AI has made building easier.
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.
Explore the editions ↓The archive
The old workforce pyramid was built on a simple trade: junior hires did high-volume execution, and in return, they got repetition, proximity, and time to develop judgment. AI is removing the economic need for that base, and with it, the default training path most organisations re
Read edition ↗AI is making it radically easier to produce impressive work, but it is quietly removing the friction that used to build judgment.
Read edition ↗Job titles and years of experience are noisy signals now. A “senior” title can mean execution in one company and strategic judgment in another. A clearer way to understand your actual career stage is to examine the question you are answering most frequently each week.
Read edition ↗The Product Operating Model, which empowers teams to build solutions based on direct customer conversations, should improve product outcomes, but some key risks can derail your efforts.
Read edition ↗Dependencies remove autonomy, which kills accountability. Once you have handoffs, you allow people the wiggle room to throw up their hands and say, "I did my job".
Read edition ↗Brooks' Law showed us that adding people to a late project makes it later due to the exponential increase in communication overhead. But modern organizations face a more complex challenge: managing portfolios of interconnected products with dozens of teams sharing resources, infr
Read edition ↗I know first-hand the pushback that you get when you suggest making changes to how teams work. Empowering teams is difficult because it changes the process of how teams work, how people are upskilled, how you avoid duplicating work, how you can be confident that teams are working
Read edition ↗Quarterly planning sessions can lead to an output focus. We need to ensure that we balance the needs of alignment (ensuring that teams work on the highest priority business areas) with autonomy (teams decide what to build).
Read edition ↗When a Product Team empowers a Stream Team to decide what to build for their value stream, it requires significant trust. Stream Teams must actively maintain this trust through complete transparency in their work, research, and decision-making processes.
Read edition ↗Things can fall through the gaps between teams. And when that happens, the proposed solution is always more meetings. Daily cross-team syncs, weekly alignment sessions, and a new Slack channel for real-time coordination.
Read edition ↗Empowering teams requires trust. Stream Teams are given the autonomy to achieve the product objectives they’ve been set, and they are accountable for outcomes rather than just outputs. However, autonomy does not mean operating in isolation - effective product development requires
Read edition ↗In product development, encountering unexpected results isn't just common – it's inevitable. The true measure of a team's effectiveness lies not in avoiding failures, but in how they respond when faced with disappointing data or failing features.
Read edition ↗In cross-functional teams, generalists perform better. Their ability to flex across disciplines and help out wherever needed makes them indispensable in modern product development. Yet, when it comes to hiring and promotions, companies overwhelmingly favour specialists.
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