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.
A recent tweet by John Cutler provoked some interesting reactions. It got me thinking about whether there are underlying principles of product management that apply in all contexts.
When companies set out to redesign a product or service, the results can sometimes be underwhelming. Instead of delivering service transformation, the team recommends only minor efficiency tweaks. If this has been happening to you, there can be many underlying causes. I’ve identified a few common problems and what you can you do about them.
“I’m 4 weeks into a new [product manager] job, having moved states for it, and I’ve recently become a parent for the first time. Currently, I am feeling overwhelmed.”
“I have a PM in my team who I regularly find digging into areas of the business that are unrelated to the initiatives they’re responsible for. [As a result,] they also have a track record of being extremely slow to bring anything to market.”
Even if your product’s achieved product-market fit, you’re wrong if you think you never need to worry about it again.
Imagine you’ve just been told that you’ll be a member of the team responsible for the first manned mission to Mars.
Now imagine someone asks you how much the mission’s going to cost. The whole thing. There and back. By close of business on Thursday.
I’m often involved in the interviewing and hiring process, so I’d like to share with you my product leader’s guide to interviewing product managers.
“Should the product manager have some level or perhaps a great deal of responsibility for the profitability of the product? Should they understand things like the unit economics, that sort of thing?”
Starting a new product manager job can be daunting, particularly if you don’t change jobs very often. I work freelance, so I find myself in a new organisation roughly every 3-6 months. Let me share with you my tips for your first few months in a new role.
