Go to school. Prove your worth by getting your diploma. Find a job. Work hard. Don’t break the rules. Cash in your pay-check every month. Enjoy your life after work. The end.
This is the life pattern most of us grew up with and one that still reverberates strongly today as most of the social institutions are set up for this modus operandi. But lots of us can fell the wind of change. We may not be fully capable to put it into words but “times they are a changing”. It is something I have been thinking for a while. I think your Spider senses are tingling too.
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Most strategic initiatives are trying to solve (perceived) company problems. And that’s the problem right here. Company problems (usually fueled by paranoia) are NOT customer problems. This lack of alignment is the fundamental strategical error that leads to all sort of tactical blunders. The root cause is the fear of missing out. It is caused or accentuated by managers leading by looking in the rear mirror and getting freaked out by competitors moves or new tech trends.
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These popular “definitions” of Product Management can make us (product managers) feel nothing less than incarnations of the Vitruvian man. In a business world full of Dilbert characters we are nothing less than a representation of the perfect, well balanced biz man. Heck, we are like Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos combined. We rock!
In the real world however, things could not be further from the Messiah-Like figure all these articles can led us to believe.
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The quest for the perfect note-taking application: A never-ending saga full of excitement over the new shiny app followed by disappointment when the new-found love fails to meet a need I just realized I have to solve. I really tried them all. But they all ended up sucking in one way or the other. But as I putting down some of my thoughts around jobs-to-be-done, I realized that note taking is in fact a solution to a multitude of problems. There are many cases when taking some notes is the the answer, but understanding the question can help one in choosing between one approach and the other.
That led me to thinking about my own set of jobs for note-taking. This is not meant to be a guide on note taking, but as a personal example on how a simple tool (in this case notes) can serve a lot of jobs. Here we go:
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Thanks to Ward Cunningham, the metaphor technical debt is quite a well-understood concept. It means you are borrowing time by writing messy code, not worrying about scaling, documentation or other items required for a quality release. You go quick and dirty to release early but all that bad code will incur debt. And there will be a time when you need to pay that debt back - with interest.
I think the parallel with the product design world is a welcome addition. I frequently find myself using the term product debt but I also get the sense that very few people know what I am talking about. Like technical debt, product debt is inquired when you make short term product decision with an expensive long term consequence.
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Over the years, I had numerous calls with clients or potential customers over Skype. I went with a remote solution mostly because of distance. That was important as most of the people I wanted to talk to were not nearby. Heck, they were not even in the same country as me. Skype was simple, it saved me time and money.
I am starting to appreciate real-life customer interviews. I am doing them more and more and I believe the level of insight you can gain from a face2face discussion is fundamentally better. Why is that?
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Leaving the click-bait title aside this will be an article about writing good specs
This year I learned something that I kinda guessed already: The biggest benefit of keeping a journal is not archiving your experiences. Very few people take the time to read what they wrote 5 years ago. The biggest benefit is in the writing process alone. Writing helps you clarify your thoughts and feelings. According to science: writing accesses your left brain, the analytical and rational, so your right side is free to create, brainstorm or mix ideas.
Journaling and writing specs have a lot in common. The benefits for me are strikingly similar.
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