Month: October 2023

Learned some important lessons about organisational politics.

Did some more work on my product standards framework as a tool for helping product owners guide new product development.

Worked on some usage goals for a new product using pirate metrics. I’m keen that we use them to guide the design work.

My new books were delivered. Now I need to find time to read them.

I completed 17 tasks today, including getting ready for tomorrow’s team meeting. It’s going to be an interesting one.

One of the products I’m aware of but not really working on looks like it’s being managed in a less than ideal way, but I know I don’t have time to do anything about it. I think I’m going to have to let it go wrong, and I don’t like that. I don’t like that we aren’t learning from our mistakes.

I did a bit more thinking about product standards, especially for the value risk. That means a product has to be problem-focused, have an audience, and be marketable.

Still pondering whether I should give NoBloPoMo a go this year. I know I won’t have time, and I’m pretty much over those kinds of challenges, but I am looking for something to give me some focus on my stuff. Maybe I should make it a reading challenge.

Was near Bletchley Park today and there was a lot of police around ahead of the AI Summit next week. And the prime minister announced an AI chatbot so people can pay their taxes.

“When a user asks GOV.UK Chat a question, the remaining GOV.UK pages without personal data are searched and ones related to the question are sent with the question to our third party provider, OpenAI. When OpenAI receives the question, it uses the GOV.UK content it has been sent to create an answer to the question that is written in a human-like response.” Wonder what the content designers think about that?

Thought a bit about a new product development process and what the conditions might look like to make a process successful.

Read a little about monotropism as a theory for autism

Listened to Eric Reis on Lenny’s podcast.

I want to write about what I’m calling charity product management’s ‘moneyball moment’. It’s the point where we realise that we’re doing product wrong by following the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur idea of how products exist in the world and develop a new paradigm for product based on systems thinking, feminism, ecology. It moves away from the individualistic approach of user-centred design and takes a system-shifting approach. But whenever I try to write, I can’t find the words to make it make sense.

Watched Into The Wild again. I’ve seen it before and it’s been years since I read the book. It’s a story that speaks to me.

Started thinking about what effective new product development might look like. What kind of process, skills, knowledge, resources, etc.