Blog - Itamar Gilad
This collection of blog posts by Itamar Gilad explores various aspects of product development, challenging conventional approaches and advocating for a more data-driven and goal-oriented mindset. Gilad argues that product development should be driven by achieving specific outcomes rather than simply solving user problems, emphasizing the importance of aligning development efforts with clear goals. He critiques the common practice of prioritizing ideas based solely on customer feedback, emphasizing that not all customer requests are inherently valuable. Gilad also criticizes the prevalence of hype and overselling within tech companies, urging product managers to focus on delivering real value rather than being swayed by fleeting trends.
He addresses the ongoing debate about the role of product managers in product development, arguing that the focus should be on collaborative teams rather than hierarchical structures. Gilad advocates for a more evidence-guided approach to product development, suggesting that measurable outcomes and data-driven decision-making should be prioritized over subjective opinions and gut feelings. He provides practical advice on how to adopt evidence-guided development within organizations, emphasizing the importance of shifting from a focus on tasks to a focus on goals.
You’re Not Just Solving User Problems
I regularly ask product people how they choose what to develop. Today, an increasingly popular answer is “we focus on the most important user problems”, or its more modern cousin “we prioritize opportunities”. Underlying these answers is a classic model that asserts that product development has to start with mapping out and prioritizing customer problems, […]
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The Lifecycle of Goals: Research, Discover, Deliver, Monitor
Product companies tend to manage the lifecycle of projects (AKA ideas) — from the moment the project/initiative is approved until it is shipped. But in a reality where most ideas fail to create value, it is far more important to manage the lifecycle of goals (what we’re attempting to achieve)— from the moment the goal
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What Does Generative AI Mean For Product Development?
If you’re a product person Generative AI should be firmly on your radar, not least because some think that it will replace you soon. Hyperbole aside, it’s very reasonable to assume Gen-AI will affect, maybe transform, product development. But what’s going to change? And are there any downsides? As this is a very new technology,
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6 Product Manager Stereotypes To Avoid
It’s no secret that product management is often a misunderstood and misused role. Many companies restrict PMs to narrow, stereotypical jobs, hindering their potential impact. Without strong role models, some PMs fall victim to these product management myths and perpetuate them to new hires. Here are six wrong ways to think about the product managers,
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Don’t Let Hype Run Your Product
Observing tech companies you may notice a broad, disturbing phenomenon: everyone’s hard at work “selling” their product ideas — stakeholders and engineers are selling to product managers, product managers are selling to management, and management is selling to everyone (just listen attentively in the next all-hands meeting). As a product manager I too had to
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Your Customers Are Not Always Right
When talking to product managers, company leaders, and customer-facing folk, a common belief surfaces: if enough customers (b2c), or an important customer (b2b) ask for something, then we should build it. This axiom is reflected in prioritization discussions as well as in many product management tools that rank ideas by “customer votes”. Customer feedback, whether it
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Who Should Rule the Product?
Recently the product sphere had boiled-over over Airbnb removing product managers from product teams and converting them into product marketing managers. The Airbnb transformation may be a one-of (essentially an attempt to adopt the centralist Steve Jobs / Apple model), but the story and the discussion that followed surfaced an age-old debate: who should rule
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Planning With Outcome Roadmaps
As I’m writing this, the dreaded yearly planning cycle is just around the corner and the debate over roadmaps is surfacing once more. On one hand it’s clear that classic roadmaps that show releases on a timeline create both high planning overhead and high waste. On the other hand, attempts to construct roadmaps around outcomes
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Why You’re Struggling to Prioritize
Idea prioritization exercises are often hard and unsatisfying. The discussions run long and the decisions feel suboptimal. Using numeric methods like ICE or RICE adds more process, but not necessarily more clarity, as the numbers feel “made up”. I’ve written in the past about how to make better use of ICE, but I have to
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Adopting Evidence-Guided Development in Your Org
This is an excerpt from my book, Evidence-Guided: Creating High Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty. While the chapter references the GIST Model (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks), the methods described can be used broadly. Switching to an evidence-guided mode of work is rarely easy. The people developing the product and influencing it have to
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