Tag: product roadmapping and sprint planning

Join My 2026 Continuous Discovery Habits Book Club: Build Weekly Discovery Routines That Stick

Continuous Discovery Habits turns five this year, and I’m celebrating by inviting you to read it with me. Over 135,000 people have bought the book. I’ve seen these habits transform outcomes, reduce rework, and sharpen product strategy in my teams and across the product community, but I also know it’s not easy to sustain the practice—especially when you feel like the lone champion in your organization.

To make it easier and more social, I’m launching the 2026 Continuous Discovery Habits Book Club. We’ll read the book together—one section per month—with discussion questions, practical exercises, and resources that help you actually do the work, not just read about it. Whether you’re picking up the book for the first time or revisiting it, the goal is to build real muscle memory in discovery.

By December, you won’t just understand continuous discovery—you’ll be practicing it.

Each month, I’ll share a reading guide with reflection prompts, exercises you can run solo or with your product trios, and short videos to help you spread the ideas across your team. I’ll monitor comments throughout the year so you can ask for help, share what’s working, and connect with peers—even if you join late.

I’ll also host quarterly live discussion sessions so we can compare notes, push through sticking points, and swap tactics with other empowered product teams. If you want to participate, grab a copy of the book (or dig up your old copy), share the "Spread the Love" videos to get friends and colleagues on board, reserve time to try the team exercises, and register for the community sessions. Let’s do this.

🎖️ This reading guide is brought to you by New Year, New Habit: The 5-Day Customer Interview Challenge. Become a more confident interviewer in less than a week. You’ll conduct one practice interview a day, get personalized and detailed feedback so you know exactly what to improve, and we’ll be giving out daily prizes to the most improved. Join the challenge today.

This Month’s Reading: Introduction; Chapter 1: The What and Why of Continuous Discovery; Chapter 2: A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery. Estimated reading time: ~40 minutes.

These chapters will introduce you to why discovery and delivery are not phases—they happen continuously. You’ll see a clear benchmark for what "continuous discovery" looks like, learn what product trios are and why they’re the foundation for good discovery, and explore six prerequisite mindsets (outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, continuous) you’ll need before these habits can stick. You’ll also get the opportunity solution tree—a visual framework for connecting what you’re building to why you’re building it. Need a copy? Grab the book: https://amzn.to/3hGkNYT?ref=producttalk.org

We learn best in community. Use these short videos to share key concepts with teammates and invite them to read along: What is product discovery? https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/799fdbb41e16ebc4f0/what-is-product-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — a quick intro to the key idea behind discovery work. Defining continuous discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/a79fdbba151ee3c72e/defining-continuous-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — a clear benchmark to aspire to. The rhythm of continuous discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/4d9fd5b4111ee0c2c4/the-rhythm-of-continuous-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — the two small research activities you should do every week. The underlying structure of product discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/449fdbb5191fedc4cd/the-underlying-structure-of-product-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — how outcomes, opportunities, and solutions connect. What’s a product trio? https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/a79fdbb31e1be2c12e/whats-a-product-trio?ref=producttalk.org — why cross-functional collaboration matters.

🎖️ This reading guide is brought to you by Just Now Possible, a podcast about how AI products come to life—straight from the builders. If you are being asked to add AI features to your roadmap, you don’t have to start from scratch. Get a head start by hearing how other teams are navigating similar challenges. Find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

When we reflect and discuss what we read, we absorb more and apply it better. This month is about building awareness of where you are today—no judgment. The first step in any change is getting a baseline. Next month, we’ll take small steps to strengthen the habits.

Here are three prompts for individual reflection. 1) Think about a recent product decision your team made. Did you rely more on opinions, data, or customer input? Get specific. 2) Which of the six prerequisite mindsets (outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, continuous) is strongest for you personally? Which would require the biggest shift? 3) What’s your reaction to weekly customer touch points? Does this excite you? Scare you? Something else?

And here are three prompts for team discussion. 1) Who on your team is responsible for discovery and delivery? How interconnected are these activities? 2) How does your team currently collaborate cross-functionally? When product, design, and engineering come together, is it to make decisions—or to hand off work? 3) Think of a recent feature your team built. What opportunity did it address? What else could you have built to address that opportunity?

For this introductory month, focus on seeing your current system clearly. In my experience, visibility alone reveals friction and makes the path to change obvious—and measurable.

Exercise: Draw Your Current Discovery Process. Time: 60 minutes. Do this solo first, then compare with your team. Take a blank sheet and draw how your team actually decides what to build. Show where ideas come from, who makes decisions and how, where (if anywhere) customers enter the picture, and how you know if you built the right thing. Then compare drawings with teammates. Where do perceptions differ? What does that say about your shared understanding?

Exercise: Audit Last Week’s Decisions. Time: 30 minutes. Do this solo or with your team. List every product decision your team made last week—big or small. For each decision, note who made it, what information it was based on, and whether customer input was part of the process (and how). Then look for patterns: how many included direct customer input versus assumptions, opinions, or secondhand information?

