The product manager role is a mistake
The popular model
Software product companies aren’t usually started by people with a strong background in building software products. Those who most likely end up founding businesses are good at getting funding, and at understanding their target industry. They’ve been in their industry for a long time, know their industry inside out, convinced themselves this means they can do it, and used their relationships and skills to get the money necessary to start a company. These people tend to lead everything personally, and a lot could be said about the damage domain experts cause to their own companies when they lead things. Somebody already did it though, and they did it so well that there’s no point in me doing a worse job.
Read more…You should fear competition more than you fear your competitors
The situation
An obsession with competitors
Most startups obsess over their competitors. They watch every move, rush to copy every initiative or feature, analyze their marketing, check whether they’re being outsold, and keep an eye on others’ funding rounds.
Read more…Can accountability exist without authority?
The ubiquitous way of structuring companies is by nesting areas of responsibility. You introduce well-defined areas and problems, and assign them to people, so that each area or concern has exactly one person responsible for it.
Read more…The 3M Rule of management
Metrics and indicators are amazing when used appropriately. But problems arise when people either:
- Use metrics as targets. I wrote a post about this, so I’m not going to explain why this is the case again.
- Focus exclusively on things that can be measured, while neglecting things that cannot.
- Adopt metrics without understanding their context. I wrote a post about McKinsey’s software development productivity nonsense, so I’m not going to expand on this either.
- Don’t factor in any delays between inputs and outputs.
- Believe they need metrics in order to manage anything.
Today I want to challenge the last point, that you need metrics in order to manage anything.
Read more…Make the change easy, then make the easy change
“Make the change easy, then make the easy change”. Didn’t Kent Beck say that? He did, didn’t he? So why are we talking about this (again)? I just want to clarify a few things about this very good piece of advice.
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