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To Get Good At Product Management You Need to Put in the Reps

Toby Rogers
Toby Rogers
@tobiasrogers
Hello fellow punks! 
Welcome to the 6 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 ⬇️

Lets get this product into shape...
As a product manager, you can read all the books and blog posts you want, but if you’re not regularly getting new stuff into your users’ hands, then you’re never really moving forwards. 
Product management is something you learn by doing.
the product manager who ships every week is learning a lot quicker than the PM who ships once a quarter. 
Like John Cutler says, reps matter:
John Cutler
"more junior" product manager at popular tech company known for their product

"In the last year, I've been involved in 3 major releases, and lots of lots of experiments...maybe 8-12"

senior PM at large enterprise

"Last year was basically a 1.5 large releases"

reps matter
There’s a reason companies like Meta encourage new engineering hires to push to production on their first day. 
The proof of success for an idea isn’t what your UXR interviews tell you—it’s what your real customers tell you when they use (or more often don’t use) your product. 
Toby Rogers 🚀🤘
No product survives first contact with its users.

If you think you've won by shipping, you need to think again.

The first version of your product is just a step towards building something your customers actually want.
It’s not about moving fast and breaking things, though.
It’s about upping the tempo at which you cycle through your OODA Loop so you can make sure what you’re learning compounds quickly. 
If you just release to production once a quarter, you’re only able to iterate on what you’ve learned every three months at best.
As product managers, it’s our job to test ideas. The only way to do that properly is by showing them to people. 
The quicker we can do that, the better.
What I've been reading 📚
No start-up is perfect. They’re all broken in different ways. What matters is what you choose to fix, and what you choose to leave.
This article by Erez Druk has a great approach for deciding what to worry about in what order 😬
Every Startup is a Little Bit Broken
Every Startup is a Little Bit Broken
Every startup in existence is broken in multiple ways. Anyone who tells you otherwise about their startup is either delusional, lying, or both. In its early days, Paypal ignored thousands of customer support requests every week as angry customers piled up. When customers discovered the corporate phone number and started calling 24/7, Paypal disconnected it. They cared deeply about their customers but simply couldn’t handle that particular fire at that particular moment. The very best startups of
www.erezdruk.com
In product we focus a lot on features, but what really matters is position. Before we try and figure out what we want to build, we need to understand where our product sits in relation to everything else.
This article from Basecamp‘s Ryan Singer is a few years old, but it’s still a great explanation of the kind of trade-offs you’ll need to make 👇
Position, Position, Position! - Signal v. Noise
The mantra in real estate is “location, location, location.” You can upgrade kitchens and bathrooms all day, but if you’re in the wrong neighborhood it won’t sell. The same is true for products. Fo…
m.signalvnoise.com
Dual track Agile has long been my preferred framework for building new products. This post from Mind The Product is an excellent primer for anyone looking to embrace the messiness of continuous discovery and delivery 💡
Dual-Track Agile: Why messy leads to innovation - Mind the Product
Dual-Track Agile: Why messy leads to innovation - Mind the Product
Dual-Track Agile is an IT development methodology where figuring out what to build is as important as the building process. You start with a discovery track to find out if a product idea is good and if it makes sense to build. Successful findings from the discovery track are added to the backlog of the delivery track. […] Read more »
www.mindtheproduct.com
That’s it! 
See you next week (probably). 
Toby 
The Punk PM 
P.S. Feel free to share this with anyone else you think would find it interesting.
I’m still playing around with ideas for content and format for this newsletter, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Go ahead and shoot me an email with ways you think I can make it better.
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Toby Rogers
Toby Rogers @tobiasrogers

Product management musings from your favourite Punk PM

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