Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I build high-craft software and the teams that build it. I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Product Management Archives

Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth December 1, 2024
Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.

Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People. November 23, 2024
Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.

Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product November 19, 2024
You need a first product sooner than you think. Here’s a framework for helping you identify a winner.

A Framework for Scaling product teams October 9, 2024
The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.

Roadmap Outcomes, not Features September 4, 2024
Drive success by roadmapping the outcomes you’ll create instead of the features you’ll deliver.

Different roadmaps for different folks September 2, 2024
The key to effective roadmapping? Different views for different needs.

Too Big To Fail April 9, 2024
When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn’t have room to fail. But failing is an important part of innovation. If you can’t let it fail, it can’t succeed.

Go small April 4, 2024
The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.

Start with a Belief April 1, 2024
You can’t use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.

Mastery doesn't come from perfect planning December 21, 2023
In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.

Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform November 13, 2023
Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.

Measuring Feature success October 17, 2023
You’re building features to solve problems. If you don’t know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?

Build the whole product October 6, 2023
Your code is only part of the product

The Trap of The Sales-Led Product December 10, 2020
It’s not a winning way to build a product company.

The Hidden Cost of Custom Customer Features December 7, 2020
One-off features will cost you more than you think and make your customers unhappy.

Domain expertise in Product Management November 16, 2020
When you’re hiring software product managers, hire for product management skills. Looking for domain experts will reduce the pool of people you can hire and might just be worse for your product.

How to advance your Product Market Fit KPI October 21, 2020
Finding the gaps in your product that will unlock the next round of growth.

How to understand your product and your market September 30, 2020
A customer development question you can ask to find out who your product is best for and why they’ll love it.

The KPI that measures Product-Market Fit September 9, 2020
If you ask this question to a different small group of your users every week, you can measure trends over time to determine if you’re moving toward product-market fit.

Don't use NPS to measure user happiness for enterprise software September 7, 2020
Measuring the satisfaction and enjoyment of end users is a key to unlocking product-led growth. Net Promoter Score is the wrong tool for this.

Ask One Question To Help You Reach Product-Market Fit September 3, 2020
Learn what adjacent problems you need to solve to become twice as valuable to your customers.

Evaluative and generative product development August 30, 2019
Customers never even talk to the companies that don’t fit their needs at all. If the only product ideas you’re considering are those that meet the needs of your current customers, then you’re only going to find new customers that look exactly like your current customers.

Building the Customer-Informed Product August 15, 2019
Strong products aren’t composed of a list of features dictated by customers. They are guided by strong visions, and the execution of that vision is the primary focus of product development.

Feature Voting Is Harmful To Your Product February 7, 2019
There are a lot of problems with using feature voting to drive your product.