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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Matt Lemay
much of the actual work of product management seemed to be taking place on the margins and in the shadows.
In theory, product management is a masterfully played game of chess. In practice, product management often feels like a hundred simultaneous games of checkers.
Product managers are much more likely to share “war stories” than “best practices,” and are more likely to talk about the mistakes they’ve made than the meteoric successes they’ve achieved.
most of the things you will need to get done as a product manager are not things you can do alone.
I was genuinely surprised by how much of my on-the-ground work as a product manager at a large organization happened through backchannels.
If you want to be the smartest person in the room, you probably will not succeed as a product manager.
assume people are smart and assume the best intentions. This is not some warm and fuzzy kumbaya mantra; rather, it’s tactical, practical advice to help you survive and thrive as a product manager.
the “best practices” that product managers pick up at a particular organization usually succeed for reasons that are specific to that particular organization.
no matter how many tools and technologies you throw at it, distributed work is not the same as colocated work.
a product manager cannot succeed if there is not clarity among senior leaders about a company’s strategy and vision.
I truly wonder how many executive teams have a company strategy and vision. Making more money isn’t really a strategy or a vision.
In many cases, though, the challenge is not that there are competing visions for the company, but rather that there is no vision at all.
One of the things that I feel has contributed the most to my career as a product manager is having the courage to push back, and to have challenging conversations.
nothing that you are telling a senior stakeholder in a “big” meeting should ever be a surprise, ever.
your success ultimately hinges not on your ability to make stakeholders happy, but rather on your ability to make users happy.
When talking with users, your job is not to convince, or to impress, or to align. Your job is simply to learn as much as you can about their needs, their world, and their perspective.
In the world of charts and dashboards, information is tidy, neatly categorized, and easily manipulable. In the real world…yeah, not so much.
if we don’t understand why we’re doing well, we are powerless to build on that momentum, and completely helpless if the trend reverses.
rather than attaching your value as a product manager to a number that might be outside of your control, ask for accountability in a way that makes you wholly responsible for seeking out and acting on the things you can control.
think of roadmaps as a strategic communication document, not as an actual plan for what will be executed and when.
your organization needs to have an explicit and shared understanding of what a roadmap means and how it is to be used.
Here are a few guiding questions to help you get started with creating a clear sense of how your organization intends to use its roadmap: How far into the future should our roadmap go? Does our roadmap make a distinction between “short-term” and “long-term” plans? Who has access to the roadmap? Is it user-facing? Public-facing? How often is the roadmap reviewed and by whom? How are changes to the roadmap communicated and how often? What criteria does something need to
meet to be added to the roadmap? What could somebody within the organization reasonably expect if they see a feature on the roadmap three months from now? What could somebody within the organization reasonably expect if they see a feature on the roadmap two years from now?
The challenge for a product manager is not so much to have ideas, but rather to establish criteria that can be used to consistently evaluate ideas against user needs and business goals.
prioritization will be as easy or as difficult as your goals are clear, well understood, and actionable.
roadmaps and prioritization are best approached not as sources of authority, but rather as opportunities to connect and align.
Alistair Cockburn, another signer of the Agile Manifesto, responded to what he called the “overly decorated” state of modern Agile by distilling the entirety of Agile practices and processes into four actions at the “Heart of Agile”:
Product management is not an easy job — but the practice of product management can make everybody’s job easier.
