A Manifesto for Pragmatic Product

I’ve written a book called New Wave Product, it’s a manifesto for a more pragmatic approach to product management.

Three things motivated me to write the book:

Services. I work in the service sector as do most of my professional network. We don’t gather raw materials, we don’t manufacture products, we provide services. And yet my role is ‘product manager’ and I’m helping ‘product’ teams. Dissonance between product language and service sector causes unnecessary headaches. It’s time to figure out what ‘product’ means in a world of services.
People. Product models and frameworks are great at deriving insights from data or creating objectives and key results. But they don’t acknowledge the messy reality of decisions being made amongst groups of people in large organisations. The gap between the hard skills of the popular models and the soft skills needed to negotiate decisions and align people is huge. It’s time to make space for people and feelings in product management.
Pragmatism. Linked to the above, junior and mid-level product managers hoover-up models and frameworks from product thought leaders. The models are great but normally assume perfect conditions for the job and an organisation geared around the product management profession. This rarely exists and leads to disillusioned product people feeling as though they can’t do their job properly. It’s time to reassure product people that imperfect conditions and gradual change an improvement is the job