Share this page!

John Cutler Profile picture
Twitter logo
4 Dec, 13 tweets, 4 min read
Thread'o'threads

Friend: "Maybe you would have finished the book if you weren't tweeting all the time"

Not all wrong.

1/13 A short lesson in thinking about horizons/scope

2/13 Debt, drag, and illusions...

3/13 Roadmaps and roadmapping

4/13 The value of sprints...

5/13 Playing the telephone game

6/13 More on the 1-3s approach...

7/13 Earning the respect of developers as a product manager...

8/13 Change agency tips (without burning out)...

9/13 Resistance to visualizing work...

10/13 Healthier teams ... what do we see?

11/13 Feels like faster ... is faster...

12/13 Come common org loops...

13/13 NPS and stubbornness

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with John Cutler

John Cutler Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @johncutlefish

John Cutler Profile picture
6 Dec
the problem with distinctions like "discover vs deliver" is that they cloud the real issue.

IMHO...solve what constitutes a team and their decision/mandate scope first, and many of the other problems work themselves out.

Why? (1/n)
...take a team arguing about discovery vs. delivery.

What they *really* are arguing about is the clash of engineering team incentives, product manager incentives, and design team incentives.

....hmm...how do we keep THEM shipping while WE figure out the 'right things' (2/n)
design wants more time to do a good job, PdM is being pestered about how they'll solve the problem (and SHIP), and eng is told SHIP.

they proxy this dogmatic debates about what constitutes discovery and delivery, who does what, and how they can do MORE AT ONCE. So...(3/n)
Read 4 tweets
John Cutler Profile picture
15 Nov
It is about this time of year I recommend a “so what if we build nothing” exercise. It is always fascinating.

Gather a cross-functional group and pose the question “ok, so what if we stop building new stuff. We go into full maintenance mode. What happens?” 1/n
Initially ppl will be confused. They’ll joke about losing their job. Once the get over that, they get curious and start imagining.

Typically I prep with some kind of monthly/quarterly “scoreboard” or dashboard. “ok, what happens to this quarter after quarter?” 2/n
What numbers go up? Go down? More or less support cases? Fewer purchases? Fewer upgrades? Higher cost of acquisition? Lower tension? More churn? A competitor starts to creep up? What stagnates? When?

“Let’s start creating a timeline...” 3/n
Read 6 tweets
John Cutler Profile picture
9 Nov
#wardleymapping fans. I was about to make this list myself, but figured it would be more fun as a group activity. Care to add some?

WM help(s/ed) us decide to __________ instead of _________________ .
e.g.

change a team's mission from acting as a specialist walled garden to trying to spread that expertise across the company
use vendors for X,Y, and Z, and then spin up an internal team to act as a center of excellence for navigating those vendors/tools and abstracting the provider from the company.
Read 4 tweets
John Cutler Profile picture
4 Nov
A quick overview of a workshop we are running at @Amplitude_HQ with prospects/customers. It hits all the angles. We use @MiroHQ

1/n First we dig into the product promise and path to sustainable, differentiated growth...
2/n Then we take a quick look at competitive. Personally, I think that to "ignore the competition" it is important to understand the competition first. So we look at that...
3/n With that context, shift a bit to learn a super high level form of journey mapping. First we start with using an emotion wheel to get people ... well ... thinking about humans. And then we do a 30,000ft exercise with 5 key narratives...
Read 9 tweets
John Cutler Profile picture
3 Nov
One of the highest leverage things a company can do is to work cross-department to establish meaningful personas/narratives/JTBD/whatever-you-call-it.

If it is so high leverage, why do so few companies actually follow through? ... (1/n)
Utility. What is meaningful for day-to-day action for product development is often "too complex" to be meaningful for marketing and sales. Similarly, what helps marketing do their thing, is often not actionable for PD. (2/n)
Marketing will do just fine with a 1-3 "personas" and a rough sense of a journey map. They also focus on marketing "the gap". Meanwhile, product/design need to deal with all the subtleties and the present. The reality.

So what looks good on the surface (common artifacts)(3/n)
Read 5 tweets
John Cutler Profile picture
2 Nov
“Our developers just like to code so we can’t do X”

Lots to unpack here, but a couple thoughts:

1/n: Until anyone sees something work, they’ll opt for their comfort zone. We all do it.
2/n: If you’re asking developers to do X, but their department is incentivized around Y (e.g. shipping) .... sure, developers will want to avoid doing X
3/n: Sometimes it is the person saying “Our developers...” who doesn’t want to do X, or doesn’t want their reports to do X. They are the uncomfortable one!

Dig deeper. Find out what “the developers” really have to say
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @johncutlefish has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @johncutlefish!

Read all threads by @johncutlefish