PRODUCTHEAD: Evals are just another rabbit hole
» Evals are your way to check your AI is behaving
» Writing evals is a task a PM can do, but shouldn’t
» With AI, “done” becomes a calibration about an acceptable variance in output and behaviour
Category: PRODUCTHEAD – Product management newsletter
PRODUCTHEAD is my free curated newsletter of the best articles, videos and podcasts from product leaders and commentators all over the world. All neatly packaged up in a weekly email delivery for your reading, viewing and listening pleasure. Curated by Jock Busuttil (jockbusuttil.com).
PRODUCTHEAD: Theory versus practice
» ‘Good’ product practice is boring – good and useful progress without drama
» So you can build your own digital services. What’s next?
» Corporate values can be more revealing than might appear
» There’s a tension between what can do and what you should be doing
PRODUCTHEAD: Understanding our defaults
» We have 4 behavioural defaults: emotion, ego, social and inertia
PRODUCTHEAD: To build or not to build?
» AI means product people should focus more on discovery and go-to-market
» AI opens the door for product people to become product builders
(A range of views this week on PRODUCTHEAD)
PRODUCTHEAD: The SaaSpocalypse ends not with a bang, but a whimper
» The SaaSpocalypse won’t kill off vendors, but they will have to change their pricing strategy
» There is an opportunity to exploit higher usage driven by AI agents and increased automation
PRODUCTHEAD: Organisational norms, behaviours and business models
» Open and sustainable dialogue across roles leads to greater organisation coherence
» An organisation’s business model solidifies over time
» A new venture with a different model should ideally be pursued separately to the main org
PRODUCTHEAD: Managing up and down
» Understand the needs of your audience to be more influential
» Go-to-market execs won’t hear you unless you speak in currency symbols
» Your manager can’t advocate for you if you don’t brief them
PRODUCTHEAD: Moats and bridges
» When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
» Product, market, model and channel must all fit together to be successful
PRODUCTHEAD: AI usage and the ‘bottleneck’
» In complex human systems the constraint is often policy, mindset, or coordination, not a single bottleneck
» Being the “human in the loop” means having genuine authority, time to think, and understanding the bigger picture well enough to question the system
PRODUCTHEAD: Who doesn’t love a good manifesto?
» AI is forcing us to adapt how we work in the face of greater information flow
» However, this doesn’t mean we abandon the fundamental guiding principles of our discipline
