Hello fellow punks!
Welcome to the 11 of you who have signed up for this since the last issue. It’s great to have you on board. Hopefully you’ll stick with me while I figure out what this newsletter is all about.
Here’s this week’s issue ⬇️
Someday this social media war is gonna to end...
I migrated this newsletter from Substack to Revue a while ago because Revue's deep integration with Twitter looked like a perfect way to build an audience.
I love Substack, but since I moved across my reader list has grown from a handful to nearly a thousand.
Now that Elon Musk has got his unpredictable hands on the Twitterverse tiller, though, it looks like Revue is going to be one of the first casualties.
So what does that mean for Product Punks?
Most likely I'll move back to Substack (I mean, why wouldn't I?). But one question it does raise, though, is the role these platforms play.
When I was a more prolific blogger, I jumped between writing on my own self-hosted blog (which nobody read) and writing for Medium (which got a lot more eyeballs on my content).
For me, there's a constant battle raging between the need to have control over my own content, and getting it in front of people who might be interested in it.
Over the last year I've built a sizeable following on Twitter, but Musk's chaotic takeover has proven that my following is built on sand.
And what does that mean for mine (and anyone else's) personal brand?
Like Teresa Torres says, you've got to know when you should play in someone else's playground and when you should stick to your own.
I haven't decided (yet) what the long-term future looks like for my online voice. I'm not going to delete my Twitter account tomorrow, but I'm definitely going to experiment with other, decentralised social media offerings like Mastodon where I can try and regain a bit of control.
If you're interested in joining me, you can find me here 👇
0 Posts, 2 Following, 1 Follower · The Punk PM | Talking about product management principles and resources | Writing the Product Punks newsletter | Lead product hedgehog @hedgehoglab
How to handle estimates as a PM 🔮
I've been working on a challenging fixed timescale project lately, which has got me thinking about the role estimates play in product management.
Humans are terrible at forecasts and estimates, but unless you're lucky enough to work for a truly agile product organisation, you'll always have to deal with them.
Earlier this week I published this thread with some pointers on how to handle them the right way 🔎
Estimates are always wrong.
But as a product manager, you can't get away from them.
Here's how to handle them the right way:
— Toby Rogers 🚀🤘 (@tobiasrogers)
Nov 3, 2022
My favourite tweets of the week 🐦
Most of the talk on Twitter this week has (unsurprisingly) been about the craziness surrounding Musk's takeover. There have still been a few interesting product management nuggets to pull out, though 🐦
Five values to help you become data-informed
Using data well is hard.
It's easier to talk up the latest tech or wrap ourselves up in its pretty promises, but those things don't make for better decisions.
Being truly data-informed comes down to internalizing a set of 5 simple yet exceedingly powerful values: 👇
— Julie Zhuo (@joulee)
Nov 3, 2022
Metrics are for seeing progress, not monitoring performance
Software metrics are for the team to see their progress - not for others to critique their performance.
— Dave Farley (@davefarley77)
Nov 3, 2022
Why Linear beats Jira
JIRA, Gitlab, Phabricator all suck but Linear doesn't.
As a PM, I've found ticket mgmt platforms to be a necessary evil.
Here's a breakdown of the product & why I think this the go-forward project/ticket mgmt + product development:
— Jen Yang-Wong (@Jenyangwong)
Nov 3, 2022
How company positioning and product positioning differ when you only have one product
If your company has only one product how does the company positioning differ from the product positioning? What happens when you have many products? Here's my thinking on that 1/
— April Dunford (@aprildunford)
Nov 2, 2022
A crowd-sourced list of the best books for product managers
I asked my paid newsletter subscribers what book most helped them become a better product manager.
Here are the top 10 most mentioned books (in order):
1. Inspired by Marty Cargan by @cagan
2. The Mom Test by @robfitz
3. Continuous Discovery Habits by @ttorres— Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan)
Nov 2, 2022
What I've been reading 📚
David Bowie is one of my all-time heroes. I was lucky enough to see him live in the mid-nineties, and he's always been someone I've looked up to as a creative.
This article from Creative Pool has some amazing lessons from one of pop culture's ultimate icons ⚡
David Bowie was a true renaissance man - a musician, actor, writer, artist, producer and more. His creative influence resonates as much today as it did when he was ‘Ziggy Stardust’...How Bowie approached his creative life, his influences......
Military leadership isn't all about command and control. It's about learning how to lead in the extraordinary complexity of war.
This post from agile-coach-turned-army-officer Dmytro Yarmak is insightful reading for anyone who's job it is to lead others 🪖
From agile coach to the military officer: breaking stereotypes about leadership in the army | by Dmytro Yarmak | agiledrive | Sep, 2022 | Medium — medium.com
Every Ukrainian has their own story of how they met the full-scale war and how it changed them. As for me, on February 23 at 4 pm I was at the office of one of our agency’s clients. I spoke with the…
As a tech product manager who's always struggled with distraction, I'm acutely aware of the impact technology plays on our ability to focus.
This article from This Too Shall Grow has some excellent actionable advice on how to stave off digital overstimulation 🤯
From Scrambled Brain to Sunny Side Up: How to Protect your Attention and Fight Digital Overstimulation — This Too Shall Grow — thistooshallgrow.com
You might be familiar with this common productivity trap: making use of
every moment of your life, leveraging every teeny tiny break to do more,
only to end up feeling burnt out and with your brain all foggy. Let’s look
at attention, memory, multitasking, and how to protect your brain against
digital overstimulation.
That’s it!
See you next week (probably).
Toby
The Punk PM
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