Terri Eccles

For years, product leadership was about being the bridge. Translating intent into documents. Turning ambiguity into specs. Hoping the signal survived the handoff. That bridge is disappearing. When agents can turn clear intent into working software in hours, speed is no longer the advantage. Clarity is. What still matters, and matters more than ever, is judgment. Taste. Knowing which problems are worth solving before anything gets built. Understanding users so deeply that the right solution feels inevitable, not debated. This is not the end of product leadership. It is the return to its core. When execution accelerates, direction becomes destiny. When building gets cheap, choosing gets sacred. The leaders who will define this era are not the ones who write better specs. They are the ones who can sit with ambiguity, shape intent with precision, and recognize greatness when they see it. If your value was translation, that was a workflow. If your value is understanding, taste, and conviction, you are just getting started. The future does not need more documents. It needs leaders who know what deserves to exist. #ProductManagement

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You know what most companies do when they adopt SAFe? They open the website… They see the big picture diagram… And they treat it like a coloring book for toddlers. "Oh look! A role! Who could we paint into that one?" "Oh, we’ve got a department – maybe that can be our release train." "Oh, this role looks fancy – let’s give it to Bob. He’s good with frameworks." And they start filling in boxes. Coloring it in. Just… matching what they already have to the new names. 🎨 But guess what? That doesn’t change anything. It’s like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and expecting it to turn faster. Here’s the thing nobody wants to hear: 📌 You cannot become agile by mapping your existing roles into a new diagram. You cannot transform your org by playing "SAFe bingo." And honestly, SAFe makes this mistake way too easy. Maybe on purpose. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is what everyone ignores – the bottom of the diagram. Yep, that tiny strip under all the colorful layers. It says: Culture. Mindset. Leadership. Psychological safety. That’s the stuff that actually drives agility. That’s the foundation. But it’s not sexy. It’s not easy to paint. So people skip it. They don’t want to change leadership behaviors. They don’t want to create safety. They just want to fill in the chart and call it a transformation. So next time you see someone proudly assigning people to boxes on the SAFe diagram – Just pause… and say: "You know that’s not how agility works, right?" Because agility isn’t about the diagram. It’s about the people. And if you don’t change how they think, lead, and collaborate – It’s not a transformation. It’s cosplay. #agile #transformation #safe #scaledagile #framework

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CEO: “We need to replace our entire product team” Me: “Um, ok, let’s talk about this for a moment…” As a CPO and product advisor I’ve met plenty of CEOs and execs who are frustrated with the results they see from their product teams. Often they feel like all they need to do is replace the existing team with more experienced, “better” PMs.  But really they're blaming PMs for some of their own shortcomings as leaders. Results from a product team depend on putting great PMs in a great environment. If you don’t have a great environment, it doesn’t matter how good your PMs are, you’ll still be disappointed with the results. Maybe your PMs really are awful, but before you fire them all and hire new ones, I’d make sure you fix the environment: a) It’s much faster, cheaper and less painful b) You’ll have to do it anyway c) You’ll be surprised by what you can get from your existing team So how do you create a great environment for PMs as a leader? 🎯 Have consistent goals Of course you want to be agile, but try not to change the priorities all the time. Every quarter is ok, but every week or two and your teams will never get going. 🛡 Minimize distractions Progress is inversely correlated to the number of initiatives you have. Make sure your teams aren’t getting distracted by execs’ pet projects, internal requests or customer feedback. Have a very small (1-2) number of priorities for them to focus on. 🗺 Explain the context Spend the time up front to explain your goals and the features you’re asking for. If all you’re doing is demanding widgets from your product team, likely they’ll have a very different idea from you of what they are building and why. 💰 Talk about the money You can’t expect your PMs to make commercial decisions if they don’t have visibility of the business financials. Make this a part of every discussion (but just a part - it’s not everything!) 🛑 Be explicit where you will take risk Teams are usually quite conservative when it comes to risk, because when the site goes down they get blamed. If you want to move quickly, be very clear about the risks that you are willing to take. 👥 Manage their role breadth PMs can be excellent at lots of things - comms, analysis, delivery, user interviews… pretty much whatever you need them to, but they can’t do it all at the same time - there are only so many hours in the day. Make sure tasks as split evenly across design, engineering and data. 📄 Agree a lightweight reporting process As a leader you need status updates. To fly blind would be reckless. But bloated reporting burns many hours each week. Take 1-2 hours up front to co-create a reporting process with your PMs (i.e. tell them what you really need, and let them figure out the best way to deliver it) and you’ll save them huge amounts of time going forward. Hustle Badger offers practical, comprehensive support to upskill your product team. DM me for private programs, workshops and advice.

