11 ways to avoid Analysis Paralysis as a Product Manager

Nick Banner
Agile Insider
Published in
5 min readJan 22, 2023

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Analysis paralysis and how to avoid it in Product management
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Earlier today as I was watching an episode of She-Ra with my daughter on Netflix when I noticed the following dialogue:

“Bad things are going to happen. That’s life. You can let it paralyze you or you can roll with it. Figure out the things you can.”

The heroes had spent most of the episode trying to decide on the best course of action in order to re-capture a strategic tower. The problem was that they could not find the best way, that would cover every failed scenario. Then more heroes (stakeholders) showed up for the planning (meeting) and it all started looking like a real-world meeting that went the wrong way.

In the article that follows I am going to try to explain what is analysis paralysis (or overthinking). The common root causes of analysis paralysis, and most importantly, how to avoid overthinking and be more productive. I am going to put it in the frame of Product Management, but I strongly believe that “overthinking” and its solutions can be applied to every problem. Product related or not.

What is Analysis Paralysis?

What analysis paralysis looks like
Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash

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Nick Banner
Agile Insider

Nick Banner is the alias of Nikolaos Chatzigeorgiadis (PO/PM, PSPO I), a greek name pronounceable properly only by Klingons