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Dispatches


Fundamentals are always "in"
Somewhere along the way, last 10 years PMs started burrowing into the agile lifestyle - and when we did, we lost the lense of the...


A roadmap is a story
Roadmaps are a challenging concept for PMs - maybe the most challenging concept. Many PMs believe it is a pro-forma part of the job - a...


Repetition and persuasion
it is often written that PMs are in the business of alignment, and communication is the craft but I have to say - almost universally -...


Change your team's clock
You are your calendar. As Tom Peters said a decade ago: The calendar never lies. You can claim something is your priority, but if your...


Financial physics
Here's what your CFO thinks software development looks like (a version of underpants gnomes): BUILD FEATURE -> SELL FEATURE -> PROFIT!...

Maybe PM should be slow
Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything? What if Product...


Software is cumulative
Watching Elon Musk talk about manufacturing is a guilty pleasure. Not because of amazing technical feats (to wit: Mechazilla) but rather,...


Responding in comments
Reminds me of that old saying about wrestling with a pig - you both get dirty and the pig likes it. That's exactly what happens in...


Not complex, simple
Reminds me of that old quote from Bruce Lee: I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced...


As good as it gets?
There was a movie in the 90s with jack nicholson that was called As Good As it Gets . Notionally it was about midlife trials and...


Beware captive IT
I live and breathe the "software business," as in, a company whose business is selling software and/or access to its software. It's an...


You will regret snowflakes
I keep encountering this phenomena and it baffles me. How can this possibly persist in this day and age. Even in the "on-prem" packaged...

Manage attention not time
Product Managers hate micromanagement and complain about it constantly.  It  kills motivation! It kills creativity! I hear this a lot,...


Low-agency virus
i'd love to pick up the check but We live in a moment of empowerment. A few years ago the term was the super-empowered individual,...


Why sit
You can get a lot of steps in at most airports. I have started pacing the terminals while I wait for my flight. I walk the lengh the...

Ship More
Organized chaos. Send it! I'm coming to believe that the single best fix you can make at a software company (especially one that is not...


Staff work
The modern software org is collaboration across, down, and up - all the directions. In this lattice, the PM finds themselves strung up....


It happens
PMs obsess about all the things, and how to differentiate and what the market needs and what the user needs and how to win and how to...


Software faith
AI made me this picture of software faith. It's nice, I think but also maybe a little sacreligious. The financial-ization of the software...

Responsive PMs are the worst
Reminds me of that old 30 Rock gag... We might not be the best people, but we’re not the worst - graduate students are the worst! The old...
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