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Every industry has influencers, who are experts in what they are doing. These people motivate us, inspire us and give an additional push to keep growing and improving. In this article, I would like to share with you leading Product Ownership Influencers, we believe you should definitely follow. They make a difference in the software development industry and in digital product creation.
Following these guys will help you stay up to date with product ownership best practices, tools, and methodologies, as well as innovative projects and many more! To be honest, it was hard to come up with this list as there are many other talented product owners, but I decided to include these ones because these people wrote books, introduced new concepts, made a difference in their companies and keep inspiring their followers on social media. They absolutely deserve to be mentioned!
Top Product Ownership Influencers
1.Roman Pichler
The first one on our list of product ownership influencers is Roman Pichler, who is a leading product management expert specialised in digital products. He has more than 15 years experience in teaching product managers and in helping companies build a successful digital product management organisation. Roman is the author of “Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age” and “Agile Product Management with Scrum”, and he writes a popular blog for product owners and has created several practical product management tools.
2. Marty Cagan
Second one on our list of product ownership influencers is Marty Cagan – a Silicon Valley-based product owner with more than 20 years of experience with industry leadering companies including eBay, AOL, Netscape Communications and Hewlett-Packard. Marty is the author of the book “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love” which presents techniques for creating winning products. He pursues his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing and speaking. Martin was a leader of Product and Design for eBay, where he was responsible for defining products and services for the company’s global e-commerce trading site. Marty now works with technology companies from across the globe on improving both innovation and velocity. He is widely recognized as the primary thought leader for technology product management, is the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG).
3. Rich Mironov
The third one on our list is Rich Mironov. He coaches product executives, product management teams and agile development organizations. He also parachutes into software companies as interim VP Products/CPO to fix company-level product/market/engineering/revenue issues. He is a tech executive and serial entrepreneur, Rich has been a Product Owner at six start-ups. Also, he has consulted to more than 100 tech companies. Rich is a relentless blogger, speaker, teacher and mentor on software strategy, product management, and aligning “what-we-can-build” with “what-markets-will-pay-for.” His long-running “Product Bytes” blog has slides and videos from public talks. Rich is a mentor in Silicon Valley product circles, founded the first Product Camp and chaired the first product owner/product manager tracks at the annual Agile Conference. Other than that, he has guest-lectured at many business schools (Haas, MIT/Sloan, Dublin Institute of Technology, Stanford, Santa Clara…), conferences, and corporate events.
4. Cliff Gilley
The fourth one on our list of product ownership influencers is Cliff Gilley, he has been a B2B product manager for over 10 years in a variety of industries, and is a passionate advocate for agile, effective Product Management. His blog as The Clever PM is devoted to providing tips, tricks, and hacks to make people better, more clever Product Managers.
5. Teresa Torres
And the fifth one on our list of product ownership influencers is Teresa Torres – a rising star in product management, and the author of the popular “Product Talk” blog. She’s got an eclectic background in cognitive science, UX design, startup management and organizational change – which gives her a unique perspective on product discovery. Teresa shares her deep & hard-won product wisdom on the long game of product management. Also, she helps teams gain valuable insights from customer interviews, run effective product experiments, and drive product outcomes that create value for their customers and their businesses. She teaches teams how to connect the dots between their research activities and their product decisions. Her recent clients include CarMax, Snagajob, Spotify, and Tesco. Before becoming a coach, Teresa spent the majority of her career leading product and design teams at early-stage internet companies. Most recently, Teresa was VP of Products at AfterCollege, an Internet startup that helps college students find their first job. She also held product and design roles at Become.com and HighWire Press. Teresa has a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University.
6. Martin Eriksson
Martin Eriksson has 20+ years experience building world-class online products in both corporate and start-up environments for global brands such as Monster, Financial Times, Huddle, and Covestor. He is the Founder of ProductTank, the Co-Founder and Curator of Mind the Product, and an Executive in Residence at leading private equity and venture capital fund EQT. He is also the author of best-seller Product Leadership, How Top Product Leaders Launch Great Products and Build Successful Teams (O’Reilly, 2017). Also, he is a keynote speaker at two largest product conferences, as well as a regular speaker at meetups and conferences around the world. Currently he advises and mentors companies on how to excel at product ownership.
7. Janna Bastow
Janna Bastow comes from a user-centric design background, she founded ProductCamp London in an effort to meet and learn from other product managers. As a product owner always looking for better tools, she co-founded ProdPad, product management software that helps you manage your roadmap and your product backlog. Janna also organizes ProductTank events around the world. She likes to inspire great product conversations by asking: “What problem are you trying to solve?”
8. Simon Cast
Simon Cast is a product owner and Co-founder of ProdPad – building great product management software, and of Mind the Product, a global community of product managers. He has 14 years experience in building products, ranging from satellite control software to online social capital tools. He co-founded ProductCamp London with Janna, and he now organizes ProductTank events and the Mind the Product Conference. He is focused on conception to launch of products; implementing product management processes including prioritisation methods and roadmaps; data driven product management; implementing analytics and comprehensive experimentation programs; mentoring & training people in product management and managing remote and out-sourced development teams. He is skilled in reviewing and improving UX, usability and user journeys for new or existing products.
9. Jeff Patton
Jeff Patton is the glue that connects good product management and strategy, lean user experience and agile delivery practices together. He has authored numerous articles, essays and, most recently, a book, “User Story Mapping.” He is an independent consultant with a unique teaching and speaking style, he uses hand-drawings and engaging story telling to share his passion for product design. He has designed and developed software for the past 20 years on a wide variety of projects from on-line aircraft parts ordering to electronic medical records. Jeff has focused on Agile approaches since working on an early Extreme Programming team. In particular, he has specialized in the application of user-centered design techniques to improve Agile requirements, planning, and products. Jeff has been an evangelist championing the inclusion of strong product design and user experience practice in Agile development. Today Jeff teaches and coaches a contemporary blend of practice that incorporates Lean and Lean Startup and Design Thinking all directed at helping organizations build digital products their customers love.
10. Mike Cohn
Mike is a Certified Scrum Trainer who was a co-founder of the Scrum Alliance and who served as it’s Chairman of the Board. He is the president of Mountain Goat Software and specializes in helping organizations develop high performing agile and Scrum teams. He has previously served as a technology executive in organizations of various sizes, from start ups to Fortune 40 companies. He has helped with the adoption of such processes at numerous companies, including Bioware, Capital One, Electronic Arts, Google, High Moon Studios, Intuit, JDA Software, Lexis Nexis, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Nielsen Media Research, Pearson, Phillips Electronics, Sabre, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Software, and Yahoo. Cohn is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development and Succeeding with Agile: Software Development using Scrum.
11. Steven Haines
Steven Haines is the founder of Sequent Learning Networks, a product management training and advisory firm, and The Business Acumen Institute, a training company devoted to business acumen excellence. Also, he is an author of several bestselling business books, and an energetic public speaker. His ideas and books continue to shape how leading companies organize to produce category defining products and highly performing business people.
12. Peter Economy
And the last but not least on our list of product ownership influencers is Peter Economy – a best-selling author of more than 100 books, including Managing for Dummies, Everything I Learned About Life I Learned in Dance Class, and User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product with total sales in excess of two million copies.
I hope you find this list of product ownership influencers useful! If you know other industry experts, who deserve to be mentioned here, feel free to add them in the comments section below!
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