I Manage Products blog
& PRODUCTHEAD newsletter

» The Spotify Model was only ever a snapshot in time at Spotify » It existed in the context of a company whose leadership valued trust, self-organisation and change » As Spotify grew, it failed to strike the right balance between autonomy and collaboration » Alignment to product strategy remains crucial for autonomous teams to deliver valuable work

» Rather than existing in a bubble, each product team should have core members, collaborators and supporters » How you should divide up teams depends on your product’s overall flow; avoid ambiguous ownership » Teams should have end-to-end responsibility for a part of the user journey with minimal dependencies » One approach is to delineate between teams working on a core problem domain, and on those enabling their work

» Sonos is working through a major user backlash after launching a flawed app » Pressure from senior management forced the launch to happen before it was ready » Tips for recognising and managing tension as a product manager » Round-up of lessons learned from failed product launches

» A common misconception is that openly sharing code presents security risks » Keeping code open clarifies ownership and can avoid vendor lock-in

» Services are best identified as verbs rather than nouns » You cannot have services without products, nor products without services » A service is something that helps someone to do something

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.

» Dissect your monolithic metrics to drive growth in more easily influenced segments » Don’t kill the golden goose of growth by oversaturating a channel » If growth is your goal, have a sense of urgency

» Sarah Jeong on why the Pixel 9’s Reimagine feature is the final nail in the coffin for trust in photos » 9 Sept: I’m giving a talk for Product People on lessons about org culture

» Knowing what kinds of customer you want and don’t want help you to prioritise ‘one-off’ feature requests from sales » “Enterprise customers look at our roadmaps as the starting point for negotiations” » Are feature requests a deliberate strategy or a reactive wild goose chase?

» The uncertainty of a problem should influence how we respond to it » Misdiagnosis of a problem can compound it » We frame our solutions through the lens of our social predisposition » Wicked problems can only be addressed by collaboration between different social types

» The only thing you can truly control in life is yourself » Securing buy-in is meaningless if you let people go back on their agreement without challenge

» At C-level, focus more on “what’s in it for you” and less on “here’s what I need” » Get your strategy, priorities, risk-taking heuristics, and goals straight, and treat allocation as a hypothesis