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John Cutler
@johncutlefish
, 6 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
“Our process is broken!” “We need to FIX role definition!” “We need to figure out the role of product vs. design!”

Quick exercise...

1. Ask the team to blurt out “work” from the last six months. It can help to use a super simple X and Y axis (like Size and Complexity)
2. You’ll quickly notice two things.
A) a lot of the work is related. Small things link to bigger things
B) there’s disagreement about some items.

Note these things.
3. Group work that feels similar. Resist the temptation to overthink this. Have a conversation about why the work feels similar. Most teams end up with 15+ “shapes” or work.

E.g.
“Totally new product, new persona, unknown tech, dependencies across company”
“P0 Prod Issue”
4. List out the shapes. And then capture how you approach these things right now. How does the team collaborate? How does the work flow? What happens when?

Try to stick to what is happening now. If it is vague and all over the place, indicate that (hopefully w/o judgement)
5. Now brainstorm things that could be improved wrt how you address this shape of work (based on what you have observed in the past)
6. And with that, hopefully you have an improved shared language about “the work”. You’ve designed a lightweight taxonomy for the work. And you have some working agreements.

Experiment with some of the improvements.

Inspect/adapt.
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More from @johncutlefish see all

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John Cutler
@johncutlefish
10 #PMTips

1) It is not about your ideas. Create a framework/model that elicits and prioritizes the most promising ideas

2) Bring customers/users to the team vs. being a proxy

3) Don’t slip into being a scrum master/project manager. It will hurt you and the team
4) Ask how you can improve the teams decision velocity and decision quality (instead of falling into sole decision maker mode)

5) Make sure anyone on the team can trace their daily tasks through to the 1-3 year bets of the company (without glossing over uncertainty)
6) You do not manage the team (repeat 10x). The team is not your “resource” to optimize. You are a team member.

7) Become an expert at experiment design and understanding the impact of the team’s work. Real outcomes are the ultimate motivator
Read 5 tweets
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John Cutler
@johncutlefish
Sorry to do this, but I have to figure this out once and for all, and the only way is to actually tweet it.

Tweet 1
... right before I use the (+) button which I expect will add an empty tweet.
...ok, I have used the (+) button.

We are in tweet 2 -- I am pretty sure. Now I am going to click on "Tweet all" and see what happens. I am 99% confident this will work as a thread (making this tweet 1.2)
So now I am going to try this and see what happens. How did I get here? I clicked on "Add Another Tweet".

This is where things get dicey. Does this become a child tweet to 1.2 ? Or does it become a child tweet to 1.2's parent (Tweet 1)

We will see.
Read 3 tweets
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John Cutler
@johncutlefish
hurry hurry ... create small teams

(meanwhile, teams are highly dependent on each other, #design and #PdM, #testing, #ops shared and maxed out)

"why isn't this working?"
...."I know why! We need project portfolio management. It is a planning problem. And another layer of human load balancers!"

(meanwhile, kingdoms grows, dependencies obscured, people 'deal')

"this is a low accountability environment!"
..."We've got to fix this. OKRs! Fix the managers. Even BETTER quarter packing and tetris"

(meanwhile, passionate problems solvers are leaving, burnt out, sad, and hardened souls with the right incentives are digging in for the long haul)

"we have to figure out how to innovate"
Read 5 tweets

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Scott Berkun
@berkun
1. When designers get frustrated working with people who don't understand design, the tempting wish is to CONVERT THEM, ideally in one fell swoop, to GET IT. But this rarely works. Here's why. #design #ux
2. Persuasion works best on the other person's terms, not the designer's. You have to put aside how much they don't know and start somewhere small, in their worldview, where there is a clear problem, in their language, that design can help them solve.
3. It's the difference between "you don't understand this big important abstract thing" (what they hear) and "problem X is important to you and I will help you solve it". Which is a better-designed way to get what you want?
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Lindsay Ellis
@thelindsayellis
Been thinking on this for a while. John is my bud, but I wanted to add this as people may take the wrong message from it. Imposter syndrome isn't a question of action (obviously if you write words you're a "writer" in the most literal sense), but of quality and legitimacy. THREAD
Defining “imposter syndrome” as “the fear that you will be exposed as a fraud” is one aspect of the condition, but a bit reductive as it tends to focus on the “fraud” part rather than a general feeling of inadequacy with regard to peers.
Scalzi’s personal example, as he notes, has much to do with class and privilege, but it has just as much to do with how you were raised, and as an adult it’s difficult to rewire those thought patterns, and it's hard to speak to that if you've never experienced imposter syndrome.
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Jonathan Pritchard 🧠🎙️✒️
@the_pritchard
How Magicians #Design A Trick, And Real-World Applications

Design Thinking is all the rage lately, and it's great to see the general population waking up to its power but y'all are late to the party.

Magicians have been doing this whole "design thinking" thing for 10,000+ yrs.
Let me pull the curtain back and show you exactly how we go about making the impossible happen. It's a very logical process that gets phenomenal results, but it's been shrouded in secrecy for thousands of years.

First Question: What effect do I want to have on my audience?
This is powerful focus.

Out of everything that is possible, what SPECIFICALLY do I want the audience to experience? Do I want them to believe I can fly? Do I want them to think I can make tigers appear out of nowhere? Or, do I want them to think I can read minds (my specialty)?
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Cheryl Platz
@muppetaphrodite
It's time for my 2018 #design recap! Less writing, more @ideaplatz speaking and podcasts, and a job transition to boot. I expanded my public talks to include not just VUI but conversational UI, artificial intelligence, and improv for creativity. Here's my year... 1/
My first 2018 post was aimed at #VUI #design job seekers. Rather than reply to a series of 1:1 inquiries, I look for patterns to inspire published pieces. A VERY common question: "Any tips for my Amazon/Google/etc voice design interview?" #voiceFirst medium.com/@muppetaphrodi… 2/
In February 2018, I had the honor (+challenge!) of following @MrAlanCooper on the #Ixd18 mainstage. In my early days on the #EchoLook, I daydreamed about speaking to @ixdconf attendees about that product #design process. A literal #ux dream come true. 3/ vimeo.com/254533851
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Mistress Matisse
@mistressmatisse
I have to say that, as bad as the situation is for sex workers right now, I have never seen so much positive journalism about us in mainstream media as I have the last few years, and it’s giving me tiny shreds of hope to cling to.
For perspective: I’ve seen more positive articles about sex work in the last six months then I did the entire first 15 years I was a sex worker. I really cannot emphasize how dramatically this has changed.
Media is not in and of itself a changing of norms or changing of the laws, but simply knowing that there is an issue here and it has a NAME is important.
Read 3 tweets
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foone
@Foone
Last night's project: Pulling apart this MDT-9100-386 terminal to get it working properly again. I bought it in supposedly working condition but it won't power on.
It's still got the radio unit on it, which I don't need (and can't use). time to pull that off.
It uses a custom connector, which is odd. I'd have expected it to be just serial or something.
It's got a surprising number of connectors on the bottom.
SCSI(!), dual serial, parallel, and what looks like a joystick port? That's got to be something else.
Read 135 tweets

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