This week I've been thinking about quitting. I'm really good at it. I've left 3 jobs because of bad product culture. I wrote about one on LinkedIn a few months ago. It was that career experience that led me to the concept of product culture, and ultimately to ProductCulture.org and this nano-letter.
The product culture movement starts here. This group of passionate product people has inspired me and I need your help to codify our values, as in a Product Culture Manifesto. I think if we get this right we can help change the world.
ONE THING on PM as Quarterback
"I don't like when people say that the product manager is the CEO of the product. To me, it's more like the quarterback. The quarterback sometimes has to call the plays himself, but also will take plays from the offensive coordinator or the head coach on the sidelines, right?" That's from my friend Dan Lack, who has been a CEO and a VP PM. We can go further: Quarterbacks are in charge on the field, but they operate within the overall team strategy developed by the owner and the head coach.
Do you like this analogy?
Read moreONE THING on Smart People who Hate Roadmaps
David Cancel, CEO of Drift, hates roadmaps. He says, "Either I'm going to disappoint you by giving you exactly what we thought six months ahead of time was the best solution when it's not, or by changing course and having lied to you."
Read moreONE THING on MVP Done Right
I’m a big believer in the Minimum Viable Product concept. Lots of people misunderstand it. MVP is not "What's the least we can get away with?" or "The crappiest-version that we can possibly put out."
Instead, MVP is "What is the smallest amount of work that we can do to validate a hypothesis and verify our assumptions about our business plan."...
ONE THING on The Art of Why
I make it a policy never to act on a customer request without making sure I understand why they want it. What problem are they trying to solve? What value do they expect to derive from this change or addition (or subtraction)?
Sometimes you find, if you understand the few underlying problems, you can come up with a single solution that solves the needs of many customers at once....
ONE THING on What a Roadmap Is (and Isn't)
When Product Managers present a roadmap, people often conclude that it is an absolute commitment. For some reason they assume that the learning process stops when the roadmap begins. Weird but true. I've seen this again and again in multiple companies.
Read moreONE THING on Leadership vs. Management
This week I've been thinking about the differences between product and project management. Friends? Enemies? Frenemies? I've just written a 10-page report for O'Reilly on the subject, but here's one key point:
Read moreONE THING on Digital Transformation
This week I'm thinking about how McKinsey's findings on the obstacles to digital transformation apply to product. Here's the money quote:
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