Test-n-Tell.com - making product decisions

  There are multiple ways to describe a culture. Today let's think about taking vs writing cultures, or we also could call it meetings vs memos culture. 

Recently I was reminded how old product management is . Well, kinda. We don't have an exact date the discipline was born. Maybe it happened alongside the first industrialisation attempts, maybe later, but no later than marketing established itself and early brand managers wear their hats. One is certain - product management is not new. How then we still call it unestablished?

  Some time ago I was asked to describe an average, good or great product manager. What is the difference between them? The answer might be slightly more tricky than it appears. 

  Product management is a diverse role that attracts people from different backgrounds. It's fair to say that anyone could be a product manager. In the series of articles, I've described the most common transitions and offered a few tips for aspiring PMs. 

People are coming to product management from all sorts of roles, sales and marketing not being the exceptions. Coming from strictly business roles such as marketing or sales, people usually bring their unique perspectives into the new role. 

  The year was 2015 and everyone was into startups. Incubators were spawning left, right and centre. Coaches appeared out of nowhere teaching people about fundraising, product-market fit and million-dollar exits. It was hard to resist the hype. So I didn't. I also dreamt of my own startup. How cool would it be to work on something you believe in, on your own vision. Luckily I didn't immediately quit my job and run to incorporate a new company. No, I was a product manager for a while to know that more than 90% of all ideas and startups fail. And I also knew the top reasons why startups fail . I was determined to avoid the most common mistakes and "fail safely". 

  We all know the concept of technical debt . Yes, those are all the things we avoid doing until something breaks. At least with a technical debt, we can blame developers but there is another kind of debt that's purely on us and that's product debt.