Over the past year, I've been exploring various coaching methods, and integrating self-directive coaching has significantly impacted my day-to-day interactions with the incredible teams and guilds at Potato. In line with the ethos of my recent article, I'm eager to share my insights with the community. Before we delve into the details, let me lay down the fundamental principles. Understanding the Heart of Self-Directive Coaching The essence of self-directive coaching ...

Building confidence in your role is an ongoing journey characterised by learning, growth, and the steadfast support of a robust community. Whether you discover this community within your organisation or by connecting with peers in similar roles outside of work, the significance of cultivating it through community engagement cannot be emphasised enough. The Power of Community: Despite the solitary moments that come with your role, the truth is that you ...

As a Delivery Lead, I play a crucial role in building meaningful relationships with our clients, going beyond the conventional focus on timelines and deliverables. When it comes to client management at Potato, empathy is my secret sauce. It's about understanding clients on a deeper level, beyond their business objectives. It's about appreciating their precise demanding situations, aspirations, and the human aspect of their expert roles.

Let’s dive into an extraordinary and somewhat unconventional technique that promises to transform the way Delivery leads can tackle uncertainties during the project life cycle – the Stinky Fish Session. Now, before you turn up your nose, let me assure you that this unique approach is not about actual fish (thank goodness!). Instead, it's a metaphorical representation of those tough and unpleasant issues we often shy away from and how ...

In my latest post, I discussed how to build products people love using Jobs-to-be-Done, a theory that provides a framework to help uncover your customers' needs.

As product people, we're used to being bombarded with feature requests from different stakeholders like the sales team, partners, other teams within the organisation, or even our customers and users.

As a product person, I know there’s always an infinite number of requests and problems that my teams could be working on. These can come from users, or different stakeholders within the business and they’re usually mostly linked to something they want to unlock or move forward relating to their goals. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should action them, or that we will entertain them at all.

It’s a term that you can’t seem to get away from in product development since Frank Robinson introduced the methodology in 2001, and then Eric Ries popularised its meaning in 2009 as part of his larger thinking around Lean Startups.

When I started at Potato in 2018, I was given the opportunity to take on a project which at the time was excluded from any business strategy or future vision, including limitations to management frameworks. Fast forward 2 years and we have a successful, self-organised team using Scrumban. It was my first time working for a digital product studio. It soon became clear to me that I needed to adapt ...

Over the course of your career you will have probably heard questions like “When will feature X be available?” or “What’s our plan to solve Y?”. You may have also spent hours in status meetings or steering committees reviewing feature specs. And justifying what your team is working on now, and what they were going to focus on in the upcoming months. You’ve probably tried some ways of having people ...