We’ve worked with hundreds of teams stuck in reactive delivery cycles, constantly shipping features but never sure if they’re actually moving the needle. In our webinar, Chaos to Clarity, Kenny Kranseler and Tom Evans shared a fictional case study that hits close to home for many PMs: WellNest Health, a company with a strong reputation and a bloated backlog.

What WellNest needed wasn’t another roadmap or velocity boost. It needed a rethink of its product management strategy.

In this post, we’ll walk through how WellNest Health used the Productside Blueprint to move from tactical noise to strategic impact, and how you can, too.

The Breaking Point: When Shipping ≠ Progress

WellNest Health’s flagship product, BuildNest, was built on good intentions. It promised to help employers and healthcare providers support employee WellNest with physical and financial tools. But growth stalled. Customers were disengaged. Executives were frustrated.

And the product team? Drowning in requests from sales, executives, and large clients… with no way to prove which features mattered and which didn’t.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In fact, a live poll during our webinar showed zero attendees described their team as “a humming, outcome-focused product team.” Most said they felt like Heather (VP of Product) and Tommy (Senior PM): under pressure, overwhelmed, and disconnected from real impact.

Enter the Blueprint: A Framework for Strategic Product Management

The Productside Blueprint helps teams align on what matters, validate what’s true, and build what works. It’s built around five phases:

1. Context: Understand your business, market, and customer landscape.

2. Investigate: Learn what your customers actually need through research.

3. Define: Prototype and test potential solutions before scaling.

4. Create: Prioritize, align, and build a strategic roadmap.

5. Deliver: Launch with purpose and measure what matters.

Each phase builds on the last. Together, they shift product teams from reactive delivery to intentional outcomes.

How the Blueprint Helped WellNest Reboot Their Product Management Strategy

Let’s zoom in on a few key moments from the WellNest Health story that illustrate how the Blueprint works in action.

1. They stopped guessing and started aligning

Heather began by aligning with execs on the real business outcomes WellNest needed to drive (not just “grow revenue”), but the levers underneath that. From there, she mapped macro trends (using a PESTEL analysis) to understand what was happening in their market and customer base. That context became a foundation for every product decision to follow.

2. They built customer understanding from the ground up

Instead of jumping to AI, blockchain, or whatever buzzword was trending in the C-suite that week, Heather and Tommy focused on listening. They created proto-personas across their three key customer groups (HR managers, employees, and healthcare providers), then ran empathy interviews and used Jobs to Be Done to uncover true pain points.

One insight: HR managers didn’t just need dashboards. They needed clear, customizable ways to show WellNest program ROI to their leadership. That shaped everything that came next.

3. They tested ideas early (before building)

With insight in hand, the team brainstormed widely and used “How might we” questions to frame opportunity areas. They chose storyboarding as their low-cost, high-speed prototyping method, even using AI to generate visuals. Feedback from early tests helped them refine solutions without burning dev cycles.

4. They built a strategic roadmap (not a feature dump)

In the past, the roadmap was just a dumping ground for whatever sales promised last quarter. This time, Heather and Tommy used a product outcome canvas to connect customer needs, potential solutions, business goals, and success metrics.

Then, they prioritized initiatives based on value, feasibility, and viability, ensuring each feature had a clear purpose and measurable impact.

5. They treated launch as a team sport

They didn’t wait until the last sprint to throw features over the fence to marketing and support. Heather and Tommy co-created persona-based messaging with the marketing team and trained customer success and sales with mock scripts, call guides, and feature proofs.

The result? No surprises at launch and a much smoother adoption curve.

What Changed (and What Didn’t)

After launch, the team used success metrics and health metrics to track adoption, satisfaction, and red flags. When signals showed some drop-off in engagement, they didn’t panic. They ran another round of discovery and quickly shipped targeted improvements.

The Blueprint didn’t just help WellNst build a better product. It helped them become a better product organization.

They shifted from “What should we build?” to “What problem are we solving, and why does it matter?” That’s the heart of any strong product management strategy.

Product Management Lessons You Can Steal

No matter what stage your product is in (new, mature, or declining) the Blueprint can help you:

• Clarify your product’s role in achieving company strategy

• Get aligned with execs and stakeholders on what good looks like

• Validate ideas before committing resources

• Deliver customer value without burning out your team

• Measure what matters and adapt quickly

As Heather put it: “It’s not about launching things. It’s about delivering outcomes—for customers and for the business.”

Let’s Break the Cycle Together

If your team’s stuck in feature churn, unclear product management strategy, or stakeholder chaos, the Productside Blueprint can help you get unstuck.

• Download the Productside Blueprint eBook to learn how to put the frameworks, tools, and templates to building outcome-driven product practices that stick.
• Watch the full webinar to see how teams like WellNest Health applied the Blueprint to real-world product challenges (and how you can, too).
• Explore the Optimal Product Management course if you’re ready to sharpen your product management strategy, align your team, and lead confidently.

Where does your team get stuck: discovery, alignment, delivery? We’d love to hear how you’re turning chaos into clarity. Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

Let’s make product work effectively.

This post How Product Management Strategy Turns Struggles into Structure first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

Growth is great. Until it breaks your team.

More products. More teams. More tools. More meetings.

But not necessarily more clarity.

If your organization has ever said, “We need product ops,” odds are you’re already in the weeds. Growth adds complexity, and if you scale without a plan, you don’t just end up working harder—you end up working against yourself.

