As the year closes, it’s time to look back at the product articles that really resonated with our community during the last 12 months. Here’s a look at our most-read guest posts for 2022.

How to get the most value out of your product roadmap

Paul van den Broek’s post starts by defining what a roadmap is and what it shouldn’t be – it shouldn’t be a deadline management tool or a release plan. He also looks at why you should make product decisions based on value and why a customer-centric approach is important.

He also talks about how you manage dependencies on a roadmap and about the importance of communicating clearly what is on your roadmap.

Read the full post here: How to get the most value out of your product roadmap

Burnout in product teams

A study published in Forbes, published in late 2021 showed that seven out of 10 tech employees were considering quitting over the next year; 30% of those were because of burnout. It prompted this post by MTP’s Louron Pratt in March 2022.

Academics have identified six causes of burnout: lack of autonomy, insufficient reward, lack of fairness, breakdown of community, values conflict and an unmanageable workload. The post then looks at how product managers can optimise for their wellbeing and grow their tolerance for emotional risk

Read the full post here: Burnout in product teams

Why should product managers understand Microservices?

This post from Shiva Hullinakatte examines why product managers should understand Microservices, and talks about how an organisation can transition to Microservices and establish scrum/Pod teams based on Microservices.

Read the full post here: Why should product managers understand Microservices?

Product strategy by Andrew Tokeley

Up next is a ProductTank Wellington talk from product leadership coach Andrew Tokeley. He explains why strategy is a big part of trying to help product managers connect the dots and prove the value of what they’re working on and why many can struggle with lack of strategy.

Watch the talk in full here: Product strategy by Andrew Tokeley

Building a product without any full-time product managers

Next comes a case study from Francesco Wiedemann, whose startup Kyte ran for some time without any full-time product managers. Francesco explains how the founders were responsible for the product work, and shows how small teams can achieve growth without the need for full-time product managers.

Read the post in full here: Building a product without any full-time product managers

Measuring the right North Star metric

Product coach Sebastian Straube’s post focuses on measuring the right things in order to build successful products. It looks at different types of metrics and provides an actionable framework that product managers can use to measure the path from the customer problem to reaching the product vision.

Read the post in full here: Measuring the right North Star metric

3 ways product managers’ roles have evolved – and where they’re headed next

This post from Mazier Adl looks at how, as technology advances, product managers’ time is critical and at how today’s supply chains require extra planning from product managers. It also looks at how consumer expectations of their products and services have changed over the past few years because of technology developments. Product managers increasingly are responsible for spotting and interpreting future trends in consumer behaviour, as well as extrapolating those trends throughout the entire product development process, Mazier says.

Read the post in full here: 3 ways product managers’ roles have evolved – and where they’re headed next

Product strategy for beginners: Part 2

The second part of Lassi Likkannen’s guide to product strategy (the first part was published in December 2021) was one of the most read Insider posts this year. In it he runs through how to get productive with product strategy and shows us why starting is difficult. He offers a five-step model to creating a product strategy and benefiting from it and looks at whether businesses need to separate product strategy from company strategy.

Read the post in full here: Product strategy for beginners: Part 2

Product vision and strategy – Marty Cagan on The Product Experience – Part 1 of 2

Part 1 of The Product Experience podcast episode with Marty Cagan comes in just below the top spot this year. In it, Marty talks about a host of topics including strategy, vision, ethics, and ways of working.

Listen to the podcast episode in full here: Product vision and strategy – Marty Cagan on The Product Experience – Part 1 of 2

Effective communication with software engineers

Simon Munoz wrote our most-read Insiders post this year. He says that if he had to highlight one quality that can influence the success or failure of a product manager, communicating effectively with your engineering team would be high on the list.

He shares a host of tips he’s learned from experience, all geared to getting the most out of a product manager’s relationship with engineering.

Read the post in full here: Effective communication with software engineers

There’s more where that came from!

Use our Content A-Z to find even more product management insights.