Off the back of his recent article for Mind The Product, Liam Smith interviewed me about my experiences in freelance product management.
I started as a freelance product manager in 2012 when I founded Product People Limited, and had been blogging about product management for a couple of years before that. (You can read my first ever blog post if you like.)
» Accept that some customers will never migrate to your new platform
» Products do not fail in vain if you learn something valuable in the process
» In 1979 Intel realigned its 2000-strong company around a new set of objectives in just 2 weeks
» Balancing opportunity with strategy in the midst of competing distractions is hard
» You wouldn’t let genAI write your product strategy without checking it, right?
» Product strategy discovery focuses on the problem space
Coding in the open benefits public sector organisations and can yield a strategic advantage to commercial organisations also. I explore how and why.
» Strategy is a coherent set of choices about what we’re going to do to achieve our vision
» Negotiating estimates ultimately leads to disappointment — it will still take as long as it was going to
» The necessary conditions for any behaviour to be enacted include capability, opportunity, and motivation
» Product ops is an enabling function that streamlines the logistics of product management
» It is particularly valuable in larger organisations with fragmented product practices
» Product ops is just as focused on context as product management is
As a freelance product manager, think about two things: how you can deliver value as quickly as possible, and how to ensure you do at least the one main thing they brought you in to do.
» Companies hire freelancers because they need to address a specific issue or are not ready to commit to a full-time hire
» Excel by being a problem-solver — pay close attention to potential clients’ challenges
» Don’t apologise to your client for your (hopefully reasonable) day rate
» A pursuit of job stability can easily translate into an unproductive ‘inertia’ instead
» Self-sealing arguments are no-win situations: every defence you make is co-opted the by other party as evidence you’re wrong
I’m chatting with Voxgig’s Richard Rodger about common challenges in product management and DevRel:
» Why learning by soundbite gives a superficial understanding of the craft
» Why we’re finding it hard to communicate value to our bosses
+ more :-)