In our recent Productside Stories webinar, Ryan Cantwell (Principal Consultant & Trainer) at Productside) joined our COO Cynthia Petti to break down what product operations (ProdOps) actually is, how to spot when you need it, and (just as importantly) how to avoid turning it into another layer of process that slows everyone down.

Let’s walk through how teams stall, where product ops fits in, and how to build it with intention.

The Hidden Cost of Growth: Misalignment

“What worked for 10 people won’t work for 100. But throwing more tools or roles at it just creates noise if you don’t solve the root problem.”

Growth reveals cracks in your product organization. More PMs, more tools, more roadmaps—and less alignment. You end up with:

• Multiple roadmaps but no shared priorities
• PMs stepping on each other’s toes
• Dashboards galore, but zero signal

Before long, you’ve built what we call a meeting maze. Everyone’s busy, but no one’s clear. And that’s when someone says, “Maybe we need product ops.”

But here’s the thing: if product ops is a reaction to chaos, and not a solution to the right problem, it just becomes a Band-Aid. You need to treat the root issue, not the symptoms.

So, What Is Product Operations (or Just “Product Ops”)?

Nope, it’s not project management in disguise.

Product operations is a strategic function, not a tactical support role. Think of your PMs as drivers and product ops as the pit crew. PMs don’t win races by driving harder—they win when someone’s removing friction, refueling the engine, and handing them the data they need to stay ahead.

Done right, product operations:

• Establishes consistent rituals and reusable workflows
• Bridges go-to-market and product
• Makes data actionable—not just accessible
• Accelerates strategy by enabling clarity and execution
• It’s not about owning the process. It’s about removing drag.

Where Product Operations Delivers Real Impact

Through years of working with product teams, we’ve seen three areas where product operations consistently unlocks value: discipline, translation, and insights.

1. Discipline: Standardizing for scale

When every PM is running their own sprint ritual and backlog format, you don’t have autonomy—you have entropy. Product ops brings order to the chaos by introducing:

• Shared cadences
• Standard rituals
• Reusable templates and tools
• This isn’t about stifling creativity—it’s about freeing PMs from reinvention so they can focus on strategic work.

2. Translation: Aligning across functions

Without product ops, go-to-market often feels like broken telephone. Sales doesn’t know what’s launching. Marketing asks, “What is this feature even for?”

Product ops fixes that by:

• Creating GTM checklists
• Leading roadmap previews with cross-functional teams
• Turning features into clear, customer-facing narratives

When product, sales, and marketing speak the same language, launches land—and revenue follows.

3. Insights: Turning data into direction

Most PMs are drowning in dashboards but starving for clarity. Product ops doesn’t add more data. It makes what you already have usable.

It helps teams:

• Define trusted metrics
• Clean up the tooling mess
• Use data in prioritization, not just retros
• Because metrics should fuel better decisions—not just decorate slides.

What to Focus on in Your First 90 Days

You don’t need to fix everything out of the gate. You just need to prove that product operations creates lift.

Start by identifying one high-friction point in your product process (launch chaos, roadmap misalignment, inconsistent rituals) and solve it. A few practical steps:

• Conduct empathy interviews with PMs and stakeholders
• Shadow planning sessions to spot inconsistencies
• Roll out one lightweight, high-impact solution (like a shared roadmap template or GTM checklist)

“The moment PMs feel enabled (not policed) product ops earns its place.”

When people start breathing easier, you’ll know you’re on the right track.

How to Scale with Intention: The Product Ops Maturity Model

Growing product ops isn’t about adding headcount. It’s about increasing clarity.

Here’s the 4-stage model we use to help teams scale with purpose:

Talking About Product Ops with Stakeholders

When you’re selling product ops internally, don’t pitch it as a job description. Pitch it as a force multiplier.

Instead of saying, “We need someone to manage templates,” try:

“Right now, our PMs are making judgment calls with bad data and spending more time in meetings than with customers.”

In other words: don’t sell activity. Sell acceleration.

3 Common Traps to Avoid

1. Tooling without intent

   New software won’t fix your alignment problem. Start with friction, not features.

2. Metrics without decisions

   If a metric doesn’t change how you act, it’s just noise. Anchor on what drives decision-making.

3. Ops as a cop

   Product ops isn’t there to enforce process purity. It’s there to create space for strategy. Be a coach, not a gatekeeper.

Final Thought: Treat Product Ops Like a Product

The biggest mistake teams make? Launching product ops like it’s a role to fill, not a system to build.

Use your product skills:

• Define the pain
• Build the smallest solution
• Test its value
• Iterate and scale

“Most failed ops functions didn’t fall apart from incompetence. They collapsed under the weight of good intentions and zero clarity.”

So start small. Remove drag. And build a system where great product work actually has room to happen.

Want to put these ideas into practice?

• Watch the full webinar to hear how real teams are using product operations to scale without chaos.
• Download the Product Management Leader First 90 Days Template Pack—your jumpstart guide for setting priorities, aligning stakeholders, and leading with clarity from day one.
• Explore the Optimal Product Management course if you’re ready to sharpen your strategy, improve team alignment, and lead product work that actually works.

Is product ops unlocking your team’s best work—or just another layer of noise? We’d love to hear your take. Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

Let’s make product work… actually work.

This post How Product Operations Helps Teams Move Faster (Without Burnout) first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

When product teams get stuck in backlog chaos, stakeholder noise, and reactive shipping, it’s not a process problem. It’s a product strategy problem.

That’s where the Productside Blueprint comes in.

In this serialized story, you’ll meet Heather Leaf, VP of Product at WellNest Health, and her lead PM, Tommy Trunk. They’re facing mounting pressure, internal friction, and a big challenge: turning a well-known brand with a faltering product into a focused, outcome-driven organization.

