Author: Jock Busuttil

Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

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» Failure to adapt and iterate on team structures and processes will result in your strongest product people leaving

» Accepting that an employee might thrive in another environment is accepting that you (as their manager) could have done a better job

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» Shape Up is a collection of product development techniques that happen to work for Basecamp

» Just because they work in Basecamp’s context doesn’t mean they’ll work for yours

» OMG so problematic

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» If context is continually changing, aim for incremental progress and let go of perfectionism

» Balance the need for action with the drive to understand both the problem and your biases

» Change is like a sledge stuck in the ice: hard to get moving, but easier to keep moving once freed

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» Software is never ‘done’ even if you choose to ignore it for a while

» A ‘training wheels’ framework to get a team started should be treated as a throwaway experiment

» Clarity is not the same as certainty, although it helps you manage the uncertainty

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» When negotiating, don’t pitch, listen

» To minimise residual influence, negotiate each point independently

» When trust is low, consider making a concession contingent on the other party reciprocating

» Conceding because you don’t want to upset the other party is a losing scenario

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» Speak the language of C-level by focusing on revenue, customer benefits, and financials

» Without understanding, there can be no empathy

» Product managers need to be able to communicate with a wide range of people using different languages

» The worst product managers only speak in the language of product management

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» Good product managers amplify the ability of an organisation to generate value

» Successful companies have figured out how to align quality, customer value, and sustainable velocity

» With no formal entry requirements, many people have piled in to product management with little care for the craft

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» Be involved and interested, but not on the critical path

» Talk about the ideas you threw away, in commercial language

» Founders are rejecting the generic advice to delegate everything — this evolves the product manager role