The Beautiful Mess 2020
In 2020, I wrote a weekly post about the beautiful mess of product development. Topics covered included product management, design, cross-functional collaboration, change agency, general decision making, continuous improvement, and sustainable approaches to work. I had intended to write a book in 2020, but had to stop. It was too difficult with the pandemic, a toddler, and a full-time job. Meanwhile I kept plodding away at these posts. A friend suggested I release this as "a book", and while I don't consider this to be a truly cohesive body of work I do believe there are some good, actionable ideas here.
Table of Contents
TBM 1/53: The Empty Roadmap
TBM 2/53: Three Options
TBM 3/53: Experiment With Not On
TBM 4/53: Teach by Starting Together
TBM 5/53: It's Hard to Learn If You Already Know
TBM 6/53: Way and Why
TBM 7/53: Learning Backlogs
TBM 8/53: Product Initiative Reviews
TBM 9/53: Some MVP and Experiment Tips
TBM 10/53: Hammers & Nails
TBM 11/53: The Know-It-All CEO
TBM 12/53: Not BAU
TBM 13/53: Good Idea?
TBM 14/53: 1s and 3s
TBM 15/53: Why Can't This Be Like...
TBM 16/53: The Boring Bits
TBM 17/53: Measuring to Learn vs. Measuring to Conform
TBM 18/53: Blank Slates, Seedlings, Freight Trains, and Gardening
TBM 19/53: Drivers, Constraints, and Floats
TBM 20/52: Questions and Context
TBM 21/53: "Vision" and Prescriptive Roadmaps
TBM 22/53: Attacking X vs. Starting Y
TBM 23/53: Privilege & Credibility
TBM 24/53: Mapping Beliefs (and Agreeing to Disagree)
TBM 25/53: Persistent Models vs. Point-In-Time Goals
TBM 26/53: Kryptonite and Curiosity
TBM 27/53: The Lure of New Features and Products
TBM 28/53: Developer & Designer Collaboration (in the Real World)
TBM 29/53: Shipping Faster Than You Learn (or…)
TBM 30/53: Healthy Forcing Functions (and Paying Attention)
TBM 31/53: Scaling Change Experiments
TBM 32/53: Beyond Generic KPIs
TBM 33/53: But Why Is It Working?
TBM 34/53: Better Experiments
TBM 35/53: Basic Prioritization Questions (and When to Converge on a Solution)
TBM 36/53: Self-similarity and Manager/Leader Accountability (for Cross-functional Teams)
TBM 37/53: Talk to Your Manager, Take the Survey
TBM 38/53: Assumptions: Value & Certainty
TBM 39/53: Neither, Either, While, Without
TMB 40/53: 10 Tips for Sustainable Change Agency
TBM 41/53: Strategy and Structure
TBM 42/53: The Annual Planning Dance
TBM 43/53: The Product Outcomes Formula®™©
TBM 44/53: What Is Your Team Stubborn About?
TBM 45/53: Rank Your 2020 Initiatives (by Impact)
TBM 46/53: Think Big, Work Small
TBM 47/53: Thinking Like a Designer/Product Manager
TBM 48/53: One Roadmap
TBM 49/53: Signals and Confidence
TBM 50/53: The Curse of "Success" Metrics
TBM 51/53: Coherence > Shallow Autonomy
TBM 52/53: Real Teams (Not Groups of One-Person Teams)
TBM 53/53: Virtuous Improvement Loops
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