Weeknotes 512
I did:
Move fast and brake things
This week was a lot about quickly figuring out what to stop. Or why that work started and whether it’s right to carry on. That involves lots of talking to people, getting different perspectives, looking at data, considering end-to-end, and making decisions about whether to speed up or slow down. Did this stuff too:
- Presented new opportunities to stakeholders, all of which they approved thanks to the solid thinking our product managers did.
- Talked about doing cohort-based reporting so we can see the difference between users who are successfully completing their enrolment and those that aren’t.
- Worked on a marginal gains strategy. There’s lots of thinking to do that will help us focus on the right things in the right way as returns diminish.
- Avoided a sabotage moment.
- Started planning the next six months of roll-out for one of our products.
- Used Microsoft Planner to organise some work. It’s changed a lot so I might have to update my guide.
- Did some interviews for a senior product manager role.
I read:
Rhizomes FTW
I love rhizomes. It’s my go-to mental model for organising without a centre, so it was great to read two things this week about rhizomes. Rachel Wood exploring rhizomatic service design, thinking about services as non-linear, interconnected, adaptive ecosystems that are constantly evolving. And Steve Messer shared some links to interesting thinking about rhizomes.
Continuous Discovery Habits That Actually Work
Listened to Melissa Perri’s round out of continuous discovery habits. Made me realise how much I miss the pace continuous-x work, but also how it’s only appropriate in certain circumstances.
Product strategy
Watched Ant Murphy’s talk about product strategy, which was cool and all, but like so many talks/posts/articles about product strategy, talk about what it is rather than how to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone explain how they created a product strategy. It’s both strange and understandable at the same time. Strange because of how much a product manager’s job is about product strategy, and understandable because strategy is an ongoing emergent thing that is difficult to explain.
I thought:
Moving the goal posts
The problem with the metaphor is that in sports the goalposts don’t move, and so moving them is considered unfair. In business, the goalposts move all time and that’s a good thing.
The difference between wrong and getting righter
Ignore the grammar, it was never my strong suit, but I was thinking quite a bit this week about the difference between unitarist, binary, right/wrong thinking and the idea there is an end state to be reached; and pluralistic, more or less right thinking that recognises constant change as the norm. These co-exist but they feel mutually exclusive. You can’t have both and not have them conflict each other because they see the world in completely different ways. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to reconcile that conflict without changing people’s entire paradigm. It’s an interesting meta-problem.
MOPEDD teams 🛵
We’re experimenting with hexagonal teams (which is obviously twice as good as a trio). These teams that have six roles; marketing, ops, product, engineering, design and delivery. Putting people together is easy. Helping them reach a shared understanding is going to be the hard bit, so I’ve been pondering the different concepts and perspectives each role brings and how they might fit together. Maybe marketers think about audiences and campaigns, whereas maybe designers think about users and journeys. Where is the overlap in these concepts that helps create common ground and shared understanding?