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Railsware Blog

on product management, engineering, design, culture and many more...

5 Non-Obvious Skills Product Managers Should Master

Over the years, I’ve read countless articles about essential skills for product managers. They all mention the usual suspects: strong communication skills, leadership ability, decision-making, and so on. Basically, the same skills we’ve been developing since childhood or college. But what about the stuff they hardly taught us in school? …

How We Hire QA Engineers For Coupler.io

Every time we open a QA Engineer vacancy at Railsware, we receive a huge influx of applications. Unfortunately, we can’t hire every talented QA who comes our way, but our well-structured hiring process helps us find the best fit for our teams. We’re excited to shed some light on how …

How to Give Product Demos That Win Customers

Words can’t always convey the true value of your product. Sometimes, a potential customer needs more than a video or some website copy to understand how they can benefit from your solution. And this is what makes a product demo a powerful tool in your sales and marketing arsenal. For …

6 Common Pitfalls Product Managers Should Avoid

Every product manager’s career journey is marked by trial and error; especially the early years. Making mistakes is natural – even expected. Sometimes, poor boundaries, rushed decision-making, and lack of communciation are the root causes of our mistakes. But what if you could avoid some of these pitfalls entirely? With …

How to Prioritize with the RICE Framework

Prioritization in product development is a tricky business. How do you define prioritization criteria, navigate differences in stakeholder opinions, and prevent personal bias from skewing your estimates? Truthfully, there’s no perfect formula, but frameworks – like the RICE scoring model – can help make the whole process less confusing. What …

Guide to Rapid Prototyping

Research from McKinsey shows that around 50% of product launches fail to hit business targets. The major causes? Poor strategic planning, which includes a lack of risk assessment in early product development. At Railsware, we’ve spent years fine-tuning our development process to avoid these pitfalls. Rapid prototyping is one of …

Product Features Explained

Conceptualizing, building, and implementing new features is a core aspect of a product manager’s job. But striking a balance between feature quantity and product quality is difficult, even when product managers have a clear vision and strategy for the product. Stakeholder expectations, customer demands, and differences of opinion within the …

A Week in the Life of a Railsware Product Lead

The definition of a product manager’s role can vary from company to company, or even team to team. It all comes down to factors like the industry, the specific niche, team size, and where the product is in its life cycle. Here at Railsware, we wanted to give our perspective …

Best Product Management Podcasts

There are thousands of business and tech podcasts out there, all vying for your time and attention. Without reading dozens of different articles – all with the same suggestions, give or take – how do you narrow down that list to a reasonable five/six picks? And avoid listening to the …

Product Management for Startups

So you’ve just landed a job as a product manager at a startup. Now what? Maybe you’re unsure about the extent of your responsibilites, or how to structure the product decision-making process. Maybe you’ve never worked with such a small team before, and don’t know what’s expected from you as …

Do You Need a Public Roadmap For Your Product?

In an effort to build transparency, boost engagement, and keep investors in the loop, many startups have opted to release public product roadmaps. But are they actually useful? What tangible benefits do they bring, and what are the risks? If you’re unsure about whether a public roadmap is a good …

Real-Life Cases of JTBD Framework

The Jobs to Be Done framework is a powerful tool for understanding the motivations and challenges of customers. It lets us dive much deeper into the context behind customer decisions than personas or user stories do. But to help you get the most out of the framework, we need to …

Idea Screening for New Product Development

Recent CB Insights startup post-mortem data shows that the second biggest reason why startups fail is due to ‘no market need.’ It’s fair to say that many of those cases could have been avoided with proper research prior to product development. So, here we’ll discuss what’s involved in the product …

Product Value Explained

Product value is the magic that turns interested prospects into loyal customers. Startups that infuse value into their products have a better chance of attracting and keeping customers, building a strong brand reputation, and experiencing rapid growth. But how is the value of a product determined? And how can you …

Backlog Refinement Without BS

A disorganized, overcrowded backlog can derail even the most dedicated product team. In this article, we’ll explain why, and what you can do about it. We’ll also share advice on best practices, as well as who to invite to backlog refinement sessions, how to prepare, and how to effectively prioritize …

How to Build Products Based on Data

Being data-driven in product development isn’t just an option anymore – it’s a hard requirement for success. Without data, you’re essentially making decisions in the dark, relying on guesswork and assumptions. And with the stakes so high, you can’t afford to take countless chances in the hopes that your efforts …

Guide to B2B SaaS Pricing

Before pricing your B2B SaaS you need to understand two concepts: pricing models, and pricing strategies. A pricing model defines the way you charge your customers: monthly or annually, per user, or per feature, and whether you have pricing tiers or not. On the other hand, pricing strategy is the …