Product Leadership Beyond the Roadmap
Ship&Lead is a blog dedicated to the craft of product leadership—the decisions, frameworks, and mindsets that separate good product managers from great product leaders.
This isn’t about sprint planning or backlog grooming. It’s about the harder questions: How do you build products that matter? How do you lead teams through uncertainty? How do you navigate organizational politics without losing your integrity? And how do you know when it’s time to kill your most successful product?
About the Author
Aye Stephen is an accomplished Product Leader with over 20 years of experience in product and project management. Most recently, he served as Chief Product Officer (CPO) at one of Europe’s leading private equity-backed eCommerce ERP solutions.
Throughout his career, Aye has built and scaled high-performing product teams in agile environments, led complex organizational transformations, and navigated the tension between short-term delivery and long-term strategic vision.
Background
- MBA — Goethe Business School Frankfurt
- M.A. in American Studies / Media Science — Philipps University Marburg
- 20+ years in product management and leadership
- Expertise: Building product teams, agile transformation, organizational change management
Why Ship&Lead?
The name says it all.
Ship — because nothing else matters if you don’t deliver. Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. The best product leaders know that shipping is not the end of the process; it’s where learning begins.
Lead — because product management is a leadership discipline, not a project coordination role. You lead through influence, not authority. You lead by making hard decisions, not by avoiding them. You lead by taking responsibility for outcomes, not just outputs.
The ampersand (&) is intentional. Shipping without leadership is chaos. Leadership without shipping is theater. The best product leaders do both.
What You’ll Find Here
Ship&Lead explores the intersection of product strategy, executive leadership, and organizational reality:
- Strategic Thinking — Frameworks for making better product decisions under uncertainty
- Leadership Lessons — What separates product managers from product leaders
- Case Studies — Deep dives into companies that got it right (and wrong)
- Practical Wisdom — Hard-earned insights from two decades in the trenches
No fluff. No recycled LinkedIn posts. Just honest thinking about what it takes to build products that matter—and lead teams that deliver.
Connect
Have a question, feedback, or topic you’d like me to explore?
Reach out via LinkedIn or use the contact form below.
Ship&Lead — Because roadmaps don’t ship products. Leaders do.