If you prefer an audio summary of this month’s reading—including the book chapters and the resources below—listen here: Stop Building The Wrong Things Faster (audio summary by NotebookLM): https://www.producttalk.org/content/media/2025/12/January—Stop_Building_The_Wrong_Things_Faster.m4a

Related in-depth guides to go deeper: Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Know: https://www.producttalk.org/product-discovery/ Product Trios: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Get Started: https://www.producttalk.org/product-trios/ Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomes: https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-trees/

Other voices worth reading: Product Discovery: Pitfalls and Anti-Patterns by Chris Jones: https://svpg.com/product-discovery-anti-patterns/?ref=producttalk.org Addressing the Challenges of Product Discovery by Saeed Khan: https://medium.com/swlh/the-challenges-of-product-discovery-6ac6109d13a8?ref=producttalk.org Making Product Discovery Work in Small Teams by Sofia Quintero: https://www.chargebee.com/blog/product-discovery/?ref=producttalk.org Product Waste and the ROI of Discovery by Richard Mironov: https://www.mironov.com/waste?ref=producttalk.org

Related course if you want structured practice: Product Discovery Fundamentals – this course walks you through the complete continuous discovery framework with hands-on exercises: https://learn.producttalk.org/cdh-master-class?ref=producttalk.org

Our live discussion schedule for 2026 (sessions are not recorded): Wednesday, March 18, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Tuesday, June 16, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Thursday, September 17, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Wednesday, December 16, 2026: 9am–10am PST and 4pm–5pm PST. Invitations will go out to Supporting Members and CDH Members two weeks beforehand—reserve the time now.

As you work through this month’s material, connect it to your product strategy, outcomes vs output OKRs, and product roadmapping and sprint planning. In my teams, discovery sticks when product trios own the rhythm, weekly customer touch points are normalized, and the opportunity solution tree keeps everyone aligned on outcomes.

I’m thrilled to learn alongside you this year. Grab the book, invite your trio, and let’s build habits that last.

Inspired by this post on Product Talk.

January 5, 2026
Build vs Buy in 2026: How I Make Confident, AI-Savvy Software Decisions That Scale

Every planning cycle, I’m asked the same high-stakes question: should we build or buy? In 2026, with generative AI reshaping the software landscape and budgets under scrutiny, the classic calculus needs an upgrade. The right call can accelerate time to value, protect precious engineering capacity, and sharpen competitive differentiation—while the wrong one can quietly inflate total cost of ownership for years.

“Navigate the build vs buy software dilemma, learn how AI is changing the game, and what you should leverage (and when).” That’s been my north star for product strategy this year, and it’s how I guide teams when the pressure is on.

My first principle is simple: build where we differentiate, buy where we need parity. If the capability is central to our value proposition or our defensibility, I’m inclined to build—often with a phased approach that de-risks scope. If it’s a non-differentiating layer (think billing, analytics plumbing, basic CRM integration), I’ll buy to accelerate, then revisit once scale and specialization justify a deeper internal investment.

AI changes the equation on both sides. On the “buy” side, modern platforms now ship agentic AI, fine-tuning options, and robust APIs that let us compose advanced capabilities fast. On the “build” side, AI workflows and toolchains (from code copilots to eval-driven development) compress cycle time, making bespoke solutions more attainable. The trade-off has shifted from pure functionality to questions of AI risk management, model governance, data privacy, and the portability of prompts, embeddings, and training data.

I evaluate decisions across two economic horizons: time to value versus total cost of ownership. Buying often wins the first round—faster deployment, proven reliability, and lower initial lift. But TCO can creep: integration work, per-seat or consumption SaaS pricing, training, vendor-driven roadmap gaps, and the “shadow ops” of maintaining connectors in our CI/CD. Building flips that profile: slower early velocity, higher upfront complexity, but potentially lower long-run costs and tighter fit with our platform scalability goals.

Operational risk matters just as much as features. I look at incident management posture, SRE maturity, SLAs, and DORA metrics to gauge resilience. If a vendor can’t meet our uptime and recovery expectations—or if their roadmap pace mismatches our deployment frequency—we’re effectively renting risk we can’t control. Conversely, if our team can’t realistically support the operational burden, buying is the safer choice.

Security, regulatory compliance, and data governance are non-negotiables. I assess privacy-by-design, data residency, audit logs, role-based access, SOC2/ISO coverage, and threat detection and response. For AI-heavy systems, I add model lineage, red-teaming practices, PII handling, and retention policies. If we can’t verifiably meet our obligations in a build scenario within the launch window, we buy and require clear data exit and portability clauses.

To keep decisions objective, I use a lightweight scorecard across five dimensions: differentiation, urgency/time to value, regulatory/security risk, integration complexity, and AI leverage/portability. We weight criteria with product trios (PM, design, engineering), run discovery spikes, and validate assumptions with stakeholder management up front. A disciplined scorecard curbs recency bias and helps us communicate trade-offs to leadership.

In practice, I favor staged commitments. When uncertainty is high, we buy to learn—ship value quickly, instrument usage, and collect evidence. If adoption proves sticky and integration pain remains moderate, we double down with deeper vendor integration. If we uncover unique needs or cost inflection points, we pivot to a build plan that reuses learnings, data models, and UX patterns from the bought solution to reduce risk.

