Breaking in to the conference that’s not just for developers. — Google I/O is billed as being by developers, for developers. However, with some forethought the event can also be a great opportunity for Product Managers.

The author of Lean UX and Sense & Respond talks shop. — Lean software development has been fashionable amongst startups for some years, but it’s still a no-go for many companies and industries. Jeff Gothelf, author of Lean UX and Sense & Respond, shares his advice on making conversations meaningful and always explaining why. Q: What advice do you have for companies who have failed trying to implement lean?

I’ve used Trello (the free list tool recently acquired by Atlassian) for anything from roadmaps to recipes, and found it invaluable for Product Management. The likes of Pivotal Tracker, Jira, Asana and Phabricator have their place, but Trello is the tool that I most commonly return to for simplicity and…

Improve your public speaking in 3 minutes with 12 slides and a random topic. — Presentation Roulette is a great tool for helping you think on your feet and improve your public speaking. Each participant has 3 minutes, 12 powerpoint slides and a topic to talk about. The catch? You don’t know the topic and haven’t seen the slides before. Ah yes- and the slides…

Eight tips on launching software quickly. — A few years ago the company I was at (Spigit) decided to build and launch a new piece of software. This software would be a test-ground for companies thinking about using their full innovation platform, so it needed enough functionality to prove the value of upgrading. The product would be…

An exercise in simplifying business bureaucracy. — In 2010 I was working for the UK government, in a department that lived up to bureaucratic expectations. IE6 was used by default, paperwork was king, and expenses were submitted via a printed spreadsheet with stapled receipts. When I moved to a startup in 2011, it was a relief to…

Software development is hard. It’s even harder if your release schedule is unpredictable and deadlines are frequently missed. There are a few ways for engineers to estimate features. Time estimates are the simplest to understand, but they only tell part of the story. Using points to estimate user stories gives…