AI has made building easier.

The Product Model

But building the right thing is still hard.

Ten articles every week on what is happening across product, research, design and engineering. Curated by Rory Madden to help teams decide what to build.

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The archive

Ideas for your next step.

311 published editions

The Product Model #292 - When AI Blurs Roles, Teams Need Better Ways of Working

Will Claude Code Ruin Our Team? by Justin JacksonAI coding is collapsing role boundaries across design, product, and engineering, so teams need new ways of collaborating that preserve shared judgment and respect instead of letting tool access turn cross-functional work into turf

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The Product Model #291 - When AI Speeds Up Work, Strategy and Structure Matter More

AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It by Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie AI can make teams faster, but without clear boundaries, it also expands workload, increases context switching, and makes it harder to switch off. Leaders need stronger norms around pace, focus, and re

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The Product Model #290 - Single Threaded Leaders: Breaking Through the KPI Prison

When companies launch transformational initiatives, they typically assign them to existing leaders who are already measured on current business KPIs. This creates an inevitable conflict: leaders will always prioritize the metrics they're evaluated on over new strategic projects.

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The Product Model #289 - Empowering Strategic Decision-Making For Product Teams

When companies empower teams without providing strategic context, a predictable pattern emerges: teams make logical decisions based on incomplete information while leadership sees these choices as misguided.

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The Product Model #288 - How To Create A Compelling Product Vision

The most effective visions paint vivid pictures of customer transformation through a systematic four-step approach:

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The Product Model #287 - Analysing A Successful Product Vision

Most product visions end up as abstract statements that sound impressive but fail to inspire action or drive decision-making. To understand what makes a vision truly powerful, we analysed SpaceX's Mars mission video, which transforms the company from a transportation logistics pr

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The Product Model #286 - Cross-Functional Teams vs. Teams of Functions

Many organizations believe they have cross-functional teams when they actually have "teams of functions" - groups where each member still reports to separate functional managers, follows distinct processes, and adheres to rigid role boundaries with formal handovers between discip

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The Product Model #285 - All Jobs Have Four Layers. AI Wants Three of Them.

Level 1 is task execution. Level 2 is choosing the right solution and trade-offs. Level 3 is deciding what problem is worth solving. Level 4 is setting direction under uncertainty.

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The Product Model #284 - Truth Is Becoming Your Scarcest Resource

AI has made competent analysis cheap. What it cannot give you is the messy, human truth: what is actually happening, which assumptions are wrong, and what people are not saying out loud.

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The Product Model #283 - The Role Of Stream Teams In ZeroBlockers

Empowered, autonomous teams can design and build better products because they are closer to the customers and can get quicker feedback.

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The Product Model #282 - Outcomes Become Your Competitive Advantage

When anyone can generate a solid PRD, a decent design direction, or a passable analysis in minutes, the edge is no longer how well you produce. It is whether you are working on the right thing, and whether it actually moves an outcome.

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The Product Model #281 - The Technical Debt Machine & Managing AI Slop

AI will build whatever you ask for, quickly and confidently. That is exactly why it is dangerous. It will not challenge the brief, spot the long-term trade-offs, or warn you when a “reasonable” choice breaks your architecture, your design system, or your product strategy.

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The Product Model #280 - The Risk Of NOT Empowering Teams

When products fail to deliver expected business value, most organisations respond by tightening control through more detailed business cases, approval layers, and coordinators.

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