Derek Ferguson

AMA: GitLab Group Manager, Product, Derek Ferguson on Product Development Process

December 3 @ 10:00AM PT
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Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
In my experience, the shape of the team is more or less the same as a traditional product team. All of the same functions need to be accounted for. There are a few additi...
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Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
As a leader, my scope stretches further up and further out than the scope of the PMs on my team. They own the customer problems and product outcomes within their domains....
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How do you measure the performance of the product team, considering only product managers, group product managers and product head?
Some companies go through challenges such as excessive bugs, refactoring, in many cases we have the company pursuing the delivery of short-term projects and sometimes the product team is the driver. Do you believe it is possible to demand performance from a product team based on individual delivery?
Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
Personally, I don’t measure PM performance by individual feature delivery. That’s not the PM’s job. Tying a PM’s performance and value to delivery creates all the wrong i...
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551 Views
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Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
That’s a great question. I’ve seen a lot of people and companies building AI features simply to have AI features and say they are “AI powered”. That’s a losing strategy. ...
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346 Views
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Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
In my experience, estimating effort is less about getting to a magically precise number and more about creating a shared understanding of what we’re actually building and...
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338 Views
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Derek Ferguson
GitLab Group Product Manager4mo
As I’ve moved into managing Product Managers, I personally don’t interact with the EMs, Designers, and Engineers that much any more. My direct counterparts are Senior EMs...
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527 Views
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