In Chapter 1, you’ll see how they start the transformation by acknowledging the chaos, and choosing a different path with a renewed focus on product strategy.

Start reading below and don’t miss your chance to get the full Blueprint eBook before it launches next week.

Want early access to the full Blueprint eBook?
Sign up here and we’ll send it straight to your inbox on launch day (June 2).

Introduction to WellNest Health 

Heather Leaf, VP of Product Management at WellNest Health, calls over her top product manager, Tommy Trunk, for their weekly meeting. She’s just come out of a leadership briefing—and it’s not good news. Once again, the company has posted a weak quarter, with lackluster results from its flagship product, BuildNest. 

BuildNest is a comprehensive wellness platform that offers physical, mental, and financial wellbeing tools to employees, while giving employers and healthcare providers a HIPAA-compliant, 360-degree view of health trends across large populations. WellNest has a strong foundation—backed by a trusted 20-year-old brand and longstanding relationships with employers, employees, and practitioners. But its product management journey has been far from smooth. 

As the wellness market grows more competitive, WellNest’s product managers are under increasing pressure to deliver features requested by sales, executives, and enterprise clients—often with little time to step back and assess strategic impact. The team is shipping constantly but struggling to prove they’re moving the needle on the outcomes that matter most.Their current approach lacks a cohesive product strategy.

Despite some success with this reactive, feature-driven approach, WellNest is starting to fall behind. New players are entering the market with agile teams, wearable integrations, and insurer distribution deals. Internally, executive leadership is frustrated—and pointing fingers at Product Management. They’ve been asked to come back with a strategy that delivers more value to customers and drives measurable business growth. 

Heather knows something has to change. Her team is operating at full capacity, but their efforts aren’t clearly tied to outcomes—or to each other. Feature requests are flying in from every direction, but there’s no cohesive thread connecting the work to long-term value. 

While searching for a better way forward, Heather discovered the Productside Blueprint—an outcome-driven approach to product work that emphasizes strategic discovery, lo-fi experimentation, and data-informed decision-making. She’s ready to put it into action and guide her team toward a more intentional, aligned, and impactful way of working—a real product strategy they can stick to.

This ebook follows Heather and Tommy as they apply the Productside Blueprint across every phase of product development at WellNest—from creating strategic clarity to building, launching, and evolving a product that truly delivers. Through their journey, you’ll gain practical, real-world insights to help your own team move from reactive execution to strategic leadership. 

Recognizing the Potential of Product Management and Product Strategy

Heather and Tommy have been given a clear mandate from leadership: align product management with user needs and business goals. But getting there won’t be easy. 

At WellNest Health, strong opinions run deep. CEO Lucas Nest often pushes the team toward his latest big idea—regardless of whether it reflects real customer problems. Meanwhile, Joe Branch, the VP of Sales, champions the immediate demands of high-profile clients, prioritizing deals over long-term product vision. Between the executive wishlist and sales-driven urgency, Heather and Tommy know they’ll need a new way to center product decisions around strategic outcomes—not gut reactions. 

For them, that starts with shifting the mindset across the organization. They need to align key stakeholders around a new model—one that puts discovery, clarity, and measurable impact at the heart of product work. 

Their tool of choice? The Productside Blueprint. 

The Productside Blueprint: A Strategic Framework 

To guide WellNest Health’s transformation, Heather introduces the Productside Blueprint—a structured, outcome-driven approach to product management. It’s not just about doing more discovery. It’s about making every product decision intentional, aligned, and grounded in strategy. 

The Blueprint is built around five phases: Context, Investigate, Define, Create, and Deliver. Each phase is designed to help teams move beyond reactive execution and toward customer-centered, business-aligned product leadership. 

Figure 1: The Productside Blueprint 

Here’s how each phase will guide Heather and Tommy at WellNest 

Context 

First, Heather and Tommy need to establish a shared understanding of the business strategy, market landscape, and competitive environment. This means aligning with leadership on WellNest’s top priorities—and using that alignment to define a clear product vision. Without this foundation, it’s impossible to make product decisions that truly support the company’s long-term goals. 

Investigate 

With strategic context in place, it’s time to dig into discovery. In this phase, Heather and Tommy work to uncover real customer needs through empathy interviews, persona development, and Jobs to Be Done analysis. Rather than jumping to solutions, they focus on deeply understanding the problems worth solving—grounding product decisions in real-world insight, not assumptions. 

Define 

Once they’ve identified meaningful customer needs, Heather and Tommy lead the team through low-fidelity experimentation. They explore a range of potential solutions, test hypotheses, and gather feedback—all before committing to full-scale development. This phase helps the team reduce risk and build confidence in their direction before investing significant time and resources. 

Create 

Now comes the shift from insight to action. In the Create phase, Heather and Tommy turn validated ideas into a focused strategy and prioritized roadmap. They define product goals, success metrics, and use prioritization frameworks to stay focused on what matters most. The result? A roadmap that’s not just a list of features—but a strategic plan for delivering customer and business outcomes. 

Deliver 

Finally, it’s time to bring the product to market—and keep learning post-launch. In the Deliver phase, Heather and Tommy align cross-functional teams on key messages, success metrics, and rollout plans. But their work doesn’t stop after launch. Using Tiny Acts of Discovery, they continuously gather insights, iterate, and adapt the product over time. This ensures their solutions evolve to meet real needs—and signals when it’s time to scale, refine, or retire a product. 

