Happy 2023!!!

First of all, I wish you a happy 2023!!!

I hope that this year we continue to advance in our learning about how to make digital products and that, with this learning, we manage to make even better products!

To help with this goal, nothing like a retrospective! \o/

I used the FunRetrospectives app, one of the companies I act as a board member, to help me. The app comes with many ready-to-use retrospective templates. And if you still want to adjust it to your needs, it lets you do that. That’s what I did when I created my retrospective with “Learnings & Facts” on one side and “Questions & Concerns” on the other.

2022 was the year I decided to become a full-time product leadership coach. It has been a very fun journey. Some interesting facts and learnings:

• I jumped into full-time coaching six months ago. Until Jun/2022, I was doing part-time coaching, a half-day per week time commitment.
• My average monthly net income doubled in the six months I’ve been coaching full-time.
• I’m also paid with shares by some clients.
• Building my brand with articles, talks, classes, and books while I was a full-time exec was very helpful in generating demand. Despite my ugly site (I’m working on a revamp!), I’m already fully booked until Mar/2023.
• I’m engaged with small startups, growth-stage companies, and enterprises.
• I’m doing discovery coaching, product leadership coaching, and transformation coaching.

I still have a lot of questions:

• Am I pricing and charging correctly?
• Will I be able to continue to generate good net income, or did I have “beginner’s luck”?
• Am I offering the right services?
• Am I engaging with the right customers?
• Will I miss hands-on experience?
• Will I miss having a team?
• Will I continue to have learnings that can be useful to other people?

I know the answers and learnings will come over time.

To answer the last question (will I continue to have learnings that can be useful to other people?), this year’s most-read articles list has many new articles that I wrote after starting my full-time coaching career.

The most-read articles can be grouped into three main topics — digital transformation, product leadership, and product discovery:

Digital Transformation

• Why “business demands => technology implements” doesn’t work
• Why business people hate discovery
• Delivery date is another source of conflict between business and tech
• (new) 3 digital transformation lessons from Disney
• (new) Type of company vs digital maturity
• (new) How to measure a company’s digital maturity?
• (new) Feature Team vs Product Team
• (new) How to turn a feature team into a product team?

Product Leadership

• Product Manager’s #1 priority
• Putting it all together — vision, strategy, roadmap and OKRs
• What is and how to create the product vision and strategy?
• (new) What is the ideal team size?
• (new) When to define, revise and communicate your product vision and strategy?
• (new) Should we have a dedicated innovation team?
• (new) Should we have a dedicated bug-fixing team?

Discovery

• The 2 sides of Product Discovery
• (new) Discovery is not a process
• (new) The main reason why products fail

I’m very happy with my first few months in my new career. Looking forward to building an amazing 2023 with lots of learnings, some answers to my questions above, and more opportunities to help people and companies bridge the gap between business and technology through education, coaching, and advisory services on digital product development and management.

Digital product training, coaching, and advisory

I’ve been helping companies bridge the gap between business and technology through training, coaching, and advisory services on digital product development and management. Check here how I can help you and your company.

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Digital Product Management Books

Do you work with digital products? Do you want to know more about how to manage a digital product to increase its chances of success, solve its user’s problems and achieve the company objectives? Check out my Digital Product Management bundle with my 3 books where I share what I learned during my 30+ years of experience in creating and managing digital products:

• Startup Guide: How startups and established companies can create profitable digital products
• Product Management: How to increase the chances of success of your digital product
• Leading Product Development: The art and science of managing product teams

You can also acquire the books individually, by clicking on their titles above.