What is this blog about?
differentiating between lies, useful lies & reality in product management
Software products are very important today and they are only going to become more important in the future at an accelerating pace.
Software product managers have become very important to software.
This is noted not just by the rising demand for product managers worldwide but by their impact, influence and all the material being written about product management.
I believe that a lot of what we are doing are actually anti patterns, performative signalling and since we are not engineers, somehow the waste that we leave behind in terms of culture, communication and thinking has become invisible and even more egregious.
What if we actually did the things product management blogs tell us we should do?
What if we applied “product thinking” to product management?
If product managers are going to be even more important in a world increasingly ruled by software, what can we do to become better product managers?
To make sure the software we make adds value both to the people actually making it and the people actually using and maintaining it?
Who is this blog for?
Are you
A product manager
An aspiring software product manager
Leading a product management team
Curious about applying principles of tempo, gervais principle, brain, mapping, anti fragility and design to product management?
Curious about the future of software product management ?
Curious about how software is and can be built in teams?
Confused about how all the blogposts about org models sound so good and yet…in practice…
Then this is for you.
This newsletter has a broad scope.
We are going to talk about strategic things - vision, mission, values, industry and market forces
We are also going to talk about tactical things - note taking, communication, planning, writing, analysis, prioritisation
Opinions on the latest blogpost by Cagan?
Or that webinar by that new product consultancy firm?
Book review?
Real world case studies?
We will use all of these in an attempt to map how software product management works in the real world to how it is projected in all the books that all of us pretend to have read.
I welcome collaborations and guest blog posts
Especially about product design, ethnography and the ethics of software since these are all upstream of the day to day product management work and are the most ignored things today in spite of all the hype around them.
I believe that the way we make software today can be improved - both for the makers of software as well as the users.
By training I am required to say that I care more about the users but in reality I am paid to work with the makers a whole lot more.
And I think we can do better.
This newsletter tracks my attempts to learn more and offer some ideas on how that can happen.
Reality contains a surprising amount of detail. So let’s talk about it - in detail.
In the meantime, tell your friends and
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