PRODUCTHEAD: Take a walk in the landscape
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
fake product trees #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
Services are inherited, messy, and rarely a clean slate
There are different types of prioritisation, and we should consider them in combination
The knowledge economy is being upended by genAI
hello
This week, Scott Colfer invites us to take a walk through the service landscape. From his own experiences working in digital government, he felt that the usual language and mental models of services assumed a ‘clean slate’ approach was possible. In reality, most organisations were dealing with a messy patchwork of so-called legacy systems, platforms, and internal services, as well as providing user-facing services. He offers an alternative mental model to better reflect reality. His new book, Product In Service: A Manifesto For Pragmatic Product Management, is now available on Amazon.
John Cutler wants us to consider that there’s a difference between three types of prioritisation: goals / strategies; efficient resource utilisation; and investments to increase or shift capacity. Often people only think about one or two of these at a time, however doing so leads to anti-patterns. Rather, he argues, we need to balance all three at a time.
To round off this week’s edition of PRODUCTHEAD, Nicolas Michaelsen reflects on how we have spent the last few decades becoming knowledge workers, but only for a specific type: propositional knowledge (facts, frameworks, strategies etc.). He argues we’ve neglected the other three types of knowledge, and now generative AI is far better at propositional knowledge than humans. We need to embrace all four types of knowledge again.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
Most of What We Call a ‘Service’ Isn’t One (and Why That Matters for Product People)
In government and the wider public sector, we’ve built our identity around “services.” Digital teams design them, measure them, apply the Service Standard to them. But most of what we call a service isn’t actually a service.
Think of services as a landscape
[Scott Colfer / Product In Service]
Stop Trying To Make Prioritization “Easy”
Hot take: We want prioritization to be hard. That’s the game. If it is easy or transactional, then something is wrong. Let me explain.
3 pillars to think about in combination
[John Cutler / The Beautful Mess]
Death of a knowledge system
We’re not just seeing job loss. We are witnessing the collapse of our dominant Knowledge System. The Great Displacement (the notion that AI will replace the propositional knowledge class) isn’t just AI replacing analysts, copywriters, or consultants. It’s the death of a knowledge system that trained us to believe: if you master the game of propositional knowledge, you’ll be safe. That system is crumbling under its own weight.
We spent so long becoming like machines, but machines are better at it
[Nicolas Michaelsen / Ecologies Of Wisdom]
recent posts
Are developers vibe coding themselves out of a job?
And is the increasing reliance by junior developers on AI coding assistants storing up a generational skills shortage for the future – ‘professional debt’, if you will?
So simple, anyone could do it. Wait – don’t fire me
[I Manage Products]
Cloud computing for non-technical product managers
To understand how cloud computing works, we’re going to start with the basic building blocks and work our way up.
And why is it a cloud anyway? (All is revealed)
[I Manage Products]
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]
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 cleaning materials and rubber gloves.
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.