People hate product managers, find out why & more / PM Snacks #44

1️⃣ Why do people hate product managers?
Aug 2021 • 4 min read • #selfimprovement
If you are lucky, you might have just enjoyed a vacation and you’re well-rested… Keep calm for this breaking news: 1/ some people hate us, 2/ for good reasons. Learn more about our sins and what to do to avoid them. I’ve been an overstepper at times until I learned to empower the team (this article from PM Snacks #35 might help) & can still be a complexifier (when I’m passionate about a product). What about you?

2️⃣ Execution at Facebook
Aug 2021 • 9 min read • #execution
Ben (PM @ Facebook) created a viral thread saying that in 1 year, he had not created a single ticket and that most project management was done by engineers. Most PMs loved this vision, others saw this as proof that “PMs don’t do anything”. In this article, the author goes one step further to unpack what it is to build at Fb. Spoiler alert: it’s more nuanced that a post on social media. A takeaway is, the stack-rank of areas a PM can uniquely add value to: 1/ Roadmapping, 2/ Product decisions, 3/ Prioritization, 4/ Escalations, 5/ Seeking approvals, 6/ Communication, 7/ Project Mgmt, 8/ Experimentation

3️⃣ How to Draw a Wireframe (Even if You Can’t Draw)
Jun 2021 • 5 min read • #design #framing
Wireframes are one of the best tools (other than simple text) to frame ideas, iterate & improve them. If you don’t feel capable, this article should help. To go deeper, you should definitely read “The back of the napkin” (a very influential book for me).

4️⃣ How I experience the web today
Aug 2021 • 1 min read • #design #fun #communication
Even if you haven’t clicked this link yet, you have already experienced it, trust me! This absurd website helps to measure how broken the web is. Can we do better? Another reason why I’m sharing this with you, is to illustrate the power of
1/ Examples to get your point across
2/ Wireframes instead of high level graphics to better frame ideas. Don’t know how to draw them? Read the previous article :)

I’m Olivier Courtois, a product maker for 10y+, currently freelance, coach& Startup advisor, former VP Product comet & Product Director ManoMano.

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