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I recently sat down with Len Epp for the Leanpub Frontmatter Podcast to talk about my book User Needs Mapping: Aligning Teams Around What Matters, and the thinking behind it. We explored why so many teams struggle to flow, not because they lack talent or motivation, but because they lack clarity on whose needs they’re serving and how their work delivers value. In the conversation, we dug into: - How User Needs Mapping helps teams reconnect to purpose - Why “alignment” starts with a shared understanding of user needs, not just structure or process - How clarifying capabilities and dependencies can reduce cognitive load and unlock better flow If you're a leader or a practitioner, I hope you’ll find it a valuable listen. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/ea_-Cz4g. Or find it on Leanpub’s YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eGqs_ZP3 or your favourite podcast app. Big thanks to Len and the Leanpub team for the invitation and the thoughtful questions.

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“Agile sucks.” One of the first teams I ever led was a content creation team. A bit before I’d arrived, someone had swooped in, dropped vanilla scrum on that complicated team of ~40 people and 12+ disciplines, told the associate producers how to run the meetings, and vanished. The team experienced weeks of agony before throwing out the entire process and going back to what they had been doing. They’d wasted too much time trying to adhere to some external framework that made everything worse. The general perspective was that agile sucks. I wasn’t so sure, but with a background in military leadership and logistics and being brand new to games, the few books I’d read about agile didn’t provide me the right tactical tools to help that team succeed. I kept thinking about what happened. Was the problem “scrum”? Was it “agile”? Today I can say that agile was not the problem, but the common ways “agile” manifests in real companies with real people trying to get work done WAS a problem. Still, most people don’t know the difference between a way of approaching work that could help them and game devs everywhere, and the rigid, overmarketed “frameworks” sold to companies so they can claim they’ve transformed themselves into value-seeking organizations. So the irony is I’m here to market a course. I’ve been teaching this course for over a decade, and it aims to provide you with an understanding of what your specific environment is, then how to use the tools and techniques in the course to actually help. This isn’t about following a rulebook, it’s about following values and principles that will help your team and game succeed. And it works. I want to Reframe Agility for an industry that has understandable cynicism for the term, but has too often thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The training is great for leaders who desire to help their teams and want to understand why and how process can help. Reframing Agility is a 2-day training happening April 14th and 15th. It’s remote. I’ve taught hundreds of people, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. You will also get an ICAgile certification. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/e6jKQW8P Please comment or repost for visibility, and if you know someone who could benefit send this their way! #gameproduction #gamedevelopment #gameindustry #agile P.S. If you want to send a group through, please reach out. Happy to talk about larger discounts!

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I think you should stop telling executives their product strategy is broken… I see this mistake a lot in transformation efforts. Product leaders walk into the C-suite armed with frameworks and data, essentially delivering the message: "Everything you're doing is wrong." Then they wonder why leadership pushes back or shows zero urgency for change. Logic and frameworks don't win buy-in; ego, identity, and success narratives do. When a company is financially healthy, executives have no incentive to admit failure. They won't embrace a radical shift that's framed as correction because you're asking leaders who built something successful to essentially disown their achievements. The reframe changes everything: instead of positioning change as a fix for what's broken, position it as a way to sustain success in a world that's changing fast. "You've built something great. Our goal is to help you stay great as the market evolves." That narrative honors their achievements while aligning with what they actually care about: growth, competitiveness, and legacy. Executive buy-in comes from protecting what they care about. Transformation accelerates when leaders see it as an investment in continued excellence, not a critique of past decisions. How do you approach executive buy-in for product transformations?

