Author of Product in Service: A Manifesto for Pragmatic Product Management ¦ Founder of the Product in Service: Leaders Network ¦ Director of Product and Strategy for Herd Consulting ¦ LinkedIn

This site is a collection of my field notes: reflections, insights, and observations from my work in product management, strategy, and digital transformation. From product leadership to systems thinking, I explore the challenges and opportunities of working in complex services. Explore posts on product management, strategy, leadership, digital transformation, and a little bit about coffee from 2012-present.

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• Jul 26, 2025

  Knowledge Metabolism

• Jul 19, 2025

  My Learning System 2025

• Jun 12, 2025

  My book: 'Product in Service: A Manifesto for Pragmatic Product Management'

• Mar 25, 2025

  Good Training Leads to Lightbulb Moments that Create Change

• Jan 29, 2025

  Professional Pivot: Director of Strategy and Transformation

• Aug 26, 2024

  Introducing New Wave Product

• Mar 23, 2024

  Product Leaders for Good WhatsApp Community

• Oct 10, 2023

  My Social Media Triad for 2024: Substack Journal, GitHub Pages Blog, and LinkedIn Network

• Jun 25, 2023

  The Science of Strategy

• Sep 13, 2022

  Scott Colfer's Guide to Making Coffee at Home

• Jul 27, 2022

  Choosing, Buying and Setting up a Rancilio Silvia Miss Silvia Espresso Machine

• Jul 22, 2022

  3 Tips for your Gaggia Classic (after I owned one for 10 years)

• Jul 10, 2022

  Scrambled Eggs

• May 30, 2022

  Notes on the Service Owner role

• Mar 3, 2022

  The next ten-years of digital government

• Feb 27, 2022

  So you're a Product Manager in Government

• Feb 10, 2022

  Digital Folk Tales

• Feb 6, 2022

  Lessons learned from six-years leading a community of practice

• Oct 12, 2021

  A Beginner's Guide to Porter and Stout

• Sep 20, 2021

  5 Tips for Successful Internal Platforms

• Aug 16, 2021

  What type of product manager are you?

• Aug 9, 2021

  Why I'm not frustrated with GDS' formal discovery/alpha/beta phases

• Apr 3, 2021

  Do you know an unsung hero of a product manager?

• Dec 27, 2020

  2020 Highlights

• Dec 24, 2020

  Ten Year Retrospective: 2010-2020

• Dec 14, 2020

  Book Update: The Beginning of the End

• Sep 27, 2020

  How to make espresso with 9barista

• Aug 23, 2020

  Book Update: The End of the Beginning

• May 11, 2020

  Book Update: Pride and Prejudice and Moths

• Mar 30, 2020

  Book Update: Maelstrom

• Jan 6, 2020

  2020 Vision: Be a good dad, write a book

• Dec 14, 2019

  My favourite books, films, TV, and videogames in 2019

• Sep 1, 2019

  Product Leadership

• Aug 5, 2019

  How I blog

• Jun 19, 2019

  How blogging helped me become a better product leader

• Apr 8, 2019

  Who's got time for digital transformation?

• Mar 20, 2019

  How do we measure the value of software features of public services?

• Mar 19, 2019

  How do we measure value without profit?

• Mar 17, 2019

  Digital transformation needs business models

• Feb 16, 2019

  Espresso yourself: eight-years of making espresso at home, in one post

• Feb 12, 2019

  Be prepared for the emotional impact of introducing psychological safety

• Jan 3, 2019

  Associate Product Manager Program Blueprint

• Jan 2, 2019

  What is product management in government?

• Dec 12, 2018

  My favourite films, books, TV, videogames, comics, and places to eat in 2018

• Nov 17, 2018

  Choosing a coffee brewer

• Sep 30, 2018

  Product roadmaps and me

• Sep 25, 2018

  Another reason why product managers are not like CEOs

• May 14, 2018

  What is an end-to-end public service?

• Mar 3, 2018

  How to brew coffee using an Aeropress

• Mar 2, 2018

  Leadership dimensions: value management

• Jan 29, 2018

  Leadership dimensions

• Jan 21, 2018

  Coffee places: Prufrock at Present, Shoreditch

• Jan 20, 2018

  Coffee places: Flat White, Soho

• Jan 12, 2018

  Personal pivot. WTF is leadership?

• Jan 1, 2018

  My favourite books, films and videogames in 2017

• Dec 24, 2017

  Don't make espresso at home, probably

• Oct 8, 2017

  How to brew French Press coffee

• Sep 17, 2017

  The product manager is dead. Long live the value manager.

• Sep 4, 2017

  How to brew filter coffee

• Aug 19, 2017

  10 experiments you can try to improve discovery

• Aug 15, 2017

  10 things we learned about discovery in government

• Aug 14, 2017

  Run a retrospective on your discovery

• Jun 3, 2017

  The Agile Manifesto for Public Services

• Apr 26, 2017

  The Five Stages of Applying the Digital Service Standard to Technical Stuff

• Dec 27, 2016

  Discovery

• Nov 14, 2016

  Product Managers: glue code for insights, not mini CEOs.

• Apr 17, 2016

  Digital by Default Prehistory

• Apr 9, 2016

  Trying GitHub Pages and Jekyll

• Feb 28, 2016

  Technical Product Management for the Non-Technical

• Jan 19, 2016

  Waterfall, Scrum or Kanban?

• Nov 17, 2015

  Product in Public Services

• Oct 17, 2015

  DevOps for Product Managers

• Jul 23, 2015

  Empathy and Digital Transformation

• Jan 30, 2015

  UKGovcamp 15

• May 20, 2014

  Hacker, hustler or hipster?

• Nov 20, 2013

  Great businesses grow from conversations

• Sep 20, 2013

  Business Model Canvas

• May 18, 2013

  Manifesto for Agile Software Development

• Jun 5, 2012

  Lean Startup for Product Managers