» 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”
» 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
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
» Context helps to make a service good as opposed to simply existing
» By not consciously designing our services, we instead force our users to link actions together
» Outcomes for users are core user needs that a service helps them to meet
» A starting point can be to ask different teams what ‘good’ looks like to them
» Rather than focusing on engineering team productivity, examine the causes of their low / negative value work
» When asked for development estimates, ask why they need the information and what they’ll do with the answer
» Different development tasks need varying amounts of user story detail
» Treat your developers with the same thoughtfulness as your users
» Empowered teams can only succeed if the leadership team is on board
» Leaders can’t scale or have all the answers; empowered teams stand a better chance
» Leadership needs to be open and transparent when issuing a “must-do” edict to an empowered team
» Product leadership is continually striving for coherence of approach and clarity of purpose
Getting your first job as a product manager can seem impossible. Thankfully it’s not! I share my advice on how to break into a career in product management.
» Motivation comes from making progress in meaningful work
» A mission-focused team tackling poorly understood problems may appear unproductive to outsiders
» It is everyone’s responsibility to act upon negative behaviour / thinking, but without assigning blame
» Even in the most controversial negotiations, the other party is just like you and aims to walk away happy
» Success at every life cycle stage hinges on the same challenge: being able to solve problems for your users
» Early on, focus on learning about your users and their context and the constraints that affect your problem
» Maturity is the most difficult stage for a product, so you have to make the absolute best out of what you have
» In product management, “the basics never change, it’s the more advanced stuff that changes”
» Oft-cited company frameworks such as the Spotify model were just a moment in time — everything moves on
» When all is changing around you, be an anchor of stability and trust for your team
