Adam Knight

A good alternative job title for most product roles would be 'professional decision maker'. Whether deciding priorities, experiments or potential features, pretty much every action a product manager takes is to decide...

Establishing an innovative culture has grown to be something of a holy grail in modern technology companies, with the goal of encouraging innovation a constant presence in white paper reports on CEO priorities. Yet...

A challenge most of us face at some time when working in software is the pervading fear that everyone else is doing it better than you. It's far too easy to fall into the trap of believing that everyone else is...

In my last post I examined some lessons learned in driving a change in career. Sticking with the subject of driving change, in this post I examine some lessons learned from my recent work initiating a change in product...

The decision to change course in your career is one of the most difficult you can make. Taking on the risk of doing something new is an intimidating option compared to the comfort of sticking with the familiar. When...

A couple of weeks ago a change came over me at work. I felt more engaged with what I was doing. I was more motivated to overcome challenges that the day before had felt overwhelming. I had more purpose and confident in...

One of the great myths of innovation is that you need to be some kind of genius to come up with great ideas, however nothing could be further from the truth. In this post I'll share the first of two real life stories...

Last week I ran a fully remote innovation sprint. I'd been planning to run one for some time, but in my head I'd always pictured it as an 'in the room' activity probably involving post-its, and pizzas. Having made some...

I was recently challenged by a friend on Facebook to do 25 press-ups (push-ups) per day to raise awareness of PTSD, anxiety and depression. In my typical 'once-a-tester always-a-tester' approach I decided to check out...

This post is about the most important question you should be asking about remote working.This is not a post to answer your questions on remote working, but I'm hoping it may cause you to ask some.A lot of people are...

Have you ever been asked to create scoping documentation for an agile development? It's not easy is it? You've probably found that, amongst the many benefits of focussing on customer collaboration over contract...

Documentation is like alcohol in that the more we distil it down, the more powerful but potentially hazardous it becomes. I'm a strong believer in minimising documentation. I'm also well aware that as we reduce the...

Facing an overwhelming backlog is a challenge that anyone in product roles or agile teams will face at some point in their career. It was a common enough challenge to be the subject of an entire discussion at a meet-up...

You’ve just accepted a job offer – to introduce a product management function into a company. What can you expect? Where do you start? And how do you bring everyone in the organisation with you in the most inclusive...

I was at a daily stand-up not long ago and a developer gave an update that went something like this "Yesterday I was mostly in meetings so I didn't get a lot of work done, I did find some time to fix a bug and do a...

I, along with many others who adopt an agile approach to their work, lean towards a mindset that there's no 'best practice' in implementing tools and processes - but rather the right one to use at the right time. For...

It's an interesting characteristic of software development estimates that, while often requested,the results are rarely wanted. Clearly an estimate was wanted, however the the one delivered is often a far cry from the...

What's on your product roadmap? It's a common question to those of us working in software development and one that we're probably happy to answer, or at least find someone who can. I was speaking with a developer just...

In some instances when an approach isn't right it impacts you immediately, in others there's no sign of problems until the consequences hit you much later. Sometimes, though, the signs of a flawed approach are there but...

I'm not convinced by the merits of developer only testing. I've known teams that have done it, and in certain contexts I'm sure it can work well, but I've not encountered many situations personally where a good software...

As someone who typically is on the 'hiring' end of the recruitment process it's been an interesting experience recently exploring the market for personal opportunities. Reading job advertisements I have been struck by...