With 2022 already here and off to a great start, we are excited to continue to innovate how product-centric companies strategize, prioritize, build and deliver products to accelerate outcomes. But, we also know it’s important to take a moment to reflect on all the things that we achieved last year. One of the best things to come out of 2021 has been our ever-growing community.
We knew that, especially with fewer in-person interactions, every touch with our community should be a meaningful one. That’s why we focused our content on connecting. What did our product professionals want to hear about? How can we bring more to the conversation? With those questions in mind, we shared content to resonate with our community’s interests and hopefully push the discussion on product best practices.
From our end-of-the-year reflections, we pulled together our most popular content of 2021. Take a look below:
Our Top Product Content and Resources From 2021
This year we tackled the most effective product practices of 2021. Some of the fan-favorite topics we discussed were product operations, making the switch from product management to product portfolio management, and transitioning from feature factories to outcome-focused organizations.
Most-Read Blog Posts
1. A Step-By-Step Guide to Quarterly Product Planning
This year’s most-read blog breaks down quarterly product planning for outcome-focused teams. The 4-step guide lays out how to easily build an effective plan that allocates responsively and enables teams to make the best prioritization decisions.
2. Rock, Pebble, and Sand Product and Portfolio Management
Readers were interested to see why the rock, pebble, sand approach is an effective prioritization method across products and portfolios. The article breaks down how this technique helps teams align the company and achieve product OKRs.
3. The Role of Product Operations – Enabling an Outcome Focused Product Organization
Over the last few years, the product operations role exploded. As one of the hottest topics of 2021, readers wanted to know what Product Operations is, what product ops does, and where the function belongs in a product organization.
4. How to Connect OKRs with Product Initiatives and Roadmaps
OKRs are a staple of good product management, but how do you do great product management? It’s all about aligning customer needs and product initiatives towards those goals. We take you through using OKRs to build outcome-focused roadmaps in 5 steps.
5. How to Choose Between a Roadmap vs. Product Portfolio (PPM) Tool
Your process is only as good as your tools. Everybody loves a good tool, but how do you choose one? We lay out that exact thought process in this blog where we describe the differences between roadmap and PPM tools and what each tool can offer.
Most Popular Webinars
There were some important conversations to be had this year. Covid may have put a halt to everyday social interactions, but it didn’t stop us from having some amazing talks with inspiring product leaders. Across 13 webinars, Becky Flint (CEO & Founder, Dragonboat) tackled all sorts of conversations in 2021.
Becky met with product experts to discuss everything from how to masterfully run quarterly planning to transitioning from product management into portfolio management to avoiding product portfolio risks.
Here’s a look back at our most popular webinars of 2021:
1. Fireside Chat with Product Operations Professionals
In our most-watched webinar of 2021, Becky teamed up with Jackie Orlando (Dir of Prod Ops, Tealium) and Diana Soler (Sr Prod Ops Manager, AppDirect) to tackle the question, what is product operations? And how do you scale and build out the function?
“As companies scale, dependencies are going to happen. Nothing meaningful can be built by one team. And that’s actually a good thing, right? The whole concept of having shared services means that you will have to thread together differences. But it’s definitely harder because everyone has a different perspective and individual focus.
That’s why we have product ops. So you can proactively drive this conversation. Sometimes people are very attached to their product or attached to their customers. That’s a great thing. But we need a neutral party to bring people another level higher so we can make decisions across the board. And then if you have data, tools, and templates to enable visibility, it will make the conversation even better.”
Becky Flint
Thanks to popular demand, in 2022, we’re keeping our Product Operations Fireside Chats going, don’t miss our next webinar: Kickstarting Product Operations Success in 2022 with Becky Flint (CEO & Founder, Dragonboat), Hugo Froes (Prod Ops Lead, OLX Motors Europe), and Chris Butler (Global Head of Prod Ops, Cognizant).
2. 2022 Strategic Planning for Outcome Focused Teams
Product leaders flocked to this webinar to hear Becky and Perry Steinberg (CPO, AbacusNext), discuss how to best run 2022 strategic planning to align OKRs, strategies, and initiatives while avoiding the common pitfalls in the process.
“One of the most important things to focus on is resource allocation. As we think about new markets, what percent of our dollars should go to which key effort? We want alignment around that from an executive perspective. We want to understand where we’re trying to go. And what percentage of our effort is going just to keep the lights on.
Models give an understanding of where we’re spending our dollars today. That then allows us to make adjustments and change team trajectory to get into our target allocation. And to do that, we need to have an understanding of exactly where we’re at today for a good strategic alignment and planning conversation.”
Perry Steinberg
3. Leading Product in a Fast-Moving Scaleup
This webinar saw Becky and Sridhar Nagarajan, (VP of Product, Chatmeter) sharing insights from their combined 30+ years of experience building and scaling product teams across companies of all sizes and industries. They discussed the strategic vision, tactical execution required for building an effective product team.
“Figuring out your process doesn’t have to be heavy. Thankfully, today, there are tools now that will help you through this process. Dragonboat is a good example of a tool that makes this process less burdensome. We do very high-level planning annually to figure out what to focus on, then quarterly we dive into what we need to actually build. That includes assigning the work to the pods and teams and figuring out when these teams need to work together. That way we build into the planning that collaborativeness.”
Sridhar Nagarajan
As we look back on 2021, we want to give a special shoutout and recognition to our customers and community.
We have you to thank for such an amazing 2021. Be on the lookout for more exciting blogs, events, and Dragonboat features coming in 2022 to help you supercharge product and accelerate outcomes. We hope to continue to be a useful resource for the product community.
Is there a blog or webinar you especially loved or more content you’d like to see? Tweet us! @dragonboat_io
