together.
- PM 101: Define the Problem Before the Solution
Jens-Fabian explains how delivering a product that solves user problems requires understanding the problem first, writing it down, and getting cross-functional buy-in that this is the right problem to work on.