How can I keep track of all these product metrics?
“Juggling all our metric tracking has become increasingly overwhelming.
“How do other teams effectively prioritize and process this information?”
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.
PRODUCTHEAD: The most popular of 2023
» Most read: Choose your own adventure — discussing better product roadmaps
» Most clicked: How to sharpen up your vision and strategy — a practical set of prompts and worked examples
PRODUCTHEAD: “Hello computer!” – the lure of conversational programming
» Conversational programming changes the nature of the developer job, but doesn’t do away with it
» Describing needs and context is more valuable than giving instructions or requirements
PRODUCTHEAD: Pragmatism is (im)perfectly fine
» There are 3 reasons why a discovery should end:
1. It is purely performative
2. Ignored / unknown context
3. Unconnected to value
» Everything on your product roadmap should have lots of context that is easy to find
PRODUCTHEAD: On OpenAI’s ideological conflict
» By reinstating Sam Altman, OpenAI has chosen financial success over its altruistic principles
» When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, the board believed he wasn’t ready to be CEO
» Google was quick to fire ethicist Timnit Gebru when she challenged its lucrative search advertising business
PRODUCTHEAD: Should you do custom features for paying clients?
» Product models are more scalable and have higher investor valuations than service models, but can be more difficult to implement and require a longer sales cycle
» If you find your team is biasing towards delivering custom features (= output), refocus on discovery and problem solving instead (= outcomes)
PRODUCTHEAD: Don’t wait. Just find out.
» When designing an experiment to test a hypothesis, ask how might it fail, and what you need to find out
» Luck and uncertainty mean that even good decisions can have a bad outcome (and vice versa)
» Framing our beliefs with a confidence percentage makes us more willing to accept contradictory evidence
PRODUCTHEAD: AI is word of the year
» Anyone can access generative AI, so simply using it is not a competitive advantage
» SEO has long sought to game search engine rankings; AI provides a new tool for doing so
» LLMs trained on AI output become increasingly detached from reality: “model collapse”
PRODUCTHEAD: How product teams can measure discovery
» We can and should measure discovery activity and its impact on the team and users
» Discovery cycle time and cadence are critical to adopting a continuous mindset
» Avoid vanity quantity metrics such as number of research activities; measure quality instead
PRODUCTHEAD: Sunsetting a product or feature
When sunsetting a product or feature:
» Explain why honestly and be transparent about how it will impact your users
» Be understanding as they may be disappointed or frustrated by the change
» Be responsive and supportive by answering your users’ questions and helping them with the transition
» If possible, offer your users alternative features or solutions
