Helping Founders and Product People build better products.
Join 11,000+ product people improving their craft for FREE every week with real advice from the trenches on building better Products, Businesses and Leadership.
Read previous posts of ‘The PBL Newsletter’
Empowerment & Constraints
I don’t like using the term “empowered” because it’s ambiguous.
Empowered to do what?
Are you empowered to expand your product internationally
Empowered to build a whole new business within your current org?
Build a new brand under a parent company?
Of course, empowerment doesn’t mean “do whatever you like” but therein lies the question:
What exactly are you empowered to do?
Long Backlogs and Unmeasurable Work
From my experience, there are two common reasons why I see product backlogs become long and unmanageable.
A lack of strategy and, therefore, backlogs become a dumping ground for any and every idea.
Working big, breaking down big solutions, rather than breaking down the outcome (refer to my last post)
Ditch Epics & User Stories and Focus on Outcomes
When I've helped organisations become more outcome/product orientated, more often than not, I've moved them away from 'epics' and 'user stories' and towards things like one-pagers, opportunities, hypotheses, etc. Why? Because they’re are better tools for facilitating outcome thinking and experimentation.