What’s Next for Heather and Tommy? Explore the Full Product Strategy and Management Journey 

In the rest of the eBook, we’ll explore how Heather and Tommy use the Context phase of the Productside Blueprint to create stronger alignment between their product work and the goals of the company. This shift will help them align their product goals with market opportunities and business objectives, paving the way for meaningful product decisions.

Get the Full PM Story and Strengthen Your Product Strategy

Heather and Tommy’s story is just getting started. In the full eBook, you’ll follow their journey through the five phases of the Productside Blueprint: Context, Investigate, Define, Create, and Deliver.

Each chapter is packed with relatable moments, ready-to-use templates, and a practical look at how to run a more strategic product organization.

Get the full eBook delivered to your inbox the moment it launches.

📘 Sign up for early access

Ready to move from reactive feature delivery to a proactive, outcome-driven product strategy? Here are some next steps to deepen your understanding and apply these concepts:

Join our upcoming webinar where we break down the WellNest Health story from this eBook—and show how the Productside Blueprint can help your team move from reactive chaos to strategic clarity.

Want to run a more strategic, outcome-driven product organization? The Productside Blueprint is your practical guide to aligning product work with customer needs and business goals.

Explore the Optimal Product Management Course. This hands-on program covers essential topics like outcome-driven roadmapping, story mapping, and strategic alignment, equipping you to lead confidently and effectively.

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Join the conversation on LinkedIn. 

This post How WellNest Rebooted Product Strategy (eBook Preview) first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

Let’s be real—AI is no longer a buzzword on the product roadmap. It’s an urgent shift in how we build, scale, and deliver value. And the PMs who can navigate that shift with confidence? They’re the ones getting promoted, pulled into strategy conversations, and trusted to lead.

That’s exactly why we created the AI Product Management Certification.

This isn’t a theoretical course with a shiny badge at the end. It’s a hands-on training experience that teaches you how to apply AI where it counts: across your product strategy, workflows, and cross-functional decision-making. And once you’ve completed it, you’ll have a certification to prove it.

What Does Our Certification Do for You?

Credibility. Clarity. Career momentum.

We recently surveyed 200 product professionals who completed Productside certifications. Here’s what they told us:

• 31% earned a promotion within a year
• 22% saw a salary increase
• 13% landed their first product role
• 88% gained confidence in executing their role
• 92% walked away with sharper role clarity

And if you go the instructor-led route, the advantage is even greater: 43% of those learners were promoted within 18 months, compared to 26% of self-study participants.

Now layer that on top of one of the most urgent capability gaps in product today: AI fluency.

PMs are expected to make sense of GenAI, integrate it into their product thinking, and use it to move faster. But most teams don’t know where to start. That’s what makes this certification different. It’s not about learning a tool. It’s about learning to lead in an AI-powered world.

You’ll walk away knowing how to:

• Identify and prioritize AI opportunities with real ROI
• Communicate AI strategies across product, design, and engineering
• Use prompting techniques and GenAI tools to accelerate discovery, research, and delivery
• Make smart decisions about when and how AI adds value to your users

AI Product Management Certification: Built to Validate, Not Just Decorate

When you pass the exam, you’ll earn a shareable digital AI Product Management certificate via Accredible. It’s a signal that you know how to put AI to work across your product. And yes, you can share it over LinkedIn for that boost of credibility.

The next live cohort runs June 23–26.

Explore the course. Get certified

This post Why AI Product Management Certification Matters More Than Ever first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

Most product managers don’t set out to write bad requirements.
They’re under pressure to deliver. They’re surrounded by requests.
And they’re juggling context, roadmaps, and Jira tickets—just trying to keep up.

So what happens?

We write what’s easy. What’s fast. What’s expected.

And that’s usually… not enough.

At Productside, we’ve worked with thousands of PMs across industries—and one theme keeps showing up:
When product teams don’t take the time for writing effective product requirements, everything downstream suffers.

In this post, we’re sharing highlights from our recent webinar with Tom Evans and Rina Alexin, where we dug into why requirements go wrong—and how to make them better.

The Real Role of Requirements

Let’s start here: a requirement isn’t just a ticket or a doc.

It’s a shared understanding.

As Jeff Patton puts it:

“Requirements aren’t just about the specs but they’re about creating a shared understanding with other stakeholders in the organization and especially those who are going to be working with you to build the product…”

So when PMs rush through requirements (or skip critical thinking about who it’s for and why it matters) what we’re really skipping is alignment.

The result?

• Missed outcomes
• Endless rework
• Frustrated stakeholders
• Wasted investment

Why Bad Requirements Happen (and How to Prevent Them)

Most bad requirements boil down to 3 things:

1. Missing context

2. A rush to solutions

3. Focusing on output over outcome

We’ve seen it too often: a senior leader demands a feature because “our competitor has it.” So the team builds it without questioning whether it fits the strategy or delivers value to the customer.

Tom’s advice? Don’t challenge—clarify.

Ask questions like:

• Who is this for?
• What problem are we solving?
• What outcome are we trying to create?

Your job is to get past the feature request and uncover the underlying goal. That’s what turns a request into a real requirement—and that’s the foundation of writing effective product requirements.

3 Core Principles for Writing Effective Product Requirements

If you only walk away with one thing, let it be this:

Good requirements start long before you write anything down.

Here are the three principles we emphasized during the webinar:

1. Start with the Who and the Why

Before jumping to what the team should build, clarify:

• Who has the problem? (Use personas)
• What job are they trying to get done?
• What does success look like for them?

This shifts the conversation from features to needs and leads to better solutions.

