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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Because so much of product management is about working with people, it’s important to take time to reflect on the kind of first impression you make to those people. In this latest entry for my series of 100 things I’ve learned about product management, I pass on my coaching advice to help you make the best possible impression every time.

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» Meetings are for information exchange, workshops are for solving problems

» With hybrid working, adopt a “remote first” mindset to avoid divisions in your team

» Poor workshop facilitation discourages future participation

» Reflection gives everyone a chance to contribute and listen

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» Charities’ strategy should focus on the future, not the annual planning cycle

» Break the habit of surveys and focus groups with user interviews

» The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated growth in digital fundraising

» Commodity services free teams from reactive and defensive development patterns  to truly innovate

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Engineering teams are choosing to work on projects that make them look busy, but which don’t actually move things forward. What they’re usually working on is a convoluted — and arguably doomed — attempt to replatform a legacy ‘cash cow’ product.

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» Learning is more valuable than being successful and not knowing why

» You can experiment with the content and layout of any web-based product with basic skills

» The success rate of experimentation is higher if there is no penalty for failing

» “If you have a good idea on a Monday and can design, test and learn by the Friday, then innovation explodes.”

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» More specific questions yield better user research findings

» User research works well when the team collaborates with a specialist user researcher

» Increased team user exposure hours correlates with more successful product improvements by the team

» The sooner you start user research, the greater impact it will have on your product

» A Kanban board helps the team to collate and track the questions to be researched