Author Archives: Dan Schmidt

Publishing a changelog is the highest value activity that you’re probably not doing. You might think that keeping a changelog is a boring chore reserved for developers. On the contrary, changelogs are a medium with the potential to transform how we all work. For those of you that already keep changelogs, I’d like to expandContinue reading “Let’s change changelogs.”

The Problem What are the heuristics for separating “important” product changes from minor changes that are essentially background noise? If this question sparks your interest, keep reading. Everyone who works at a software company must perpetually ask the question: “How did our product change?” The folks who sell, market, or support the product must understandContinue reading “How do you separate the signal from the noise of product changes?”

When I meet aspiring startup founders, I’m struck by how many of them quickly abandon their ideas and pivot to something totally different. Sometimes the pivot is relatively small, like a different type of product for the same persona they were already targeting. Other times the pivot is huge, like switching from B2B infrastructure toContinue reading “For my life’s work, I’m going expedition-style”

It’s a common practice for art students to critique each other’s work as a means to improve. To conduct a critique, one student shares their creation. Then, the artist’s peers describe, analyze, and interpret what they see and feel. The ensuing discussion covers the holistic impact of the work and the details of how itContinue reading “Product Iteration Critiques”

In How Adults Build Products, I explored a cognitive difference between adults and babies: adults have “endogenous attention” while babies only have “exogenous attention.” In other words, adults have the capacity to control their own attention. For babies, in contrast, their attention is directed by the external world. Adults behave like babies in the workplace.Continue reading “The Muscle Groups of Innovation Focus”

Now that I’ve blown your mind with the animated gif, watch this video for an explanation of how it all works.

Ever since I first published the Product Management Triangle in 2014, people have asked for versions they can use for their own purposes. I finally made this a lot easier! I updated the triangle and made it available as a Keynote template. Click here to download it. Edit the diagram however you want. I’d loveContinue reading “Product triangle Keynote template”

Technology entrepreneurs like to say that they’re “making the world a better place” but they usually have little idea about what will happen if their creations are adopted. They often can’t even draw a clear line from what they’re doing to a better world. This phenomenon was mocked beautifully in one of my favorite sequencesContinue reading “A toolchain for connecting your vision with reality”

  Babies are born with exogenous attention.  This means that the external world dictates what they pay attention to. A baby could be playing with the best toy ever, but when another toy drops next to them, their attention uncontrollably shifts to the new shiny object. In The Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnik says that babies canContinue reading “How Adults Build Products”

My first guest post on Ribbonfarm explores how the experience of navigating a maze mirrors the creative process. The essay introduces the new Maze Structure booklet, a series of mazes of increasing conceptual complexity. Here are the front and back cover.