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Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Product Management

Roadmap Outcomes, not Features

September 4, 2024

Roadmaps should be outcomes, not features. What customer or business problem do you want to solve, and what does it look like when you’ve solved it? An outcome roadmap isn’t full of things you’ll do. It’s full of the things that happened because of the things you did.

I’ve long been a fan of problem roadmaps instead of feature roadmaps. In a problem roadmap, you don’t list features and ship dates. It gives you a lot more flexibility in how to solve a problem. It doesn’t tie you to specific things you’ll ship on specific dates so that you can respond...

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Product Management

Different roadmaps for different folks

September 2, 2024

Your customers need fewer details than your co-workers. Your product organization requires a different level of detail than your sales and marketing teams. The people working on other parts of your product need more detail than those working on other products. And the members of your product team need specific details that no one else does.

overly-complicated street map

This is a common failure mode of roadmaps. You spend a lot of time crafting the perfect roadmap slide and then share it with everyone. Product management won’t let sales share...

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Management & Leadership

Micromanaging and competence

July 2, 2024

Too many leaders are so afraid of micromanaging that they become completely hands off.

But giving instruction to build competence is not micromanagement. Neither is providing feedback. Avoiding instruction or feedback because you fear the micromanager label does a disservice to your employee.

If I’m driving with Frank and I say he should check his mirror more often, that sounds like obvious micromanagement. But what if I told you that Frank is my nephew and has only been driving for a week?

The context is important. Now I’m not micromanaging, I’m giving instruction to...

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Management & Leadership

My productivity operating system

June 24, 2024

How do you get things done? How do you decide what needs to be done? An operating system that gives you a repeatable process can be the difference between a productive day and a day wasted reacting to whatever comes up.

Here’s the operating system I use to organize my work. I’ve taught this to others who have found this system effective.

Vision

It starts with a vision. What big thing are you trying to accomplish? Imagine that a year from now you’re successful at something. What do you imagine that you accomplished? It’s hard to plan if you don’t have something to plan toward.

The vision isn’t some...

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Management & Leadership

Great product managers own the outcomes

May 14, 2024

A product manager complained that marketing was asking for a marketing strategy for his product. He didn’t want to do it. “Why should I have to do their job?”

I had a few bits of advice.

1. Are you failing them?

If marketing can’t write a GTM strategy for your product, they probably don’t understand the product well enough. How strong are your product materials?

How are your PRDs, customer profiles, research summaries, one pagers, FAQs, or whatever your...

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Product Management

Too Big To Fail

April 9, 2024

Another risk that comes with overfunding a new idea at a large company is that it becomes a must-win idea. It can’t fail.

Failure is an important part of innovation. Not all ideas are good ones. Ideas that aren’t winning need to die. The company needs to prune them so they can put energy into something else.

When you put a giant team on a nascent idea, you can’t let it fail. Sunk-cost thinking drives you to keep things going because you’ve already invested so much. Politically, the backers of the idea need it to keep going so they don’t have to admit failure. And if you’ve told partners,...

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Recently Written

Roadmap Outcomes, not Features (Sep 4)
Drive success by roadmapping the outcomes you'll create instead of the features you'll deliver.
Different roadmaps for different folks (Sep 2)
The key to effective roadmapping? Different views for different needs.
Micromanaging and competence (Jul 2)
Providing feedback or instruction can be seen as micromanagement unless you provide context.
My productivity operating system (Jun 24)
A framework for super-charging productivity on the things that matter.
Great product managers own the outcomes (May 14)
Being a product manager means never having to say, "that's not my job."
Too Big To Fail (Apr 9)
When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn't have room to fail. But failing is an important part of innovation. If you can't let it fail, it can't succeed.
Go small (Apr 4)
The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.
Start with a Belief (Apr 1)
You can't use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.

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