PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
4 minute product #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
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
hello
This week I’ve achieved a high word count. Most of them have been valuable, client-facing words. The rest have been for a long-form article dropping on Wednesday on whether coding in the open is right for your organisation. (Subscribe here to receive it by email when it’s published.) As a result, I’m a bit worded-out so I’m keeping my hello brief today.
Continuing my somewhat minimalist approach this week, the articles I have for you share no particular theme other than I enjoyed reading them and I believe you would also.
Martin Eriksson, who is looking increasingly like a person about to publish a new book, talks us through the various influences and approaches that make up his strategy toolkit.
Engineering manager at Co-op Neil Vass discusses how every software project involves a liberal amount of disappointment. The question is whether you want to save up all the disappointment for the end, or to disperse it bit by bit as you go along. Thankfully he also provides a toolkit for ‘disappointing people constructively’.
John Cutler has been thinking about how ably people are to describe what desirable high-level concepts such as team empowerment would look like in practice. He suggests that being able to describe behaviours is valuable because it turns theoretical concepts into concrete observations. And once you know what you should be observing, you can figure out what might be getting in the way.
Enjoy the articles – back to normal next week :-)
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
My strategy toolkit
There is no one right way to do strategy — but there are lots of definitions, frameworks, and tools that can help you craft a successful strategy.
Draw on different approaches for different situations
[Martin Eriksson / The Decision Stack]
How to disappoint people, part 2
This series of posts describes a workshop I’ve run a few times, both inside my workplaces and at external events. I’ve found it a useful way to share some things I’ve learned and things I’m still struggling with, and to get participants to share ideas from their own experience.
This post describes the kinds of disappointment I mean — it can be used as described in part 1, as a starter for discussion in a workshop, or it might be useful to just read through on its own and see if you can relate.
[Part 3 introduces some useful tools to help]
Every project comes with a fixed amount of disappointment
[Neil Vass / Neil’s notes]
From fluffy concepts to concrete outcomes & behaviors
In product, we’re bombarded by high-level concepts like empowerment, data-driven, product-led, customer-focused, accountability, getting into the details, and high agency. But teams have trouble putting these ideas into practice. Why? And what can you do about it?
What we actually do and say while working
[John Cutler / The Beautiful Mess]
recent posts
How do you ensure success as a freelance product manager on a short engagement?
In contrast with permanent employment, the game changes a great deal when you know you’re only going to be in role for a relatively short period of time. That means you should think about two specific 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.
Anything else is an added bonus
[I Manage Products]
DevRel and Product Management with Jock Busuttil on the Voxgig podcast
Voxgig CEO Richard Rodger explore the similarities between DevRel (Developer Relations) and product management, and we cover topics including:
» Learning product management by soundbite and from stories that gloss over the messy context has given a generation of product managers a superficial understanding of their craft.
Other professions find ‘people stuff’ hard as well
[I Manage Products]
The power of open: lessons from UK government, hosted by Product People
4 valuable product and culture lessons from the UK’s government digital teams. This was a talk I gave for Product People in September 2024. Video and transcript available.
[I Manage Products]
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 a shiny new NAS.