The best trend in #prodmgmt right now: growing acknowledgement that the books, threads, and blog posts are idealized versions of the craft; and it's extremely rare to be in a position to put it into practice.

Popping up from lurking for a long while to say I'm on the new thing. Same user name.

The end of this took me out. #prodmgmt

I love a good, fast feedback loop but getting there doesn't just mean internal change. Your customers / users have to buy into it too and in some industries, that's a harder task than you'd think.

This was such a refreshing conversation between @lennysan and @joshm. I hope these kinds of things take root across the industry: - move away from being dominated by metrics - approach to corporate values that, dare I say, are more human - focus on UX https://t.co/KJjHzK27HS

I don't understand how it took this long for this thinking to take hold. You just need to look at pets to know this!

Just thinking about the highlighted part... My car has automatic windshield wipers and they go off in broad daylight if the sun hits the car just right. A minor annoyance for me, but a real danger if the entire car was controlled by that. Source: https://t.co/3LPGw1Hq6j

"You would be hard-pressed to find another parasite that has so thoroughly wrecked the body and environment of its host, all while trying to convince the host that it is deserving of praise and further accommodation."

Taps the homemade sign I made: "this is for outsiders; not product builders" They see it and immediately understand the idea: make something small, put it in the hands of users, and go from there. It's relatable and doesn't use jargon.

Shameful

Everytime I see a post with something like "ensure engineering team can deliver within specification, on time, and within budget", I think they're willfully unaware how product building works.

It's going to be great when every product is building features that cater to an unhinged AI. I for one can't wait. Seriously, product teams: go talk to real people! You'll get way more mileage out of it than figuring out how to avoid it.

Does it really need spelling out?

Who would have guessed that the same people who build cults of personality are the same ones that throw sycophants under the bus when they're no longer useful to them?!

A surprising source for discovering how cohesive your product is: writing user documentation. Would people a change in approach midway through developing a capability? Does this screen behave like similar ones? Is the user flow smooth? All revealed when you try to explain it.

Sure: you've got PRDs, wireframes, Jira tickets, etc... But the most overlooked (and perhaps most important) document is one that covers how a decision was made and everything that went into it.

This is why I couldn't care less about arguments for no backlogs. It's fine if you have one; just don't treat it as a "committed to build" list.

Each role has jargon that's completely baffling to those not in it. Product, design, engineering, sales, marketing, etc... All with their own language. If we want people to understand and have empathy for how we work, we'd do well to demystify it by using plain language.

Instead, let's encourage "bias to informed action". Meaning: We talked to people, saw some behaviors, and formed a hypothesis around it. The action is to see if our thinking pans out. 2/2

"Bias to action" is one of those pithy sayings that leads to bad outcomes when taken at face value. On its own, it encourages throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. 1/2

Just naked narcissism in these screenshots. The whole story is a lesson in bad product management: - no strategy - killed the infrastructure, resulting in constant firefighting that paralyzed their ability to work on new capabilities - catering to individual users