AI-specific choices deserve their own pass. For example, if we need retrieval-augmented generation, I’ll often buy for the orchestration and observability layer while building our domain-specific retrieval-first pipeline and prompt engineering guardrails. That split gives us speed plus control: we retain our IP and data gravity while tapping best-in-class tooling that evolves with the ecosystem.

Vendor strategy matters as much as technology. I negotiate clear data export, transparent API quotas, sandbox environments for continuous discovery, and price protections for growth. I pressure-test roadmaps, ask for integration references, and align on outcome-based milestones rather than feature checklists. Strong partners welcome this rigor; weak ones stall—another useful signal.

On the build side, I right-size ambition. We target minimum lovable scope, isolate risk in early sprints, and leverage open source where it’s mature and secure. We design for modularity so we can swap components without rewriting the world, and we budget time for in-app guides and product tours to smooth adoption, because user activation is the real finish line.

Here’s the playbook I return to: buy to validate and compress time to value; build to differentiate and reduce long-run TCO; continuously re-evaluate as the AI toolchain and our scale evolve. With a transparent scorecard, a bias for learning, and a clear view of risk, the build vs buy decision becomes less of a leap of faith and more of a repeatable product management capability.

2026 will reward teams that move fast without mortgaging the future. Make the call deliberately, instrument the outcomes, and stay humble—because the best strategy is the one you can adapt as new evidence arrives.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

January 5, 2026
Inside PendomoniumX London: AI’s tipping point and what product leaders should do next

I walked into PendomoniumX London energized by a simple question: are we finally past the AI hype cycle and into real product impact? From the hallway conversations to the main stage, the momentum was unmistakable—and deeply practical.

PendomoniumX’s sixth stop brought 350+ software leaders together for a day of AI transformation, real-world stories, and product innovation.

That scale and focus say a lot. Across the dialogues I joined, the center of gravity has clearly shifted from experiments to execution: building an AI Strategy that aligns with product roadmaps, turning promising prototypes into production-grade AI workflows, and measuring value in ways that reinforce product-led growth. It’s the inflection point where Generative AI moves from isolated pilots to cross-functional capabilities.

My biggest takeaway for product leaders: treat AI like any other durable capability. Start with sharp problem framing and customer outcomes, run continuous discovery to validate use cases, and sequence delivery through product roadmapping and sprint planning. Pair this with privacy-by-design and sensible governance so your teams can move fast without cutting corners.

Operationally, I’ve found it essential to design experiences that accelerate user activation—think thoughtful onboarding, in-app guides, and product tours that reduce friction while teaching new AI-powered behaviors. For teams adopting LLMs for product managers, keep your evaluation loops tight, instrument the journey end-to-end, and make sure every iteration maps to a clear value proposition customers can feel.

Events like PendomoniumX London remind me why community matters: they compress learning cycles. If you’re steering an AI portfolio, now is the moment to translate vision into repeatable systems—prioritize the right bets, make adoption effortless, and let data tell you when to double down or pivot. That’s how we turn AI transformation into durable product innovation.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 3, 2026
Why I’m All-In on INDUSTRY 2025: 5 Powerful Reasons For Product Leaders at The Product Conference

INDUSTRY 2025: The Product Conference is circled on my calendar for good reason. In my role leading product management at HighLevel, I look for events that sharpen strategy, accelerate learning, and connect me with operators who ship. This one consistently delivers on all three, and 2025 promises to raise the bar for product management leadership.

Join Pendo at INDUSTRY in Cleveland, Ohio.

First, I expect deeply actionable product strategy insights—beyond platitudes. I’m prioritizing conversations on outcomes vs output OKRs, product roadmapping and sprint planning, and how great teams articulate a crisp value proposition while maintaining points of parity that matter. I’m going in with specific questions on product-market fit lessons and how to systematize strategic bets without stifling discovery.

Second, the surge of AI in product work is too important to observe from the sidelines. I’m comparing approaches across AI Strategy, LLMs for product managers, prompt engineering, and eval-driven development—especially in retrieval-first pipeline patterns. My focus: where AI genuinely improves product discovery, in-app guides, and customer support ai strategy, and where it risks adding complexity without outcomes.

Third, the community is unmatched for conference networking and pragmatic learning. I’m intentional about meeting product trios who run continuous discovery at scale, as well as leaders who’ve cracked stakeholder management under pressure. These are the moments where competitive differentiation is born—through candid stories of what didn’t work and why.

Fourth, I’m eager to stress-test data practices that power product-led growth. I’ll be exchanging notes on retention analysis, unified analytics platform decisions, user activation, and how teams integrate qualitative feedback with event data to inform roadmaps. I’m also interested in how practitioners leverage platforms like Pendo, Amplitude analytics, Intercom, and HubSpot to reduce time-to-insight and craft effective product tours and in-app guides.

Fifth, I treat INDUSTRY as a checkpoint for leadership growth. I’m looking for fresh takes on empowering product teams, first principles decision making, organizational development, and the IC to manager transition. The best sessions don’t just inspire; they give me two moves I can apply with my team on Monday.

