Product Bugle @ 20: Greatest hits
The 20th edition! To celebrate: 10 of the better bits of my writing (in my opinion), and 10 of the most popular links. (10 + 10 = 20, geddit?)
So partly because it’s my 20th edition, and partly because it’s the end of Summer, this week it’s 20 links to things I’ve written; or things that I’ve previously linked to and have proved popular..
Ockham Bugle 10 greatest hits
Some of these are actually on LinkedIn or Medium, but all covered in here..
1. Stuck? Ask what the awesome person would do. This is a bit of advice I’ve given to plenty of people, and found hugely helpful myself. Since writing this, I’ve seen quite a few pieces based around the same idea. Great minds…
2. 35 great things for Product Managers to read and listen to I admit I kind of wince a bit when I see yet another list of stuff that busy people really need to read/ watch / listen to in order to do their job. At the same time, when you find something you like, it’s always good to share it. So please accept my humble addition to the genre.
3. What does good product management look like? A framework that builds on something we came up with at Sky. I’m going to revise this a bit - go back to it through September/ October.
4. What is product management? Flyer for a teenager's careers event I did this in a panic on the afternoon of my sons’ career evening, realising I was about to sit at a table trying to explain what a product manager does.
5. Product management - lessons learned A random collection of mini-essays that were actually part of a book I decided not to write. Including: That elaborate prioritisation scoring system won’t help with the decisions you actually need help with; and Good communication makes a good PM. Good listening makes a great one.
6. Think Big. Start Smart. Take Stock. Don’t Stop. I think there’s a decent idea in here. The principle is when you’re working out where to start on something, don’t always do the quickest and easiest thing. Make sure you kick off with impact - and then keep going.
7. How to bake the perfect product strategy In which I pinch all the best bits from lots of smart people and knit them together.
8. On being strategic, vs doing a product strategy After writing about the craft of doing a product strategy for a few weeks, it dawned on me that to reallly get ahead, PMs need to actually be strategic, not just do strategy.
9. Prioritising for growth This is a all about making sure you prioritise your big bets - including a bit of a recap on how that approach helped Prime Video grow (before , during and after my stint there).
10. Reducing ambiguity: the product manager’s mission. I think this is never going to take off as a tshirt slogan or Ted talk -but there’s a kernel of something really important here. I think ‘Driving certainty’ is probably a little more compelling as a title.
And the 10 most popular things I’ve linked to..
These are roughly in the chronological order I linked to them in - rather than absolute popularity (which is way too fiddly to calculate).
1. Gibson Biddle’s introduction to product strategy No prizes for originality in linking to this - everyone does. It’s a great bit of clear thinking and writing.
2. Productify: All the product strategy frameworks you’ll ever need No description needed.
3. Naomi-isms: Meta’s Naomi Gleit offers some clean cut, simple and sensible guidelines for good product management.
4. Matt LeMay - perfection is the enemy of Progress Podcast`(and his book: Product Management In Practice) Matt remains a refreshing voice in the PM commentariat - this podcast is a great intro into his way of thinking about the reality of the product management experience.
5. Rico Surridge: Roles in a Product Engineering squad The nuts and bolts take on what a ‘product team’ looks like.
6. The LNO Framework for Product Managers: I heard Shreyas Doshi talking about this framework for your time management (tasks are either ‘Leverage’ / ‘Neutral’ / ‘Overhead’) - and then found this full write up by Aakash Gupta
7. Shreyas Doshi’s pre-mortem template: I’ve always been a big fan of pre-mortems - and this gives you the template for how to run one.
8. Book summary: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: A great book that debunks a lot of the fizz and nonsense about what strategy really should be.
9. Book summary: The Cold Start Problem: I’m still wading through this - but it’s a cracking analysis of what
10. The PSHE model for evaluating product managers: Very clever, and a very simple way of thinking about a levelling framework for product managers.
And with that..
Have a great weekend (Bank holiday in the UK!). Back next week with the Summer over and a full blown Bugle to celebrate.