Blog
Short, specific write-ups from live engagements: what I tried, what it cost, and what I'd do differently.
The three are not interchangeable and they fix different problems. A blunt guide to which instrument fits which stall — including the cases where the honest answer is that you need none of them.
The skill that got you hired as a PM is not the skill that keeps you booked. What actually changes when you go independent, how the first three clients arrive, and the honest case for not doing it.
Three words used interchangeably for three different purchases. What each one owns, what you get at the end, and the questions that reveal which you're really about to hire.
Most PM hiring loops test presentation skill and produce confident mis-hires. A four-stage process that tests judgement instead, the scorecard to run it with, and the false negatives it will save you from.
A bad north star doesn't fail loudly — the number goes up and the business doesn't. The test that kills most candidate metrics, and what to do when the honest answer is that you need two.
The reframe is worth everything and the orthodoxy is worth almost nothing. How to use JTBD without losing three weeks to arguing about whether a job statement is correctly formed.
Teresa Torres' structure is the fastest way to see when a team has jumped from outcome straight to solution. It also decays into decoration within two months if you treat it as documentation.
Nobody publishes numbers, so here's the structure instead: the three pricing models, the arithmetic that makes a day rate comparable to a salary, and what a cheap engagement actually costs you.
Most discovery advice assumes consumer traffic volumes and users you can talk to freely. B2B has neither. What actually works when your sample is twelve accounts and your users are behind an account manager.
A working guide to the product management frameworks worth knowing — grouped by the job they do, with the failure mode of each. Teams rarely fail at picking a framework. They fail at applying one.
A product management process framework that survives contact with a real company — what each stage owes the next, where processes actually break, and how much of it you need at your stage.
Most PM ladders describe responsibilities. The real difference between levels is what kind of ambiguity you're trusted to absorb — and which of the three hard transitions you're standing in front of.
A strategy long enough to hide in is a strategy nobody can act on. The five things that belong on the page, the two that don't, and the test that tells you whether yours is real.
RICE works, and it fails in one specific place. How to score each term honestly, why the arithmetic lends false authority to a guessed number, and the two fixes that make the output survive a stakeholder meeting.
The gap between PM and senior PM isn't output — it's evidence of judgement. The four artefacts a promotion committee is actually looking for, and how to build them in two quarters.
PLG is a go-to-market model, not a product philosophy — which is why so many teams adopt the vocabulary and none of the mechanics. What the term means, what it requires, and the products it doesn't suit.
The four signals that founder-led product has run out, what the role has to own on day one, and why hiring the title before the function exists is the most expensive mistake in this decision.
The questions that actually get asked in PM interviews, grouped by the skill they probe, with the difference between a weak and a strong answer — written from the side of the table that does the hiring.
The patterns fake door tests actually take in a live product, what each one can establish, and why Dropbox and Zappos — cited in every example roundup — were not fake door tests at all.
A fake door test ships the entrance and not the room, so you find out who wants in before you pay for the furniture. How to run one, what it can't tell you, and how not to burn trust.
A clickable prototype gets a decision in one meeting. A 12-page spec gets comments. Here's when I still write the spec anyway.
What I actually do in month one — before touching the roadmap, before reorganising anyone, and before anybody asks me for a strategy deck.