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How We Ran a 1-Day Remote AI Hackathon (For the Whole Company — Not Just Devs)

Justo conducted a 1-day remote AI hackathon for the entire company to emphasize the importance of AI in business operations.
The focus was on creating working prototypes instead of just presentations, with the belief that constraints fuel creativity.
The hackathon was open to all employees, not just technical staff, resulting in diverse and strong contributions.
The event concluded with a demo session, generating real momentum and showcasing the impact of shipping functional solutions.

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Medium

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Why I Use a Gantt Chart for Agile Projects

Kanban is commonly used in Agile development for workflow management and task visualization.
Jeff Sutherland, the author of Scrum, criticizes Gantt charts as an illusion of predictability and advocates for Kanban.
Despite starting with Kanban as a Scrum Master, the author found that stakeholders often requested Gantt charts, leading to their use as a complement.
Over time, the author realized the necessity of Gantt charts in Agile development, explaining their usage and importance in this article.

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Productify

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The Unhappy Path of Product Strategy

Product strategy and creation often face challenges similar to those encountered in product development.
Optimism in product creation may lead to unexpected issues like unfamiliar customer behavior or technical hurdles.
Successful Product Managers excel at predicting potential challenges and planning for them.
Similarly, strategy creation starts optimistically but may encounter unforeseen obstacles during execution.
Organizations often find themselves on an 'unhappy path' with their strategy, prompting reviews and adjustments.
Operational Discipline involves aspects like risk management, decision triggers, focus discipline, required support, and progress metrics.
Addressing the unhappy path of strategy early on is crucial for effective strategic planning.
Identifying risks, creating dynamic strategy review cycles, combating scope expansion, ensuring support infrastructure, and measuring progress are key strategies for managing the unhappy path.
An 'assumption slam' can help surface beliefs and stress-test them to anticipate strategic challenges.
Structured reconsideration and clear pivot criteria are essential for adapting strategies to changing circumstances.
Establishing focus, defining scope, building necessary support, and using appropriate metrics are vital for successful strategy execution.

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TechBullion

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Product management 101 for building an LLM based product

Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained popularity, leading product managers to explore integrating them into products.
Building a successful LLM product focuses on solving user problems effectively rather than just showcasing technological prowess.
Consider if LLM aligns with core user journeys and domain requirements before implementation.
Factuality, training data availability, and regulatory constraints are crucial factors to consider when implementing LLM products.
Selecting the right LLM model involves evaluating model capabilities, customization needs, and proprietary vs open source options.
Prompt tuning and latency considerations play essential roles in choosing an appropriate LLM model for specific use cases.
Quality evaluation methods for LLM products include assessing correctness, relevance, clarity, biasness, and safety scores.
Establishing privacy and safety policies, continuous evaluation, and user awareness are vital for LLM products.
LLMs offer transformational potential but require thorough consideration of user pain points, business fit, and model selection for success.

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Medium

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I Launched Unity Gaming Services (UGS) From My Bedroom, and Built a PLG Engine While I Was At It

Unity Gaming Services (UGS) was launched successfully, accounting for over 30% of Unity's ARR within 12 months, focusing on liveops and multiplayer gaming remotely and powered by product-led growth.
The initiative aimed to unify various Unity tools into a single platform for a self-serve Product-Led Growth motion, addressing the fragmentation in services previously provided by third-party sources.
UGS targeted SMBs, solo developers, and indie studios with a PLG-first approach, emphasizing easy access for users to test the platform before making financial commitments.
The team implemented in-product prompts, sample games, SDKs, and revamped documentation to enhance user experience and onboarding, essential for a successful PLG strategy.
Amid the pandemic launch restrictions, the team engaged with developers through real-time AMAs, webinars, snackable videos, and educational content, adapting to the lack of physical events.
The launch strategy focused on authenticity, developer trust, and storytelling rather than a traditional marketing approach, leveraging community involvement and targeted outreach.
Despite challenges and setbacks within Unity's leadership, the impact and value of UGS remain significant, emphasizing the teamwork and dedication of the team behind the initiative.
The story reflects the importance of effective leadership, teamwork, and perseverance in navigating difficult situations and delivering a product that resonates with users.
The experience of launching UGS during tumultuous times contributed to the growth and development of the author as a Product Marketing Manager, highlighting the transformative impact of the project.
The narrative underscores the resilience and dedication required to overcome obstacles, innovate in product development, and create a solution that addresses user needs effectively.
The author's reflection on the UGS journey serves as a testament to the power of collaboration, customer-centric approaches, and the drive to succeed against all odds in the tech industry.

