PM Snacks #20 / 🤯 Roadmaps making you fail, being an editor & learning to read books like a pro

Olivier Courtois

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Jan 21 · 2 min read

Hey there 👋

1️⃣ Most roadmaps are setting up their product teams to fail • Sept 2019 • 5 min read
Last week, I had the chance to talk in french about roadmapping (replay): 1/ the process is the important part: it enables alignment in the team, 2/ it is a communication tool, you should over-communicate, 3/ it’s not a plan, you rarely get everything right the first time cos a roadmap is packed with assumptions. To go further on this, learn why time commitments are not a good idea, and discover a way to create a roadmap without it in this thread #strategy #execution

2️⃣ Why companies should have Product Editors, not Product Managers • Aug 2012 • 3 min read
Oldie but goodie. I love how this framing spotlight not only the importance of saying no to most ideas, but also meticulously saying yes, to assemble a coherent story (= having a vision, an angle) #culture

3️⃣ How to ask the right questions in Jobs to be Done interviews • Nov 2020 • 10 min read
Wrapping-up our series on Product Discovery, let’s deep dive into the “job to be done” interviews. (New for you? Here is a good introduction). Main take aways of the article: 1/ spend way more time that you would first think on the context, 2/ use a script to thoroughly map all stages, 3/ go off script to chase the story the customer is offering you #discovery #userinterviews

4️⃣ 7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design • Feb 2018 • 8 min read
No designer in your team? Learn some tips to produce better interfaces through detailed examples by the team behind the “Refactoring UI” book. But seriously, it’s a job, get a designer to step up your game in that matter #ux #ui

5️⃣ How I read books: setting up a new system • Dec 2020 • 7 min read
My younger self used to read as many books as he could to make giant leaps (=win a few years of wisdom, or so I thought). Now, I wait to have a specific problem before picking the best content to learn from. But I’m still very far from the process described in this article… my method revolves around: 1/ mind mapping the concepts, 2/ “teaching” others about it in order to internalise it #managingyourself

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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