To make the most of the week, I’m applying a continuous discovery mindset: arrive with clear learning goals, capture portable frameworks, and translate at least two insights into experiments before wheels-up. If you’re focused on product strategy, product discovery, and product-led growth, we’ll have plenty to compare and build on together.

I’ll be in Cleveland ready to learn, share, and connect with peers who care about craft and outcomes. If you’re attending, let’s compare notes on what’s working, what’s stalled, and how we can raise the bar for product management leadership in 2025 and beyond.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 3, 2026
The New AI Playbook for Product Portfolio Optimization: Slash Complexity, Boost ROI

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned leading product organizations is that portfolio choices make or break outcomes. In an era of infinite requests and finite teams, the question isn’t what we could build—it’s what we must build next. That’s why I’m codifying a pragmatic, AI-driven playbook to optimize the product portfolio while staying true to outcomes, not output.

AI-powered product portfolio optimization is here. Explore strategies and tools helping product leaders manage complexity and boost ROI.

My starting point is a data backbone that connects strategy to reality. I aggregate product usage, revenue by segment, cost-to-serve, retention cohorts, and support signals into a unified analytics platform, then layer a retrieval-first pipeline so LLMs can reason over clean context. Instrumentation matters: Amplitude analytics, Pendo, and in-app guides provide the behavioral and activation signals that make prioritization measurable.

From there, I translate strategy into an objective decision system. I express outcomes vs output OKRs, align initiatives to value proposition and competitive differentiation, and classify opportunities with the Kano Model. LLMs for product managers help cluster voice-of-customer at scale; with thoughtful prompt engineering and AI workflows, I can map themes to jobs-to-be-done, quantify demand, and de-duplicate asks across stakeholders.

Execution hinges on evidence. I run A/B testing with a clear minimum detectable effect (MDE), pair it with eval-driven development for AI features, and ship through CI/CD while tracking DORA metrics. This closes the loop between product roadmapping and sprint planning and real-world performance—activation, retention analysis, and Web Vitals inform the next set of portfolio bets.

Trust is a feature, so governance is built-in. Privacy-by-design, data governance, and AI risk management guide how we store, prompt, and evaluate models. I apply guardrails to sensitive workflows and define success metrics that balance short-term ROI with long-term resilience and regulatory compliance.

The operating model matters as much as the models themselves. Product trios and empowered product teams run continuous discovery, pressure-test assumptions in QBRs vs OKRs, and make trade-offs visible. Stakeholder management becomes easier when the portfolio narrative is anchored in transparent scenarios and shared metrics.

If you’re getting started, here’s my flow: unify data, define outcomes, segment opportunities, simulate scenarios, and test fast. Use LLMs to synthesize signals you’d never humanly read, then make one focused bet per team that moves a measurable KPI. Rinse, learn, and reallocate—portfolio optimization is a living system, not an annual meeting.

Ultimately, the promise of this new playbook is simple: less noise, sharper focus, and compounding ROI. By pairing AI Strategy with disciplined product management leadership, we can manage complexity with clarity—and consistently build what matters most.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

December 29, 2025
Product Manager Cover Letter Mastery for 2026: Proven Steps, Templates, and AI Workflows

Every week I review dozens of applications for PM roles, and in under 30 seconds I decide whether to keep reading. In 2026, the bar is higher than ever: clarity, outcomes, and customer insight beat buzzwords every time.

Learn how to write a standout product manager cover letter with steps, examples, templates, and smart AI workflows to make your application stand out.

I start with a crisp opening that communicates my value proposition in one sentence: the product problem I love solving, the customer I serve, and the measurable outcomes I drive. Then I connect my experience to the role’s core responsibilities—product discovery, product positioning, go-to-market strategy, and stakeholder management—without rehashing my resume.

A strong PM cover letter follows a simple structure: a hook with context, one paragraph proving product management leadership through outcomes vs output OKRs, a paragraph on how I partner with empowered product teams and engineering to ship, and a closing line that shows I understand the company’s roadmap and where I can help now.

To make this concrete, I include brief examples that show decisions, not duties: how I translated ambiguous customer signals into a roadmap, how I balanced platform scalability with speed, and how I measured success with activation, retention, and adoption—not vanity metrics.

Templates help me move fast, but I always tailor. I mirror the job’s language, highlight the few experiences that map 1:1, and cut everything else. I quantify impact where possible, link outcomes to business value, and keep it to 200–300 words so hiring managers can scan.

I also use smart AI workflows to accelerate the craft without sacrificing authenticity. My LLMs for product managers playbook: extract the role’s competencies, generate a draft outline, compare multiple versions with light A/B testing, and refine tone and clarity. Tools should augment judgment; the final voice is mine.

If you’re applying now, assemble your core template, slot in two role-specific examples, and close with a confident ask for next steps. With the right structure, clear outcomes, and a little AI leverage, your product manager cover letter will stand out in any stack.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

December 18, 2025
Plan Your 2026 Product Conference Calendar: Top Events, Locations, and Insider Tips

I’m curating a living list of 2026 product conferences to help product managers, product leaders, and empowered product teams plan ahead with confidence. I use this calendar to align my team’s discovery work, roadmapping, and go-to-market strategy—and to prioritize conference networking and learning that moves the needle on product-led growth.