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Medium

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Bridging Product and Technology with the CPTO role

The CPTO model at Zafin combines product strategy and architectural discipline for delivering value to customers efficiently.
As the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Zafin, the role involves leading end-to-end product development.
The CPTO wears multiple hats including Strategic Vision, Technology Stewardship, Customer Advocacy, Drive Execution, and Culture Champion.
Responsibilities range from setting market trends and roadmap priorities to owning platform architecture and technical leadership.
The CPTO role bridges customer needs with product solutions and ensures high-quality feature delivery within set timelines.
The CPTO also focuses on building a unified culture within the product and engineering teams for cohesive collaboration and success.
The model emphasizes shared goals, celebrating wins together, and fostering ownership, collaboration, and customer-centric thinking.
The combination of product and tech leadership in the CPTO role leads to reinforced responsibilities and efficient outcomes.
The CPTO role at Zafin plays a crucial role in shaping the future of how banks operate in a rapidly changing industry.
Stay tuned for part 2 of the series where the CPTO will discuss the rationale behind combining the CTO and CPO roles at Zafin.

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Medium

The Hidden Path to PE Success: How AI Makes Tech Debt Transformation a Value Creation Event

AI systems can deeply analyze and modernize legacy codebases at scale, making technical debt transformation feasible and cost-effective.
Traditional due diligence processes are limited by the time and cost of human analysis, which AI now makes more rapid and economical.
AI tools can quickly understand complex codebases, generate documentation, identify patterns, and create modernization roadmaps.
Automated AI documentation generation lays the groundwork for efficient refactoring, test case creation, and integration strategies.
AI can create detailed modernization plans at a fraction of the cost and time previously required, enabling systematic technical modernization for various companies.
Integrating AI-powered code analysis into due diligence enhances understanding of technical modernization requirements before acquisitions, turning technical debt into a value creation opportunity.
AI fosters systematic modernization efforts based on business impact, integration value, and strategic alignment across portfolios, transforming technical debt reduction approaches.
AI models can generate refactoring recommendations focused on business value, speeding up the process and aligning it with strategic goals.
AI aids in cloud-native modernization, vendor consolidation, and API design, optimizing systems for future integrations and reducing technical debt.
Completing the transformation with AI-native orchestration capabilities results in systems that operate autonomously, preserve institutional knowledge, and offer visibility into system performance and user behavior.

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Medium

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Did Not See That Coming

Six months ago, Sales and Marketing collaborated on a strategy to attract new accounts with an annual subscription tier at a discounted rate.
The CFO highlighted the overlooked downstream service costs during a finance review meeting, raising concerns about the sustainability of the pricing model.
Leadership is now looking for a solution to address the pricing issue and maintain customer trust before renewals occur.
The focus is on balancing the need to adjust the pricing model swiftly while ensuring customer satisfaction and protecting the product roadmap's funding.

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Medium

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Post 1 of PMPrep series: The PM Interview Landscape Map

PM interviews often have a hidden challenge that many overlook.
Success in PM interviews does not necessarily correlate with experience or technical skills.
The key to excelling in PM interviews lies in the ability to think systematically amidst ambiguity.
Understanding what PM interviews truly test is crucial for success.

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Medium

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In product management, roadmapping is a crucial activity serving multiple important purposes.