2. Focus on Outcomes (not just Outputs)

It’s easy to ship features. It’s harder to deliver impact.

Only about 20% of product output actually leads to meaningful outcomes. The rest? Neutral at best. Harmful at worst.

That’s why we recommend working backwards from your desired customer outcomes and mapping those to business goals. Then (and only then) should you define what output (feature, capability, improvement) will drive that change.

Need help visualizing it?

Check out our free Outcome Tree and Outcome-Based Roadmap templates in the Product Leader Pack.

3. Write Requirements as a Conversation, Not a Checklist

The best requirements aren’t bulletproof specs. They’re the starting point for collaboration.

One way to drive this? Story mapping.

Start with a high-level user flow for a single persona, then break it into steps and actions. This helps your engineers, designers, and stakeholders see how everything fits together—and it surfaces edge cases, assumptions, and gaps early.

Story maps help your team build shared understanding before the first line of code is written. And that’s the point.

You Can’t Write Great Requirements Without Great Discovery

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

If you’re not doing discovery, you’re not writing real requirements.

Talking to customers. Running empathy interviews. Observing user behavior.

These aren’t “nice-to-haves”—they’re how you generate the context that makes your requirements valuable.

Don’t assume your stakeholders have that context.

Don’t even assume you do.

Go get it.

(Need help? Download our Voice of the Customer workbook—free and field-tested.)

TL;DR: How to Write Requirements That Actually Drive Outcomes

✅ Start with the problem—not the feature

✅ Define the persona, job to be done, and desired outcome

✅ Map output to customer outcomes to business goals

✅ Use story mapping and discovery to create shared understanding

✅ Write less. Align more. Deliver better.

Write Less. Align More. Deliver Better.

Want to put these ideas into practice?

Watch the full webinar on demand to hear the real stories and tools behind outcome-driven requirements.

Download the Voice of the Customer Workbook to improve discovery and gather the context your requirements are missing.

Explore the Optimal Product Management course if you’re ready to master outcomes, story mapping, and strategic alignment—live, hands-on, and in person.

Are your requirements driving clarity—or just keeping the wheels turning?

We’d love to hear your take. Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

If you want to get better at this, join us in person.

Our Optimal Product Management course walks through all of these practices—live, hands-on, and coached by senior PMs like Tom.
📍 June 17–19 | Austin, TX
🎓 Includes AIPMM Certified Product Manager™ exam
🔗 Save your seat

This post Writing Effective Product Requirements to Drive Outcomes first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

If you’ve scrolled LinkedIn lately, you’ve seen the headlines: AI is coming for your job. Product roles are being cut. Entire teams, downsized. And with layoffs, macroeconomic whiplash, and the looming specter of recession, it’s no wonder product managers are wondering—where do I actually fit?

Let’s set the record straight.

Your product management career isn’t dead. Neither is product management. But the definition of what makes a great product manager? That’s evolving fast.

In our recent webinar, “Your Product Management Career Is Not Dead,” instructor Tom Evans laid it out clearly: PMs who want to stay relevant—and indispensable—need to move beyond feature delivery and start operating with five core powers.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Power 1: Customer Intimacy (No, AI Can’t Do This for You)

Tom’s first point was blunt: “There’s one thing at least right now that I’m not going to trust AI for—and that’s customer intimacy.”

It’s not enough to browse dashboards or let sales be your proxy. PMs need to be talking to customers directly—frequently, intentionally, and with real curiosity.

A good rule of thumb? Aim for at least 10% of your time focused on meaningful customer discovery. If that feels unmanageable, start smaller. Make time for one voice-of-customer call a week. Schedule standing chats with customer-facing teams. Show up where your users are.

Customer intimacy isn’t just about empathy—it’s your edge. And right now, it’s one of the only ones AI can’t replicate.

Power 2: Outcome Thinking (Not Just Output Shipping)

The second power is about making sure what you’re building is actually moving the needle.

Too many PMs define success as “features shipped on time.” But as Tom pointed out, real leadership starts when you ask: What outcome is this driving—for our business and our customers?

In the webinar, he shared Productside’s outcome tree as a way to trace feature requests back to user and business goals. The takeaway: if you can’t connect a roadmap item to a clear outcome, it doesn’t belong there.

This isn’t about adding bureaucracy. It’s about building with intent.

Power 3: Continuous Discovery (Yes, Even in Enterprise)

Another recurring thread? Discovery isn’t a “phase.” It’s a mindset.

Tom challenged participants to reflect on how often they’re running small experiments—not just at the start of a roadmap cycle, but always. It doesn’t matter if you’re building a SaaS tool or a physical product—tiny acts of discovery can happen weekly.

Use your outcome-driven roadmap to flag areas of uncertainty. Then build low-cost experiments to learn your way forward. Not only will this reduce risk—it’ll make your team faster in the long run.

Slow down to speed up. It’s not just a mantra. It’s a competitive advantage.

Power 4: Strategic Influence (Data-Driven > Hippo-Driven)

Every PM has faced it: an executive barrels in with a “must-have” request, and suddenly your roadmap is on fire.

But great PMs don’t just absorb the chaos—they navigate it.

In the poll Tom ran during the session, 65% of attendees said they “influence with data.” That’s encouraging. But too many still default to “they tell us, we build it.”

If you want to lead in your product management career, not just react, you need to bring more than facts. You need to bring stories—clear, confident, data-backed narratives that help stakeholders see the why behind the what. Because strategy isn’t just about having the right answer. It’s about getting others to believe in it, too.