This list is not exhaustive. If there’s a product conference missing that should be here, please send it to conferences@producttalk.org. I’ll keep updating this as new events are announced so you have a reliable guide throughout the year.

I’ll be teaching a workshop and speaking at the Product at Heart conference in June in Hamburg, Germany. If you plan to attend, be sure to say hi.

Are you looking for the 2025 Product Conferences list? Find it here.

How I use this guide: I map events to our quarterly OKRs (outcomes vs output OKRs), focus on sessions that sharpen product discovery, stakeholder management, and product roadmapping and sprint planning, and bring a clear plan for takeaways I can apply the day I’m back. If you’re exploring AI Strategy and LLMs for product managers, you’ll find several strong options below.

January

Jan 28 — Product-Led Summit — Washington, DC, USA

Jan 30–31 — Prdkt+ — Cairo, Egypt

February

Feb 1–4 — WebSummit — Doha, Qatar

Feb 2–20 — DeveloperWeek Hackathon — San Jose, CA, USA & Virtual

Feb 4 — DDX Innovation & UX Conference — Tokyo, Japan

Feb 4–5 — UX360 Virtual Summit — Virtual

Feb 7–8 — DDX Innovation & UX Conference — Dubai, UAE

Feb 18–20 — DeveloperWeek — San Jose, CA, USA

Feb 18–20 — ProductWorld — San Jose, CA, USA

Feb 24 — ProductCon — London, UK

Feb 24–25 — axe-con — Virtual

Feb 24–25 — Product-Led Summit — Austin, TX, USA

March

Mar 9–10 — Gartner Product Leadership Conference — Grapevine, TX, USA

Mar 12–18 — SXSW — Austin, TX, USA

Mar 23–26 — The Annual ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interface — Paphos, Cyprus

Mar 26 — Chief Product Officer Summit — New York, NY, USA

Mar 26–27 — Product Operations Summit — New York, NY, USA

Mar 26–27 — Product-Led Summit — New York, NY, USA

April

Apr 1–2 — Product-Led Summit — Denver, CO, USA

Apr 11 — ProductCamp — Phoenix, AZ, USA

Apr 13–14 — Business of Software — Cambridge, UK

Apr 13–17 — ACM CHI — Barcelona, Spain

Apr 14 — Chief Product Officer Summit — Palo Alto, CA, USA

Apr 15–16 — UX Nordic — Aarhus, Denmark

Apr 15 — AI Product Summit — San Jose, CA, USA

Apr 20–21 — Product at Heart Leadership — Hamburg, Germany

April 22–23 — UX360 NA — Atlanta, GA, USA

May

May 7–8 — ProductWorld 2026 — Opatija, Croatia

May 9 — DDX Innovation & UX Conference — Munich, Germany

May 11–13 — UXDX — New York, NY, USA & Virtual

May 11–14 — Web Summit — Vancouver, Canada

May 12–13 — Product Operations Summit — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

May 12–15 — UXLx User Experience — Lisbon, Portugal

May 13 — Leading the Product Leaders Forum — Melbourne, Australia

May 13–15 — SaaStr Annual — San Mateo, CA, USA

May 14 — Leading the Product Conference — Melbourne, Australia

May 19 — La Product Conf — Paris, France

May 20 — Leading the Product Leaders Forum — Sydney, Australia

May 20 — ProductCon — New York, NY, USA

May 21 — Leading the Product Conference — Sydney, Australia

May 27–29 — UXDX EMEA — Berlin, Germany & Virtual

May 22 — La Product Conf — Madrid, Spain

May 27–28 — Dublin Tech Summit — Dublin, Ireland

May 28–29 — Chief Product Officer Summit — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

May 28–29 — Product-Led Summit — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

June

Jun 8–11 — Web Summit — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jun 15–16 — #mtpcon: A Mind the Product conference — London, UK

Jun 16 — Growth Minded Superheroes — Frankfurt, Germany

Jun 17–18 — Product-Led Summit — Seattle, WA, USA

Jun 22–26 — UXPA International — Las Vegas, NV, USA

Jun 23–24 — UX360 EU — Berlin, Germany

Jun 24–25 — Product-Led Summit — London, UK

Jun 26 — Product at Heart Conference — Hamburg, Germany

July

Jul 2–3 — Agile on the Beach — Falmouth, UK

Jul 26–28 — Agile2026 — Washington, DC, USA

Jul 26–31 — HCI International — Montreal, Canada

August

Aug 5 — ProductCon AI: Online Edition — Virtual

September

Sep 16–17 — uxcon — Vienna, Austria

Sep 16–18 — Hatch Conference — Berlin, Germany & Virtual

Sep 17 — DDX Innovation & UX Conference — San Diego, CA, USA

Sep 17 — Chief Product Officer Summit — San Francisco, CA, USA

Sep 22–23 — Product-Led Summit — San Francisco, CA, USA

Sep 22–23 — Product Operations Summit — San Francisco, CA, USA

Sep 28–30 — B2B Summit EMEA — London, UK

Sep 30–Oct 2 — GOTO Copenhagen — Copenhagen, Denmark

October

Oct 14–15 — Product-Led Summit — Berlin, Germany

Oct 16 — Just Product 2026 — Munich, Germany

Oct 26–27 — Y Oslo — Oslo, Norway

Oct 28 — Product-Led Summit — Sydney, Australia

Oct 28–29 — Product-Led Summit — Boston, MA, USA

November

Nov 9–12 — Web Summit — Lisbon, Portugal

Nov 11–12 — Product-Led Summit — Toronto, Canada

Nov 11–12 — Leading Design — London, UK

If you’re attending any of these, let me know—conference networking is always better with a plan and a friendly face. And if you’ve got a must-attend event on your radar, send it to conferences@producttalk.org so I can keep this guide comprehensive for the community.

