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Mark Ovaska
Mark Ovaska

15 Followers

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Jun 22, 2021

Strategy at a Human Scale

Focus on manageable iterations, not stakeholder proclivities. — Product Owners are often leading discussions around strategy, championing their development. Navigating these conversations can be tricky with many stakeholders and personalities. Harder still, Product Owners must reconcile various approaches — often in real-time — during strategy meetings. I’ve noticed there are two predominant voices during strategy development; the Visionary…

Product Management

2 min read

Strategy at a Human Scale
Strategy at a Human Scale
Product Management

2 min read


May 6, 2021

Don’t Help Your Users, Keep Them

Are you dying to help customers? — The best gift a great product can give to its customers is surviving long enough to continue serving them. There is never enough time and always far too many great ideas when building a product. Good teams are able to use heuristics or basic reasoning to weed out unworthy features…

UX

2 min read

Don’t Help Your Users, Keep Them
Don’t Help Your Users, Keep Them
UX

2 min read


Apr 29, 2021

Reducing Team Drift

Use informal celebrations to keep your team focused. — Teams don’t always work on the right thing at the right time. If feature X would benefit customers but the team is working on Z, they are working on the wrong thing. I call this “team drift.” (I use this term instead of “scope creep” which implies helplessness — teams…

Entrepreneurship

2 min read

Reducing Team Drift
Reducing Team Drift
Entrepreneurship

2 min read


Jul 24, 2020

A Turning Point for Change

Change always happens mid-stream but where does it start? The low point for me as a teen drummer arrived early on when I prematurely joined a band. One night on stage I started horribly wrong. The band leader quickly realized the situation was unrecoverable and simply turned around and yelled…

Entrepreneurship

4 min read

A Turning Point for Change
A Turning Point for Change
Entrepreneurship

4 min read


Mar 5, 2020

Don’t Database Your Product

Within your team, there is an epic struggle for mindshare between the two big players in your Product’s world; engineers and users. And they see the world very differently. Achieving mutual respect is important. One bellwether for knowing who’s winning the struggle is how data is being displayed. …

Product

2 min read

Don’t Data Your Product
Don’t Data Your Product
Product

2 min read


Aug 7, 2018

Incredibly Boring Success

Groundbreaking inventions are super boring. — I was lying on my back watching the sky over the abandoned factories of Rochester, NY. A friend and I had decided to spend a week brainstorming ideas that would transform the world and make us rich. No client work, only brainstorming — full time… for a week. …

Entrepreneurship

2 min read

Success is Boring
Success is Boring
Entrepreneurship

2 min read


Jul 17, 2018

5 Reasons I’ll Never Read Again

The broken promise of listicles — Ever notice the ubiquity of list-driven how-to articles? So-called listicles? I have and they’re wrong. Every last one of them. When I was young and starting my first business John C. Maxwell rocked my world with his savvy wisdom. He and Steven Covey helped ignite this whole sub-lit firestorm with…

Writing

3 min read

5 Reasons I'll Never Read Again
5 Reasons I'll Never Read Again
Writing

3 min read


Jul 16, 2018

Lighthouse Project Management

Blind spots are the cause of every project train wreck. — The project was careening towards a cliff. The technical debt was accumulating, the money was running out and the client was making larger and more distracting changes. At the same time the research and background was inscrutable. The specifications were detailed and vouched for. Expectations were set and reenforced with…

Project Management

6 min read

Lighthouse Project Management
Lighthouse Project Management
Project Management

6 min read


Jun 22, 2018

Five Days At Standing Rock

The sprawling camp that delayed a transcontinental pipeline for months drew people from around the country to stand up to the government. — DECEMBER 19, 2016 — Near Bismarck, ND: “Water is Life” is the breaking chant of Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. It’s part of the daily water ceremony at the Cannonball River. It’s said during protest. It’s an appropriate response of agreement. …

Environment

3 min read

Five Days At Standing Rock
Five Days At Standing Rock
Environment

3 min read


Jan 11, 2018

Surviving a Certified Professional Assassin

If there were such a thing as a business horror movie it’d probably start calm and cheery as 2014 did for me and my small business. There was money, great clients and everyone was getting along. Conversations tended to focus on our personal lives and the wonderful projects we were…

Taxes

5 min read

Surviving a Certified Professional Assassin
Surviving a Certified Professional Assassin
Taxes

5 min read

Mark Ovaska

Mark Ovaska

15 Followers

Serial entrepreneur and photojournalist. Husband, father, global citizen.

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