Power 5: AI Fluency Is a Must for Your Product Management Career

Let’s talk about the elephant in every room: AI.

AI isn’t replacing PMs. But PMs who know how to use AI are replacing those who don’t.

From market research to hypothesis generation to drafting product docs, AI can make you faster and sharper—if you’ve got the fundamentals. If you don’t? You’ll prompt badly, analyze poorly, and make wrong assumptions faster than ever.

Tom’s take: “AI won’t make you better unless you have strong fundamentals in place.” It’s the calculator analogy—don’t hand a tool to someone who doesn’t know what question they’re solving.

So yes, use AI. Daily, if you can. But don’t skip the foundational skills that make it worth using.

So, How Do You Make Yourself Indispensable?

If you’re looking around and wondering how to stand out, here’s the TL;DR from the session:

• Build real customer empathy.

• Link your work to measurable outcomes.

• Make discovery a habit, not a checkbox.

• Lead with data, and influence through stories.

• Use AI to enhance your work—not define it.

And maybe the biggest mindset shift? Your product isn’t just the software your team is building. You are a product, too.

Invest in your positioning. Sharpen your strategy. Clarify your value. The market is watching—and the PMs who embrace this evolution are the ones who’ll stay in the game.

You’re not here to be replaced.

You’re here to become indispensable.

Sharpen Your Edge. Move Fast.

Want to turn these takeaways into action?

• Watch the webinar on demand to catch the full session.

• Download our Product Leader First 90 Days Pack to reset your focus, fast.

• Explore the Optimal Product Management course if you’re ready to sharpen your edge, get certified, and lead from the front.

Are you building products or just delivering tickets? What’s your take? Join the conversation and share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn.

This post Your Product Management Career Isn’t Dead (But It Might Need a Rethink) first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

In Season 3 of Productside Stories, we sat down with Guy Gershoni, Head of Engineering at genesIT, for a candid conversation on what it really takes to build great products in today’s complex tech environments. With over two decades in engineering and a career shaped by deep partnerships with product leaders, Guy brought a clear-eyed perspective to the table—one that’s grounded in pragmatism, experimentation, and mutual respect.

Why Product and Engineering Collaboration Still Fails

Too often, the relationship between product and engineering feels more like a standoff than a partnership. Product managers push for roadmaps. Engineers push back with technical constraints. Somewhere in the middle, customer needs get lost in translation.

Guy doesn’t sugarcoat this dynamic. In fact, he says the root problem isn’t a lack of desire to collaborate—it’s a mismatch of incentives, language, and expectations.

“There’s this misconception that engineers just want to build cool stuff and don’t care about what they build. But that’s not true. Engineers are more excited when they know what they’re building matters.”

What engineers want, he explains, is clarity. Clear goals. Clear feedback loops. And a clear connection between their work and the business outcome it supports.

Product managers who understand this—and who show up prepared to share data, context, and measurable outcomes—earn credibility. And with that credibility, comes collaboration. Effective product and engineeering collaboration depends on that clarity, and on both sides showing up ready to learn from each other.

The PM Role: Strategic, Not Administrative

In one of the most eye-opening moments of the episode, Guy shares how an internal platform team once assumed they didn’t need product management. They thought their work spoke for itself—until a listening tour revealed how disconnected they were from their customers.

“They thought other teams appreciated them. But the moment we had direct conversations, we found a lot of frustration. That gap needed a full-time product manager to bridge it.”

This is where Guy pushes back against the idea that engineering can—or should—replace product management. Yes, engineers are deeply skilled. But PMs bring something different: systems thinking, long-term vision, and the ability to synthesize inputs from across the business.

In Guy’s words, “It’s a full-time job to understand what good looks like—and to help the team see it too.”

When product and engineering collaboration is strong, these roles don’t compete but amplify each other.

The Power of Influence Over Authority

Another myth Guy breaks down is the idea that product managers need positional power to lead effectively. In reality, the best PMs lead with influence, not title.

“If you walk in and try to boss people around without having authority, it won’t work. But if you can tell a compelling story and get engineers excited, that’s how you lead.”

It’s this blend of storytelling, context-sharing, and empathy that separates tactical PMs from strategic ones. And as Guy points out, it’s exactly what modern teams need—especially as they navigate trade-offs, resource constraints, and constant change.

Building a Culture of Experimentation

When it comes to building the right things—not just building things right—Guy is a huge advocate for experimentation. But don’t expect a rigid framework.

Instead, he leans into a mindset: start small, define the impact you want to see, and be willing to kill your darlings.

“We used a framework called KID—Keep, Iterate, Delete. If it didn’t move the needle on the outcome, we let it go.”

This approach isn’t limited to product features. Guy applies it to team structure, workflows, and even workplace policies. The key is staying objective and being willing to disprove your own hypotheses.

As he puts it, “We know that we don’t know. That’s why we test.”

Advice for Engineers (and PMs)

One of the most powerful takeaways from the episode is Guy’s advice for engineers who are struggling to work with product:

“Once you’ve mastered how to build it right, you have to learn how to build the right thing.”

This shift requires humility. It means stepping into the customer’s shoes, learning the business context, and seeing product as a partner—not a blocker.

And for PMs? Guy’s advice is simple but sharp: show up prepared, speak your team’s language, and always, always tie your work to outcomes.

Product and Engineering Collaboration Is a Skill, Not a Given

The best product teams aren’t just shipping fast—they’re aligned. From shared metrics to outcome-driven experimentation, real innovation starts with better collaboration.

