I Manage Products blog
& PRODUCTHEAD newsletter

To understand how cloud computing works, we’re going to start with the basic building blocks and work our way up.

» Choosing not to learn is a choice to be left behind » 4 types of “money story”: cost savings; upselling; new market; and customer satisfaction » Reflections on how we think about aspects of product management

» What product work will deliver the greatest positive impact for the business? » Rather than multiple levels of abstraction, team goals should be 1 step away from the corporate goal » Enabling teams can have impact by prioritising the teams doing the most impactful work

» Just over half of product managers surveyed rate themselves poor at retiring a product » Consider how people may continue using your product after it is retired, or the company exits » Activists are pushing to prevent companies from bricking devices reliant on cloud software

» So-called hypergrowth is quadratic, not exponential (adding a larger fixed amount each year — not multiplying) » Sustainable growth requires new products or built-in virality, not just more marketing » True exponential growth is rare and short-lived

» 10 tactics for subscription value creation » 10 tactics for reducing subscription churn » When switching to a subscription model, initially costs will go up and revenue will decrease

» 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

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 and more!

» Implementing AI means assessing user needs and your data sources » AI technologies run the risk of creating harm — how are you planning for that? » LLMs and genAI open up new vectors for novel attacks that need to be countered

» Platform product management dials everything up to 11 » A successful platform is continually evolving in line with user needs and emerging tech » Platform teams must recognise and respect the varying needs of their community of users

» On a typical dev project, the reality is around 2-3x the original estimate » Trying to go faster when you’re already moving quickly has limited effect for a lot of effort

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’.