This was my second Mind the Product conference and just like last year, it didn’t disappoint. The speakers all had fantastic insights to share and I learned a lot from each and every one of them. Here are my top ten key takeaways from the day. #1: Teams are built on mutual accountability Christina Wodtke talked about…

At Creative Market, we use Asana, a lot. It’s the core hub of everything we do, from planning team trips to managing design and dev work. No matter who is doing it or what they’re doing, we put it in Asana. Asana is a truly powerful tool, but that comes…

The Problem Recently I was in an early project brainstorming meeting when a big idea was tossed out. The worst possible thing happened: everyone in the room seemed to like it. From my perspective, this idea was bonkers and was drastically outside the scope and goals of the project. Usually, as the…

The Problem Let me set the scene here. I was a brand new product manager and I was super excited about the new feature my team was working on. I knew that our users would love it. They’d go bonkers for it. I might even get a parade or medal of some…

At Creative Market, we have a strong test-first culture. Whether we’re thinking about a large-scale new feature or a minor UI tweak, we try to always test out our assumptions. Most often, this comes in the form of a simple AB test. I’ve run or been part of a bunch…

On the first day that I owned my Apple AirPods, they would connect to my Mac as soon as I put them in my ears. They don’t do that anymore. Now, I have to click on the bluetooth menu in the menu bar and connect them manually… each time I…

This week, I attended Mind the Product, a conference entirely dedicated to product management. Most of the people I typically meet don’t know what a product manager does (or they think I’m a project manager) so it was absolutely amazing to be surrounded by hundreds of people who understand the…

In October of 2015, I stepped into a product management position at Creative Market. In the last 12–14 months, we’ve completely restructured the team, fundamentally changed how work gets done, dramatically reduced project timelines, and integrated user feedback into our workflow at a much deeper level than ever before. …