PRODUCTHEAD: Is your subscription really a rental?
» 10 tactics for subscription value creation
» 10 tactics for reducing subscription churn
» When switching to a subscription model, initially costs will go up and revenue will decrease
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: People problems and solutions
» A prototype expresses a product concept far better and quicker than a product requirements document (PRD)
» People good at doing a thing themselves are not always good at building a system to do it
» Work is craft: theoretical knowledge and practical experience combined
Navigating your product management career
Ross Webb and I have been chatting about product management career progression.
We cover topics including:
» Thinking of visibility as a strategic competency, not self-promotion
» Controlling your narrative through regular updates
and more!
PRODUCTHEAD: What to consider when implementing AI in your product
» Implementing AI means assessing user needs and your data sources
» AI technologies run the risk of creating harm — how are you planning for that?
» LLMs and genAI open up new vectors for novel attacks that need to be countered
PRODUCTHEAD: Platform product management
» Platform product management dials everything up to 11
» A successful platform is continually evolving in line with user needs and emerging tech
» Platform teams must recognise and respect the varying needs of their community of users
PRODUCTHEAD: Where does the time go?
» On a typical dev project, the reality is around 2-3x the original estimate
» Trying to go faster when you’re already moving quickly has limited effect for a lot of effort
Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe aka Salt Bae sprinking AI on stuff (Screengrab from https://www.instagram.com/p/BO9dI9ujWNI/ )
94: New technology alone is not the answer
New technology is not going to suddenly make all the challenges facing an organisation disappear overnight. Why? Because more often than not, those challenges are social not technological. Technology alone rarely solves ‘people problems’.
PRODUCTHEAD: Product-led sales / product value / context & intent
» Switching to a product-led sales movement should not be a hard pivot but a blended transition
» The product must demonstrate its own value regardless of whether sales people are involved
» Intent adds nuance to the classic “strategic, execution, and planning” cascade
PRODUCTHEAD: The right kind of conflict
» Conflict in product management is unavoidable
» Some conflict is actually desirable and healthy
» You can learn to assess and manage conflicts more constructively
PRODUCTHEAD: New tech = new responsibilities
» The negative effects of social media algorithms were an early warning for the consequences of generative AI
» As product managers, we have a duty of care to our users
» The unpredictability of genAI poses varying risks of harm to users depending on the context