If this post hit close to home, here’s where to go next:

• Listen to our podcast episode with Guy Gershoni for an inside look at what strong product and engineering collaboration really looks like.
• Explore our Optimal Product Management course to build the leadership skills, communication habits, and strategic mindset that modern PMs need to lead across functions.
• Download our Product Leader First 90 Days Template Pack to define your team’s values, vision, and KPIs—and create alignment from day one.

Are your teams building together or building in silos? What’s your take? Join the conversation and share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn.

This post Breaking the Silos: How Product and Engineering Build Better Together first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

What Today’s PMs Need to Lead Tomorrow’s Teams 

Product leadership isn’t standing still. And neither can you. 

As AI, product ops, and platform thinking reshape the way teams work, the role of the product leader is changing—fast. It’s not just about writing better PRDs or prioritizing feature requests. It’s about understanding systems, navigating ambiguity, and thinking like a strategist. 

That’s the throughline we heard across Season 3 of Productside Stories—conversations with product leaders who are adapting in real time. Whether they’re scaling SaaS, redefining ops, or transitioning from engineering to product, each guest shared how the job is evolving—and how they’re evolving with it. 

Here are just a few of the voices shaping the next era of product leadership: 

• Rachel Owens on scaling smarter in SaaS—and why strategy needs to stay scrappy as teams grow.

• Neha Bansal on the rise of product ops and how it unlocks clarity, consistency, and momentum. 

• Peter Moot on treating pricing as a product lever—and giving PMs a seat at the revenue table. 

• Guy Gershoni on making the leap from engineering to product strategy and leading without a traditional playbook. 

Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music

Watch on YouTube

What do they all these episodes have in common? They’re not waiting for product to be invited into the conversation. They’re leading the conversation—across functions, up the org chart, and through complexity. 

If you want to know where product leadership is headed next—and how to stay ahead—this is the place to start. 

This post Product Leadership, Rewritten: Season 3 Collection of Productside Stories first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

Back in December 2024, Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast featured Melissa Perri in a conversation about the downsides of large, heavy frameworks like SAFe. While their discussion largely focused on SAFe’s failures within traditional agile, they didn’t yet factor in the multiple disruptive forces reshaping enterprise product development: 

1. New, leaner methodologies like Shape Up and continuous discovery are gaining traction. 
2. Automation is replacing manual overhead in testing, deployment, and delivery, making traditional Agile/Scrum structures unnecessary. 
3. Enterprise cost-cutting is forcing a reckoning—as seen in the mass layoffs of Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, and other process-heavy roles. 
4. AI is accelerating product development, but it’s just one of several disruptors shaking up enterprise software. 

Clay Christensen was right—big companies are doubling down on the wrong things. They’re adding process at a time when they should be stripping it down. If they don’t rethink how they build software, they’ll be outpaced by leaner, faster challengers—and left behind in the future of enterprise product development.

SAFe is Expanding While Product Development is Shrinking

“Your framework has doubled in size. Your release cycles haven’t.” 

• SAFe has grown from 4.5 to 6, adding complexity instead of agility. 

• Meanwhile, leaner, more adaptive models like Shape Up and continuous discovery allow smaller teams to iterate faster. 

• Executives are frustrated with SAFe’s bloat, slow delivery, and high overhead—but many still don’t know what to replace it with.

Enterprises are Cutting Agile Overhead—Forcing a Shift Away from Process-Heavy Work

“The layoffs of Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches are a signal—not a side effect.” 

• Many enterprises have reduced or eliminated Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and SAFe Program Consultants. 

• This isn’t just cost-cutting—it’s a response to Agile’s failure to deliver faster results. 

• Teams must shift to models that empower them to self-organize and work lean, not rely on Agile overhead.

Automated Testing and Deployment Have Removed the Need for Large Agile Teams

“If you can automate testing, deploy in small slices, and get real-time feedback—why do you need a heavy release train?” 

• Modern CI/CD and automated testing tools mean teams can release small, validated changes continuously rather than batch large releases. 

• Risk and compliance are easier to manage in micro-releases than in massive waterfall-like SAFe releases. 

• The old “big train” release model is dying. Companies need to shift to smaller, continuous value delivery. 

4. AI is Reshaping Teams—But So is the Shift Toward Smaller, Autonomous Groups

“Your 15-person team is competing against a 3-person team using better tools.” 

• AI is eliminating routine backlog grooming, research, and test case writing. 

• But even without AI, smaller teams using better workflows (like Shape Up) are outperforming SAFe-heavy teams. 

• The winning model: small, outcome-focused teams that operate without excessive layers of management.

SaaS Subscriptions Are Dying—Outcome-Based Pricing is the Future

“Why charge for access when automation lets you charge for outcomes?” 

• AI enables performance-based pricing models, but so does automated telemetry and real-time usage tracking. 

• Enterprises clinging to static subscription models will struggle to compete with more adaptive, outcome-based pricing models. 

• Customers increasingly expect to pay based on real value delivered—not just for software access. 

Vertical Slices Beat Slow-Moving Cargo Train Releases

“Regulatory risk is reduced when you ship less, not more.” 

• Releasing in small, tightly scoped increments makes it easier to track, test, and validate changes. 

• Regulated industries (finance, healthcare, manufacturing) actually gain more control by moving faster in small pieces rather than waiting for bloated SAFe-driven releases. 

• The real risk isn’t moving too fast—it’s delaying releases until they’re too large to manage effectively. 

The Return of Skunkworks: Enterprises Must Carve Out AI & Automation Innovation Teams

“Big companies used to have secret labs. Now they have governance boards.” 

