PRODUCTHEAD: People problems and solutions
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
punchdrunk lovesick prodalong #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
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
hello
The open secret of product management is that most of the time you’re actually managing people, not products. So this week I have four articles describing different people problems and how each author set about solving them.
Mihika Kapoor tells a story ostensibly about launching a new product at Figma. It is actually about how she created a team of enthusiastic, empowered equals and convinced senior stakeholders to believe in her team’s scrappy idea.
Following on from his earlier articles on how product leaders operate (here and here), John Cutler tackles the challenge of why some leaders care about how we work and others don’t, and offers some tips for making the ‘product operating system’ more relatable.
Jen Briselli reflects on the growing numbers of professional coaches, and how that may reflect a deficit in workplace mentorship and career path guidance. Her proposal is not for more in-house coaching to improve one’s craft, but instead for apprenticeship. Learning by doing and by working side-by-side with a more experienced practitioner can be more effective.
And lastly, the perennial challenge of explaining the complexity of what you do for a living. (Until I managed to find a concise answer myself, I used to dodge the question by saying I was a dolphin trainer or lighthouse painter.) Using the innocuous example of a door, game designer Liz England explains the problem, and highlights how every other stakeholder sees the humble door from their own perspective.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
How to ship like a startup
We often hear about companies trying to maintain a “startup” mindset as they grow. They want to build products rather than follow processes, assemble irrationally passionate teams, and empower every employee with a great idea to ship a blockbuster. But BigCo status quo often gets in the way. Based on my experiences building Figma Slides, FigJam, and a few others in development, I’ve learned a lot about how to actually keep teams scrappy while launching products on the ground.
Seven lessons from the story of Figma Slides (partially paywalled)
[Mihika Kapoor / Lenny’s Newsletter]
“Why don’t our leaders care about how we work?”
“John, many of your posts are about taking a thoughtful and intentional approach when designing your company’s operating system. But at my company, no one thinks this way. It is all seen as a process, and everyone hates it unless they can benefit directly. Why is this the case?”
I’m sharing a lightly edited version of my response below as I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions lately.
When product leaders feel things are “too processy”
[John Cutler / The Beautiful Mess]
Apprenticeship is dead. Long live apprenticeship.
It’s not our imagination; coaching programs and credentials are surging. Online mentorship platforms like ADPList are seeing exponential growth. And while the rise of coaching is intriguing, even more interesting is that it’s emerging not on the job but as an extracurricular. It raises a question:
Is coaching a canary in our professional coal mine?
Humans are hardwired for learning
[Jen Briselli / Medium]
“The Door Problem”
“So what does a game designer do? Are you an artist? Do you design characters and write the story? Or no, wait, you’re a programmer?”
Game design is one of those nebulous terms to people outside the game industry that’s about as clear as the “astrophysicist” job title is to me. I like to describe my job in terms of “The Door Problem”.
The mundane shines a light on the complex
[Liz England]
recent posts
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
» Building cross-organisational relationships deliberately
» Mapping your stakeholders’ preferred communication styles
A roundtable chat on moving into product leadership
[I Manage Products]
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’.
AI is neither a panacea nor a magic bullet just as digital wasn’t for UK gov
[I Manage Products]
What freelance product management is really like with Jock Busuttil
Off the back of his recent article for Mind The Product, Liam Smith interviewed me about my experiences in freelance product management.
We cover topics including:
» Should you hire freelancers in your product team?
» How to be successful as an external hire
+ more :-)
can we help you?
Product People is a product management services company. We can help you through consultancy, training and coaching. Just contact us if you need our help!
Helping people build better products, more successfully, since 2012.
PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from warmed Welsh cakes.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“I wish this book was published when I started out in product management. It gives a really wonderful overview of what product management is and involves on a day to day basis.”
— Keji Adedeji, product leader & coach
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.