Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager
Written at Netscape in 1996 and still the most-quoted description of the job. Sets out the difference between owning the product and reacting to whoever asked last.
Writing on product work that we keep coming back to, gathered from across the internet.
Every title opens the original on the publisher’s own site. We point at this writing and credit the people who wrote it. We do not host it.
Written at Netscape in 1996 and still the most-quoted description of the job. Sets out the difference between owning the product and reacting to whoever asked last.
The origin of the three overlapping circles of business, technology and user experience. Eriksson is clear that the role lives in the intersection rather than owning any one circle, which is the nuance job descriptions tend to drop.
Adams argues that design judged on how a screenshot looks drifts away from the problem the work was meant to solve. What he offers instead is a sequence, starting from the job and the outcome and reaching the pixels last.
Covers the main categories of disability and what each implies for a page, using concrete examples rather than legal framing. A good first hour for a product manager who has never had to think about any of it.
Four value statements and seventeen signatures, and the whole thing fits on one screen. Reading the original is worth the two minutes, because nearly every argument about agile turns out to be about the second half of each line rather than the first.
The twelve principles sitting behind the four values, covering delivery cadence, sustainable pace, technical excellence and self organising teams. More practical than the manifesto itself, and the source most later frameworks quietly draw from.
A starting point for anyone new to the term, covering what discovery decides, who does it and how a continuous habit differs from a project. Good to hand to a stakeholder who expects discovery to finish on a date.