Weeknotes #274

Photo of the week:

One day something else will be looking at whatever we’ve left behind

This week I did:

Architecting for uncertainty

We’re getting into the hard work now. Well, the developers are, I just try not to cause too much confusion. It’s a bit of challenge for us to figure out how to build a product that will most likely have to be able to do things in the next six to twelve months that we don’t know about yet. It means being slower and more considered now to architect the systems in more complicated ways to give us flexibility later but that’s better than taking the easy route now and having to fix it later.

My idea that product management is about interfacing, integrating and iterating came into play this week, mostly around the integrating part. I’ve been thinking about where in their different systems and processes different channels might touch and begin to test ideas for a multi-channel approach. Those touch points will be where in the journey a user can switch from one channel to another, mostly on the assumption that the current channel isn’t working for them.

Irregular

I started a newsletter about the idea as the fundamental unit of value. I only have three subscribers, and I don’t know how regularly I’ll send it . One of things I often toy with is how to decide where to write things. Should it be a blog post, go in a newsletter, be a Twitter thread, or probably better for everyone, just an idea in my notes. Giving the newsletter something specific to be about should help me decide which writing goes where.

Centering values

I’m still (slowly) working through the Humane Technology course and am on the module about values. It starts by talking about the myth of neutrality in technology, people and metrics and goes on to talk about how we might approach developing a values rather than metrics and market driven approach to product development.

Blog posts

I wrote a few blog posts this week (well, nine). Some express a single idea and some try to bring ideas together. I’m trying to be more relaxed about writing blog posts and not have to feel like every one needs to be research and have references. They should be more a way to express ideas in progress rather than present finished thinking.

And thought about:

Whole person product management

I’ve been thinking a bit about how product management is presented in blogs and books as being about models and frameworks but when you get into it, it’s all about people. User needs should express actual people’s goals, values and aspirations. The pretend objectivity of prioritising by mapping items on two by two grid when really it’s the conversations between people that actually make the decisions. The roadmap that presents a finished vision of the product when really it’s a point-in-time summary of lots of thinking. I wonder if there’s a need to admit that effective product management cannot be done solely by relying on the concepts.

Where in the value chain

I’ve been working on the idea that the reason for the variety of definitions of product managers and types of product management work is that product managers work on different parts of the value chain. Some, maybe in an early stage start-up, might work cross the entire value chain, whereas in a different type of company a product manager might work more around the interface between company and customer, and in another type of organisation the product manager works only on a specific part of the value chain to do with the technology. This might help to explain the differences but it should also mean that we think of product management as equally important wherever in the value chain it happens.

Starlings have us beat

I was thinking a bit more about stigmergy again and whether it could be used within an organisation instead of strategy. Since writing that post I’ve started to wonder if actually stigmergy does already occur in organisations through informal information networks whilst strategy continues to be applied through formal hierarchies of authority. Maybe it’s obvious that both would have a place in a modern complex organisation. Maybe it’s naive and simplistic to think that an organisation could run effectively in the way a flock of starlings or an ant’s nest does. I’ve often thought that organisations have ‘shadow strategies’ that drive the things people actually do. Maybe that’s stigmergies at work.

This week I read:

System-shifting design

I read the Design Council report exploring some of the known issues with user-centred and solution-focused design and the emerging practice of social design that is “challenging the deep structure of current systems and working at different levels of a system to drive change“. I first heard about Social Design in the service design course I did and am interested in how it can be applied to product management. I think it’s long overdue in recognising the downsides of designing for an idealised user and can hopefully help us consider more about where are the right places to interact with systems to affect how they work.

Optimising the live virtual learning experience

This framework for improving VILT (Virtual Instructor Led Training) within organisations has some suggestions on improving learning. It doesn’t have much depth as to the rationale for improving learning in organisations, other than a few mentions of things like employee retention, but it’s another angle on the evolving space of online learning. It started me thinking about whether there’s any correlation between how much an organisation invests in the learning of it’s employees and how successful the organisation is (or to be more specific, how successful it is in responding to change and innovating).

Bootstrapping

I started reading the minimalist entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia, who built Gumroad. From what I’ve read so far, it’s interesting how it reflects many of the trends I see in the creator economy, things build an audience before you build a product.

My growth area this week was:

Keep your head up

Trying to shift focus from the specific details of solution design to how we deal with the uncertain future.