ACME Inc. sought assistance with their roadmapping process, facing challenges in tying ROI to the roadmap activities and misalignment in expectations at the feature level.
Evaluating ROI at the feature level is difficult due to factors like time horizon mismatch, lack of granular sales data, and incomplete cost capture at that level.
Strategic planning with rigorous ROI analysis focusing on major market opportunities with long-term timelines can prevent skewed ROI analyses seen in evaluating individual releases.
ROI assessment during strategic planning is most effective at the opportunity level, evaluating potential revenue from market opportunities rather than individual features.
Categorizing market opportunity timelines into three horizons helps balance short-term improvements with long-term innovation in roadmap construction.
Product Management teams prioritize initiatives for user productivity improvements and address challenges based on market opportunity horizons.
Structured strategic planning bridges high-level strategic objectives with operational activities and aligns them for more effective execution throughout the company.
Aligning roadmaps with strategic goals by shifting ROI assessment to the opportunity level empowers product teams to focus on impactful solutions and meet user needs while advancing strategic goals.
Companies need to revise their strategic planning to bridge the gap between high-level strategic objectives and operational activities, ensuring better alignment and execution.
By aligning features and initiatives with strategic goals, organizations can unlock growth and competitive advantage, transforming how value is created and captured in the market.

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Medium

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✨ Sparkles and Sales Calls

A mother's realization about her daughter's preference for a sparkly dress at a birthday party reflects the disconnect between sales and product teams.
Sales teams provide valuable emotional data from customers, highlighting what resonates and goes beyond just functionality.
Product managers focus on shipping efficient and elegant features, while sales teams understand the customer pulse and preferences.
The importance of emotional data in understanding customer needs and preferences is highlighted through the story of the sparkly dress and its relation to sales calls.

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Medium

322

When Rebrands Go Wrong: The Delicate Dance of Refreshing Your Identity

Rebrands, such as Jaguar's recent attempt, can backfire if not executed thoughtfully, eroding brand equity instead of enhancing it.
Successful rebrands balance evolutionary changes with respect for brand heritage, maintaining essential identity elements while moving forward.
Organizations should focus on solving identity-related issues with rebrands, involving customers and refining visual elements to create emotional resonance.
Effective rebrands feel like natural evolutions, not sudden overhauls, and preserve the core essence that consumers originally connected with.

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Medium

406

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When does research impact happen in product planning?

User/customer research impact in product development is evident during intensive share-out meetings where customer insights are presented.
These meetings act as significant endpoints to research studies, sparking collaborative planning and generating new ideas.
During impactful share-outs, discussions about next steps flow naturally, and leaders may need to align their current notions with new insights.
Decision makers sometimes struggle to recall insights from past research, leading them to reach out for more information to support strategic decisions.

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Medium

343

The Art of Asking Questions

Effective questioning requires a foundation of knowledge to ask insightful questions.
Avoid asking broad or vague questions as they lead to incomplete responses.
Narrowing down the focus and asking specific questions provides a clear starting point for discussion.
Asking good questions is not just about getting answers but also shaping outcomes and fostering relationships.

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Medium

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The Estimation Play: A Five-Act Tragedy in the Theater of Software Development

The article discusses software estimation as a theatrical production titled 'The Estimation Process.'
It highlights the challenge of providing precise estimates when facing uncertainty in software development.
Meetings, interruptions, and fragmentation during the development process contribute to underestimated timelines.
Estimates often become sacred artifacts that are used for judgment and control within organizations.
The pressure to meet estimated timelines leads to inaccurate predictions and distorted decision-making.
The disconnect between the reality of software development and corporate planning processes is emphasized.
Theatrics in corporate environments often prioritize governance over creativity and agility.
The article advocates for treating software development as exploration rather than an assembly line.
It suggests making smaller bets, adaptive strategies, and prioritizing delivery following discovery.
Ultimately, the focus is on empowering software teams to build effectively by rethinking the role of estimation in the process.

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