This Week in Product – Jan. 25, 2019

Greatest Hits

Hi, I’m a product manager, you may know me from my greatest hits: “Yes, that’s on the roadmap for Q3,” “No, these are just the mockups, not the finished design,” and “PRODUCT, not PROJECT.” https://t.co/auVavnhvUn

— Veronica Belmont (@Veronica) January 20, 2019

We love a good playlist, especially if it’s one that speaks to our sensibilities. But sometimes playing the same tracks over and over again can get old. Veronica Belmont of Adobe Spark pulls at our heartstrings with this tweet — we, too, are sick of being broken records about PMing.

Actually Actionable Research

Women in Product, our friend and special content partner for the ProductCraft Conference, just released an advocacy study on the state of women in product. Why should you read another data report? Well, first of all, because the numbers are actually eye-opening. What’s unique about this, though, is that in addition to just numbers, WIP shares community best practices for those who want to move the needle in gender equity in their product organization. A great example of qualitative research informing quantitative data.

Product Dogma

My experience in a few product teams in different places recently makes me wonder if we’re going through a phase of ‘scientism’ https://t.co/lSBlkC4CCP (thread…)

— Ben Sauer (@bensauer) January 23, 2019

A truly fascinating thread about a trend that we’re likewise watching/are disturbed by. Is data collection causing blindness? Are product biases failing PMs and devs alike? Unusually thoughtful discussion in the Twittersphere about the perils of thinking we already know everything.

Finally, We Have an Answer

There’s more to learn from people that don’t use your product rather than the people who do.

— Norgard (@BrianNorgard) January 22, 2019

We love Brian Norgard (former CPO of Tinder) for his definitive proclamations. He’s like the czar of product (of course, you can take the czar’s words with a good dose of skepticism). But we’ve been wondering about this question, and our own debaters thought that there’s probably more nuance when you seek product feedback. Nuance is so pesky though, amiright?

The OG Tool

Funny how much of tech and finance would grind to a halt without CSVs https://t.co/uFvZaFH0SH

— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) January 22, 2019

We constantly talk about the proliferation of product tools and how lucky we are to live in an age of dedicated software for everything we need to build and manage. But let’s be real – we’re still using a lot of sheets, and I mean A LOT. CSV is like the pen and paper of software; you can make far fancier things, but there’ll be times when it’s just going to be all you want.