The Chocolate Cake Problem
In my experience, there’s usually a fundamental misalignment between two broad groups at software companies – especially B2B/enterprise companies…
Executives
41 posts
Major Migrations Are An Organizational Challenge, Not Just a Technical Challenge
I’ve sat through planning for scores of major B2B migrations, and implemented a half-dozen of my own. Usually the…
Podcast: Agile & Sales-Led Development
I joined Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson on their No Nonsense Agile Podcast to talk about the problem with sales-led…
Product and Engineering Leaders: Shoulder to Shoulder (Talk)
In public — and when working with the rest of the executive team — VPs of Product Management and VPs of Engineering need to be fully aligned, aka “shoulder to shoulder.”…
Prioritization is a Political Problem as Much as an Analytical Problem
Product and engineering leaders tend to be analytical, and we think of prioritization as an algorithmic problem. Unfortunately, other execs see a different kind of problem...…
Product Sprawl
There’s a pattern I sometimes see at software companies, particularly those targeting enterprises or on the long march moving…
Selling Problems (and Then Solutions) Instead of Philosophy
(this builds on my June difficult discussions
[https://www.mironov.com/difficult/] post)
As good product folks, we know that…
How Weak Analogies About Software Can Lead Us Astray
I often have conversations with CEOs of software companies or software-powered
(ecommerce) companies who aren’t steeped in how software…
Difficult Product Discussions with CEOs
I’m sometimes pulled into difficult discussions with CEOs, where I’m trying to
describe systematic product-side failures that directly…
We Can’t Schedule Innovation, But We Can Schedule Discovery
Every week, I talk with CEOs who tell me they want to speed up innovation. In fact, they want to…
Shoulder To Shoulder
I talk with CPOs/VPs of Product almost every day. And with CTOs/VPs of
Engineering every week. A frequent…
The Hungry Man Parable
I talk with lots of executives from the go-to-market side of the house who think that building serious software is…