Inspired by this post on Product Talk.

December 17, 2025
Master AI as a Product Manager in 12 Months: My 2026 Roadmap to Ship Smarter, Faster

AI isn’t a side quest for product managers anymore—it’s the skill stack that will define how we discover problems, prototype solutions, and ship value in 2026. Over the last few cycles, I’ve watched teams that embrace AI Strategy outperform on speed, signal, and stakeholder confidence. This roadmap is the approach I use to build capability in a structured, outcome-driven way—so we ship smarter, faster, and more impact-driven products.

"AI for PMs in 2026: why it matters, what to learn, and a 12-month AI roadmap to master product skills and ship smarter, faster, impact-driven products."

Here’s how I frame what to learn and why: focus on enduring capabilities first (problem discovery, experimentation, ethics), then layer the AI product toolbox (LLMs for product managers, retrieval-first pipeline patterns, AI workflows), and finally operationalize with outcomes vs output OKRs. The goal isn’t to sprinkle gen ai on everything—it’s to make better decisions, reduce cycle time, and unlock product-led growth in measurable ways.

Months 1–3: Foundations. I build literacy around model behavior and constraints, context window management, and prompting patterns. I pair this with data governance and privacy-by-design basics so we avoid rework later. Practically, I assemble an AI product toolbox (evaluation checklists, prompt libraries, retrieval-first pipeline templates) and apply them to product discovery—summarizing research, clustering feedback, and sharpening value propositions without losing critical nuance.

Months 4–6: Prototyping and evaluation. This is where ideas become testable artifacts. I use gen ai for product prototyping to create UX mocks, PRDs, and in-app guides rapidly, then validate with eval-driven development. I run lean experiments (A/B testing with a clear minimum detectable effect), wire up analytics to Amplitude, and track activation and retention signals. The mantra: instrument early, measure causally, and iterate based on evidence.

Months 7–9: Shipping AI-enabled workflows. I partner with product trios to integrate AI into real user journeys—customer support ai strategy, CRM integration, and guided onboarding are common wins. We explore agentic AI for complex multi-step tasks, add safeguards for AI risk management, and pressure-test systems with threat detection and response playbooks. As features reach production, we monitor deployment frequency and tighten feedback loops to protect quality while accelerating learning.

Months 10–12: Scale and governance. I operationalize what works with product roadmapping and sprint planning aligned to outcomes vs output OKRs. We codify playbooks for continuous discovery, define eval gates for new AI features, and unify analytics so teams can compare lift apples-to-apples. Stakeholder management matures into clear narratives: what shipped, what moved, what’s next—so leadership sees compounding value, not just activity.

Throughout the year, I keep the focus on real users and real metrics: fewer hops from insight to iteration, tighter loops between problem and prototype, and crisper communication around trade-offs. The result is a team that can translate AI capabilities into differentiated product experiences—reliably and responsibly. If you follow this path, you’ll enter 2026 with the confidence to lead, the systems to scale, and the evidence to prove it.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

December 17, 2025
Must‑Know Product Benchmarks for Financial Services: Actionable Insights to Accelerate Growth

I’ve learned that in financial services, intuition isn’t enough—rigorous product benchmarks are what separate signal from noise. When my team and I evaluate portfolio performance, we anchor our decisions to the metrics that correlate with customer trust, compliant growth, and durable revenue.

Discover exclusive data and strategies from our Product Benchmark Report. Compare the financial services industry’s performance across key product metrics.

Here’s how I use a benchmark report in practice: I calibrate our baseline against peers, identify the few levers that disproportionately drive outcomes, translate those findings into outcomes vs output OKRs, and align stakeholders across product, risk, operations, and go-to-market. Benchmarks turn debate into data and surface the opportunity cost of not fixing broken journeys.

The product metrics I zero in on typically include user activation rate, time-to-first-value, onboarding completion, funnel conversion (for example, from signup to funded account or application to approval), cohort-based retention analysis (D7/D30/D90), depth of feature adoption, weekly-to-monthly active ratios, support contact rate, and cost-to-serve. In financial services, these signals tell a clear story about trust, reliability, and product-market fit.

To operationalize these insights, I combine Amplitude analytics with Pendo in-app guides to instrument end-to-end journeys, segment by customer profile, and run disciplined A/B testing with clear guardrails. This lets us move from anecdotes to statistically defensible changes and iterate confidently on onboarding, product tours, and moments that drive activation and engagement.