• Most large companies have killed their ability to innovate by eliminating protected carve-outs. 

• AI-native startups are running small, lightweight Skunkworks teams to experiment with new technologies. 

• Enterprises must restore protected innovation teams—not as side projects, but as core strategic bets. 

Carving out space for innovation is no longer a luxury—it’s a survival tactic in modern enterprise product development.

Enterprises Must Reinvent Their Playbook—Before It’s Too Late 

• SAFe, as it stands, is failing to deliver results fast enough. Companies must adopt leaner, more adaptive frameworks like Shape Up, continuous delivery, and vertical slicing. 

• The old playbook of big teams, slow releases, and SaaS subscriptions is collapsing. The future is automation, AI-augmentation, and outcome-based pricing. 

• Regulation and risk aversion aren’t excuses to move slowly. In fact, leaner, faster releases offer better control and compliance than large, infrequent ones. 

• If you’re still relying on Agile the way it was practiced in 2015, you’re already behind. The companies that rethink their approach now will dominate the next decade. 

Rethinking the Enterprise Product Development Starts Here

Big frameworks are holding teams back. From vertical slicing to lean AI innovation teams, the next generation of enterprise product development won’t be built on bloated process.

If this post hit close to home, here’s where to go next:

• Watch our webinar on what’s replacing SAFe and how automation is changing the shape of product teams across the enterprise.

• Explore our Agile Product Management course to equip yourself—or your team—with the strategic tools to lead in a faster, leaner world.

• Download our 90-Day Product Leader Template Pack to align on values, vision, and KPIs—and build momentum from day one.

The shift is already happening. The only question is whether your team is leading it—or reacting to it. What’s your take? Jump into the conversation and share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn.

This post Why Enterprise Product Development is Headed for a Crash first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Suhail Vawda

Product innovation is now non-negotiable.

Companies that want to stay relevant need to solve real problems, adapt faster than the market, and lead with clarity across silos. In this post, we’re exploring the conversation we had in one of our Productside Stories episodes this season with Joeri Devisch, a veteran of product, technology, and transformation work at global companies.

His insights are grounded in decades of hands-on leadership across engineering, business development, and product strategy—and his take on innovation is both practical and bold. Joeri’s perspective offers a reset on what it actually means to lead innovation today.

Product Innovation Is Shifting—And Product Needs to Lead It

Innovation used to sit in the R&D lab. Now it lives with the product team.

Joeri makes it clear: the future of innovation is human-centered, customer-driven, and iterative by design. Leaders who push features without understanding market context or user needs are missing the point—and likely falling behind.

Instead of placing bets based on assumptions, Joeri argues for tighter feedback loops, co-creation with customers, and building a culture where experimentation is normalized.

“You’re not doing the transformation for fun. There has to be a strategic reason, a clear sponsor, and a message that lands with everyone—not just the exec team.”

In other words: innovation starts with purpose, not process.

Customer-Centricity Is a Discipline, Not a Tagline

If innovation is the goal, proximity to the customer is the path.

Joeri emphasizes that data and intuition are not opposites—they’re collaborators. Strong product teams blend analytics, field insights, and deep user empathy to understand what’s worth solving and why.

This means:

• Designing feedback loops that don’t just collect data but act on it
• Building prototypes early to validate hypotheses
• Involving users as collaborators, not just testers

It also means building with context. What works in one market won’t translate neatly into another. Localization, cultural nuance, and embedded customer insight matter more than ever.

Great Product Innovation Requires Cross-Functional Trust

No product team ships in isolation.

Joeri talks at length about how strong collaboration—between engineering, product, sales, and leadership—is what makes or breaks innovation.

“The best products come from teams that trust each other and embrace diverse perspectives.”

This is about shared ownership, with shared docs and good comms forming part it. And it starts with leaders who align incentives, remove blockers, and model transparency.

Leadership Means Building the Right Mindset

Joeri frames transformation as a product in itself—one that needs strategy, sponsorship, and customer buy-in.

He challenges product leaders to stop thinking of change as a side project and start treating it like any other product rollout. That means planning for adoption, measuring success, and evolving the solution based on feedback.

“If your training isn’t paired with coaching and reinforcement, it won’t stick. You have to invest in the implementation of change—not just the announcement.”

The product mindset Joeri describes is continuous, business-driven, and unapologetically people-first.

Key Lessons from Joeri Devisch

Curiosity over certainty. Great product leadership is less about having the answers and more about asking better questions.

Data + context = better decisions. Intuition isn’t the enemy of analytics. The best leaders blend both.

Trust powers innovation. Collaboration works when teams are aligned—not just in tools, but in purpose.

Transformation is a product. And like any product, it needs a strategy, a customer, and a feedback loop.

Bringing Innovation to Life

Innovation isn’t a quarterly OKR. It’s a long-game discipline powered by strong product thinking, team trust, and clear leadership.

If you’re looking to put these lessons into action:

• Listen to the full conversation with Joeri Devisch on Productside Stories to hear how he approaches transformation, stakeholder alignment, and product strategy in complex orgs.
• Explore our webinars for expert insights on product innovation and how to lead these initiatives with your team.
• Enroll in our Optimal Product Management course to sharpen your strategic toolkit, lead cross-functional teams with confidence, and earn your Certified Product Manager™ credential.

What’s been your biggest challenge in leading innovation? Drop us a note or connect with us on LinkedIn—we’d love to hear your story.

This post The Future of Product Innovation: Insights from Joeri Devisch first appeared on Productside | Product Management Courses & Training by Rina Alexin