Faye is a seasoned product manager (PM) responsible for software products for close to a decade. She has organically grown her craft as a PM over that time, as the discipline itself was still largely in an emerging stage. As she likes to share her knowledge, what she has learned the hard way, she regularly mentors people starting in their journey to deliver software products.
As part of her approach towards that, she likes to let it clear from the get-go that there isn't a formula as such. But there is a few patterns that she has come to conclude that are the closest to universally applicable, when it comes to delivery, so she tends to regularly circle back to them:
We often don't have a priority problem, but one of lack of clarity.
An enabling metaphor: taking care of products is like gardening.
Focus and the dynamics of planning (a.k.a., manage your portfolio)
What she noticed is that there's a path of learning that the PM she mentors goes through, that at an abstract level can be framed as going from an idealistic inexperienced towards a pragmatic expert. For instance, for the first pattern on priority vs clarity as a problem, an idealistic inexperienced would sound something like:
If only I could figure out a way to stack-rank with priorities all the new initiatives (or features, or whatever way to define a piece of work someone is working with).
At some point though, they realize that there's more to work on than only new features, and keep adding new stuff. In fact, as Faye would teach them, that's even dangerous:
Every addition you make to a product is in a way a liability.
And how could anyone, for instance, stack-rank a new feature vs a technical investment brought forward as needed? Take the most sophisticated prioritization framework out there, and yet quite likely it wouldn't offer a straight answer to that question. It is just not trivial, it's probably not even a fair comparison.
That's when Faye typically brings forward the metaphor of developing product being like 'gardening':
It's not only about working directly in the product itself (or the plants, in the case of a garden), but also taking care of the underlying "ecosystem" around it (so that the product can "keep growing" sustainably).
To manage that kind of complexity, it's what moving beyond priority as a simple trade-off, and more as a matter of clarity, is all about:
What are the things we are going to deliberate plan to work on in the foreseeable future?
What is a new demand, where we just need to do the minimum to validate assumptions before moving further ahead?
What is something we are improving functionally (adding new behavior based on recent learnings)?
Where are we making things (broadly speaking) more robust or better, by improving what (technically or otherwise)?
How do we build-in slack so that we can deal with unplanned work that might occur?
Faye teaches her PM mentees that it is OK to have different tracks of work that are recognized to happen in parallel in a foreseeable future (e.g. let's say for a quarter). While the *ideal* WIP is always 1, in software development that's often unrealistic, and even undesirable. There's got to be focus (i.e, with clear constraints) though – a.k.a., manage your portfolio.
But better yet, that while you recognize that there's some level of parallelization going on at the portfolio level (i.e., tracks of work which are somehow work in progress), a top-notch PM will work with the team to translate that into much sharper and humble plans for the short-term:
e.g., what are we working on now and for the next few days or at most a couple of weeks?
And as Faye would articulate it, that's essentially the craft of the PM that both recognizes product development as a systemic (or holistic) issue as well as planning as a dynamic evolving process. With an emphasis on the "ing" (or the movement) part as opposed to "a plan" (to be blindly followed).
By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I'm happy to engage and interact. If I can be of further utility to you or your organization in getting better at working with product development, I am available for part-time advisory, consulting or contract-based engagements.
Rodrigo, what strikes me most about Faye's methodology is the gardening metaphor. It’s a refreshing perspective that sheds light on the necessity of nurturing not just the immediate tasks but the entire ecosystem surrounding a product. This holistic approach is crucial yet often overlooked in the hustle of ticking off deliverables. It’s a reminder that software products, much like gardens, require constant care and attention to their environment to thrive sustainably. This angle not only enriches our understanding of product management but also emphasises the importance of balance and foresight in the craft.