Because the trust and regulatory bar is higher in financial services, I also watch for friction in verification flows, error states that erode confidence, and any gaps between intent and completion. When benchmarks show we’re lagging, I pair discovery with rapid experiments to improve the experience while maintaining privacy-by-design and strong governance.

Use this benchmark report to pinpoint where you outperform and where you lag, prioritize roadmap bets, and focus your product-led growth motion. When teams rally around a shared set of product benchmarks, execution speeds up, trade-offs become clearer, and the value proposition sharpens for both customers and the business.

Inspired by this post on Amplitude – Perspectives.

December 16, 2025
Inside the Core Analytics Mindset: How I Build Products that Drive Clarity and Growth

I spend my days shaping core analytics product experiences that help teams see their business with greater clarity. When I design an analytics workflow, my goal is simple: make it effortless to ask better questions, uncover meaningful patterns, and turn insight into action. In this brief reflection, I’ll share how I approach product discovery, experimentation, and roadmapping to create analytics tools that truly move the needle.

Everything starts with outcomes. I anchor roadmaps to a clear north star and use outcomes vs output OKRs to align problem statements with measurable impact. That means instrumenting a precise event taxonomy and building guardrails for data quality so retention analysis and user activation metrics are trustworthy. When the foundation is sound, product-led growth becomes repeatable because we can connect feature usage to value creation without guesswork.

Experimentation is where conviction meets evidence. I rely on A/B testing with a disciplined view of minimum detectable effect (MDE) so we size experiments responsibly and ship with confidence. Self-serve analysis—and, when appropriate, tools like Amplitude analytics within a unified analytics platform—lets teams quickly validate hypotheses, monitor cohorts, and understand lift. The result is faster learning cycles without sacrificing statistical rigor.

On the delivery side, I practice continuous discovery and translate insights into product roadmapping and sprint planning that teams can execute. I work closely with design and engineering to reduce cognitive load in the UI, standardize tooltips and in-app guides, and ensure every chart, filter, and segment supports a clear decision. This collaboration empowers the team, shortens feedback loops, and keeps us oriented toward customer outcomes rather than feature checklists.

Great analytics products give people confidence. By aligning on outcomes, instrumenting clean data, testing with discipline, and shipping thoughtfully, I’ve seen teams unlock deeper understanding and sustained growth. If you care about building products that illuminate the path forward, start with the questions customers need to answer—and let your analytics experience make those answers obvious.

Inspired by this post on Amplitude – Best Practices.

December 16, 2025
Year-End Reflection for Product Leaders: Values, Themes, and the 100‑Wishes Reset

I’ve been closing the year with a deliberate reflection ritual for more than a decade, and this season I found fresh energy for it after listening to an insightful conversation with Teresa Torres and Petra Wille on All Things Product. Their approaches mirror the evolution many product leaders experience: moving from rigid annual goal-setting to values-led themes, longer time horizons, and a healthier respect for spaciousness. In my own practice, that shift has created better focus, less pressure, and far more meaningful outcomes.

Prefer to listen? You can find this episode here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts. I took notes with my team in mind and translated the discussion into a simple, values-driven framework that any product organization can adopt.

Why does annual reflection matter for product people? Because our work lives at the intersection of ambiguity, trade-offs, and time. If we only measure ourselves by shipped output or quarterly OKRs, we overlook the compounding value of learning, relationships, and judgement. I treat this ritual as a strategic reset: a chance to surface patterns, adjust expectations, and recommit to outcomes over output.

My own reflection habit started scrappy—paper notebooks, messy timelines, and even artful visualizations inspired by Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec. Like Petra, I’ve found that tactile, analog artifacts unlock insights I miss in a spreadsheet. Over time, I’ve kept the spirit and simplified the mechanics: a “what went well” review, a short list of hard lessons, and a handful of decisions that paid off—or didn’t.

The biggest evolution for me has been moving from rigid annual goals to values and themes. I still run OKRs, but I use them to track progress, not identity. The lens of process vs. outcome goals—reinforced by ideas from Atomic Habits—helped me set fewer, better commitments. For example, instead of “launch X by Y,” I’ll emphasize the cadence of customer discovery, the health of the product trio, and the quality of decisions made along the way.

One exercise that changed my practice is the “100 wishes” list. It’s powerful—and surprisingly difficult. Pushing past 30 or 40 wishes forces me to name latent interests and long-range intentions I rarely say out loud. Combined with decade-level themes, the list helps me balance ambition with patience. I don’t try to do it all next year; I use it to spotlight direction, not deadlines.

I also review patterns across years: Where did over-scheduling create hidden costs? When did I protect focus time and what did that unlock? Paul Graham’s Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule remains a useful calibration tool here. And when I feel the pull toward constant throughput, I revisit Stefan Sagmeister’s The Power of Time Off (TED Talk) to remind myself why strategically creating space often yields the most valuable ideas.

Of course, not every year follows plan—and that’s normal. Reflection helps me spot unrealistic expectations early and let them go. When setbacks hit, I’ll rewatch Dealing with Setbacks and re-ground in continuous discovery. The question isn’t “Did we do everything?” but “Did we learn fast, protect customer value, and make trade-offs aligned with our values?” That’s how empowered product teams compound impact.