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I've been diving deeper into our latest research at Prosci- "38% of AI adoption challenges stem from insufficient training in AI tools." On the surface this seems like an easy fix. If our people don't know how to use a tool, let's train them how to use a tool. That simplistic approach, in my opinion, would lead to massive waste and underwhelming impacts for organizations. AI is just a different beast. Here's why: AI tool-specific training has about a 14-week half-life. Let that sink in. At this pace of innovation, it's safe to assume that tool-specific AI training will retain only about 10% of its value after 12 months. Here are some examples of critical 'how to use' AI skills that have already decayed: - 12 months ago, mastering "chain of thought" prompting separated the most proficient users from the rest. Today, reasoning models just do this for us. - 6 months ago, we would have taught how to use 'Web Search' to include multiple links and downloads into one prompt to 'ground' results. Today, DeepResearch does all that for you. - 2 weeks ago, we would have said image generation is cool but still kind of limited. Today, you can't go anywhere without seeing Ghibli-style avatars or action figures of everyone on LinkedIn. We have NEVER absorbed anything with this kind of exponential pace. And because this is a shift in how we work, we have to be thoughtful about what types of 'training and skills' investments we make. So what's the alternative? In my opinion, organizations should overinvest in these three areas to address this skills and training gap: - Foundational AI Literacy - Understanding core AI concepts and building skills on how to spot opportunities for use will deliver significantly better long-term ROI than tool-specific skills. - Change Capabilities - This technology will cause massive disruptions. Organizations with robust change management processes will capitalize on opportunities rather than being overwhelmed by them. - Continuous Learning Frameworks - Nothing in this space is static. Success requires establishing systems that encourage curiosity, experimentation, and rapid knowledge sharing across teams. The competitive advantage here will not go to those who perfect yesterday's skills, but to those who truly embrace continuous change. #AIAdoption #ADKAR #product

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I've lost count of how many ineffective sprint reviews I've attended over the years. Often, the meetings focused on justifying the progress and collecting new stakeholder requests. If your reviews are like this, you should rethink your approach. To help you with this, I've updated my sprint review article. It now shares the following tips: 1️⃣ Use the Meeting for Product Discovery, Not Only Product Delivery 2️⃣ Involve the Right People 3️⃣ Split the Meeting When Needed 4️⃣ Encourage Feedback but Don’t Say Yes to Every Idea 5️⃣ Don’t Rush Important Decisions 6️⃣ Visualise the Development Progress 7️⃣ Consider Collecting User and Stakeholder Feedback Separately   Hope you'll find my tips helpful. Let me know your thoughts, questions, and experiences in the comments. https://lnkd.in/eyx7aNsR #productmanagement #productdiscovery #productdelivery #sprintreview #stakeholdermanagement #agile

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"Alberto, I am a Product Manager and I've just been laid off in this really tough job market. What can I do? Any suggestions?" I good percentage of my followers are PMs, and I hear versions of the above question A LOT lately. My suggestion/recommendation is that if you are a laid off PM (or at risk of being laid off) you should *immediately* take steps to: Differentiate yourself from the other 1,000s of laid off PMs by adding a skill to your Talent Stack that's rare to find in most PM resumes—and most companies in general. And the #1 skill lacking in most product management organizations is THE ABILITY OF USING SIMPLE MATH AND PROBABILITY to address the MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION a Product Manager must ask and answer objectively and quantitatively is: What is the Probability that this new product will succeed in the market if we execute it competently? This series of lessons for Product Managers (based on a 3-day mini-seminar I created for Stanford before COVID and I made freely available on YouTube) is GUARANTEED to significantly increase your odds of distinguishing yourself in any PM interviews—or keeping your current job, or getting that next promotion! Enjoy and Learn—and best of luck out there! https://lnkd.in/g6Z9cDH

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It’s wild to me how dismissive many product leaders, designers, and writers can be when it comes to input from developers. I assure you, no one in your organization is more particular about good software, nor more irked when it doesn’t work well, obviously, and efficiently. They also tend to be well-versed in the HIG/HCI and accessibility guidelines for whatever platform/tech you’re using. And, if I may snark a bit: designers love to *talk* about lateral thinking while developers actually do it, like 50 times a day; if you’re really stuck, bring them your problem, even if it doesn’t seem like an “engineering problem”. The one asshole you worked with 5 years ago who made you feel bad for not knowing how to do something on your own operating system is not every developer. Also, learn how to use your operating system, you are an adult professional craftsperson and that machine is your workshop.

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No fluff, just REAL TALK where we laugh, agree and argue about the challenges of Product with Mackenzie Hughes and Leah Tharin 😂. We get into - Why product teams struggle to define their impact on the business - How to build a culture around commercials/ROI - Validating your best product bets to get the most bang for your buck - And how we can work better in the "age of anxiety" in tech Worth listening to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gn6evKZg

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