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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» Celsys are going to start charging for software updates to their popular Clip Studio Paint product

» The way Celsys communicated this to their users caused outrage — some of which was justified

» Fog Creek found themselves trying to monetise their viral product Trello, which it had promised would be free forever

» Fog Creek had first mover advantage on an easily copied product, which it exploited by a timely sale to Atlassian

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» In solving their own internal scaling problem, Amazon inadvertently created the building blocks for the AWS platform

» Stripe’s founders didn’t shy away from tackling an unattractively difficult problem

» Platforms connect different sides of a market, even if they have dramatically different needs and capabilities

» Twilio’s founder prioritised the developers who’d implement his API, not the managers who’d pay for it

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» Every other team is allowed to be uncertain about the future — so should product

» There are different types of question for strategy, opportunities and interventions

» Avoid investments that are neither defense nor offense

» What people say and how they really feel can often vary

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» Your users must value your product more than it would cost them to switch

» An end-of-life policy sets out the process you will use to retire products for customers

» Think about your users and customers’ technical and economic issues first

» Retiring a product gracefully means making a plan

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» People more easily accept they’re not seeing the whole picture than being told they’re wrong

» Don’t make people feel bad about their beliefs — be kind and connect with them

» Research shows that we interpret words like “we believe” with differing confidence levels

» There is often a lack of discipline when it comes to talking about uncertainty

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» Use empathy to appreciate the context, needs and pain points of your stakeholders

» Understanding people’s social style helps you influence stakeholders more effectively

» You can use different modes of persuasion to craft a more compelling argument

» Picking the right time to make your point can amplify your persuasiveness