My sharing philosophy has become more nuanced over time. Some reflections are public to invite dialogue and accountability; others stay private so I can process honestly. I’ve found it helpful to publish what I’m saying no to, capture a theme for the year ahead, and keep the rest for myself and my team. This balance preserves motivation while still contributing to the broader product management leadership community.

If you’re designing your own ritual, consider this lightweight flow: review wins and tough calls, write your “100 wishes,” extract a few values-based themes, then translate those into process goals for Q1. Revisit monthly, not just annually. If you like structured prompts, Chris Guillebeau’s How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review from The Art of Nonconformity offers a practical template you can adapt to your context.

For deeper dives and complementary ideas, I bookmarked these as part of my year-end reset: What I’m Saying No to This Year—And Why, Ask Teresa: My Leaders Still Want Roadmaps with Timelines—What Should I Do?, Scaling Impact: A Look at the Year Ahead (2022), Let’s Connect in 2025: A Look at the Year Ahead, The Interview Coach, and Petra’s own year-ahead reflections (here and her 2026 version). I also recommend revisiting the prior conversation on leadership and change: Role of Leadership in Transformations.

I’d love to hear how you approach your end-of-year reflection. What questions bring you the most clarity? Which practices help you set an intentional, values-driven path for the next year? Share your process—I’m always looking to learn from other product creators and leaders.

Inspired by this post on Product Talk.

December 16, 2025
AI in Product Design: My Proven Playbook, Real Use Cases, and the Tools That Win Faster

In product design, AI has shifted from novelty to non-negotiable. I’ve watched teams accelerate discovery, compress prototyping cycles, and turn ambiguous ideas into validated experiences faster than ever—without sacrificing quality or customer trust.

AI in product design has quickly moved from new to necessary. Here are the AI product design tools and approaches you need to stay relevant in this decade.

From my vantage point leading product teams, “necessary” means AI is woven throughout the product lifecycle—discovery, prioritization, prototyping, validation, and iteration—not bolted on. The goal isn’t to chase hype; it’s to build durable advantage with clear AI Strategy, disciplined execution, and measurable outcomes.

First, anchor the work in strategy. Tie every AI initiative to a specific customer problem and value proposition, then express that linkage with outcomes vs output OKRs. This keeps teams focused on real impact and avoids feature-chasing. It also sharpens product positioning and clarifies where AI can deliver competitive differentiation versus simple points of parity.

Second, upgrade discovery. I rely on AI workflows to synthesize interviews, cluster themes, and surface insights at scale. A retrieval-first pipeline—grounding models in our own data—improves factuality and reduces hallucinations. Combine this with strong data governance and privacy-by-design so insights are trustworthy and compliant from day one.

Third, make quality measurable. Adopt eval-driven development: define evaluation sets and acceptance thresholds that reflect real user tasks before you ship. Pair that with A/B testing and minimum detectable effect (MDE) discipline, so you learn quickly and confidently. Add safety guardrails (red-teaming prompts, content filters, and bias checks) to manage AI risk without slowing the pace.

Fourth, enable empowered product teams. Product trios (PM, design, engineering) should co-create prompts, prototypes, and evaluation criteria. Give designers and PMs practical tools—LLMs for product managers, structured prompt templates, and reusable components—so AI-augmented work becomes the default, not a special project.

Where does AI shine in product design today? Concept exploration and market scans, turning fuzzy opportunity spaces into crisp problem statements. Rapid wireframes and interaction ideas, using gen ai for product prototyping to explore multiple design directions in minutes. UX writing that adapts tone and reduces friction across onboarding, tooltip design, and microcopy.

It also excels at guided experiences. I’ve seen strong lifts in user activation when we pair in-app guides and product tours with context-aware suggestions. For support and education use cases, a retrieval-grounded assistant can deflect tickets, shorten time-to-value, and reinforce the product’s value proposition at the exact moment a user needs help.

Voice is another frontier. A well-scoped voice AI agent can accelerate complex workflows (think data entry or multi-step configurations) when hands-free is faster or more intuitive. Just be intentional about when agentic AI adds net value versus when a simple UI tweak would do.

On the tooling side, my AI product toolbox is pragmatic and modular. For analytics and learning loops, Amplitude analytics and Pendo help quantify behavior changes and retention analysis. For in-product engagement and feedback routing, Intercom and HubSpot integrate cleanly with LLM-driven tagging and summarization. For ideation and automation, I use a ChatGPT connector and Claude Code for quick scripts, data wrangling, and prompt experiments. The constant: a retrieval-first pipeline that grounds models in approved knowledge and maintains context window management at scale.

Risk management is built in, not bolted on. Set clear AI risk management policies, catalog model and data dependencies, and document decisions. Align with regulatory compliance requirements early, and keep an audit trail of prompts, datasets, and eval results. That’s how you move fast without breaking trust.

If you’re getting started, begin small: pick one high-friction workflow, add a retrieval-grounded copilot, and measure the lift. Use the results to inform product roadmapping and sprint planning, then scale to adjacent use cases. With disciplined discovery, sharp evaluation, and the right tooling, AI becomes a force multiplier for product teams and a clear win for customers.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

December 15, 2025