The Anti-BS Product Guide

How to avoid 10 common challenges PMs face every day

Doing product management is anything but easy. Everyone has a different understanding of it. Inevitably, confusion takes over, and we end up doing nothing but manage the product soundly.

Let’s start by talking about wrong perceptions of success:

• Maximizing the team’s velocity

• Delivering features on time and scope

• Pleasing business stakeholders

• Fulfilling sales promises

• Enabling what customers want

In the short term, that may help you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get promoted by fostering the above. I’ve already done so and received a 30% salary increase once. Yet, in the medium term, I couldn’t connect that to creating value for customers and the business.

This episode of Untrapping Product Teams focuses on the antidote to drive value when everyone distracts you. I will share with you common bullshit management traps and how you can overcome them.

• Free Subscribers: Overview of common bullshit management traps

• Premium Subscribers: Detailed insights on how to overcome bullshit management

Those who want to go the extra mile can get my Anti-BS Product Management Course. It helps you defeat nonsense and stand out among most PMs. As I love equipping people to defeat BS management, here’s a 30 USD discount valid until September 10th, voucher: NO-MORE-BS

Shall we rock it together?

Product Management vs. Bullshit Management

What’s product management?

Try asking ten people. I bet you get ten different answers.

My definition is simple: Product Management is the art of uncovering what drives value, enabling teams to create solutions that improve customers’ lives and benefit the business.

In short, it’s about having a way of exchanging value between customers and the business. The biggest challenge for product people face is filtering out noise while following signs.

Given all the distractions you face, it’s easy to end up doing anything but product management. That’s when our nemesis, Bullshit Management, takes over.

You may wonder what’s Bullshit Management. That’s the art of doing things that create no value but drain your energy. The more bullshit you handle, the less value you can create.

Now, I state the obvious. I believe too many product people spend more time with bullshit management than product management. Sadly, that was my case.

First, I didn’t know I was doing bullshit management. Here are some examples:

• People longed for output roadmaps, so I created more of that

• I focused on gathering business requirements while neglecting users’ needs

• I bridged communication between business and tech

• Leadership wanted quality control, so I added a PM approval step to our workflow

• I said “yes” to everything to avoid conflicts, creating unbearable expectations

How much can you relate to the above? The more you relate to such examples, the more bullshit management you’re facing. How can you break free from it?

Beyond Bullshit Management

What do you do with bugs? Do you ignore or fix them?

Bullshit management isn’t a feature but a bug that requires a hotfix. Here’s how:

1. Face reality: The first step is understanding your scenario. Learn what you do that doesn’t contribute to value creation.

2. Take action: Commit to change one item at a time, not more.

3. Reflect: Evaluate the impact of your changes every month.

4. Rinse and repeat: Overcoming BS Management is a marathon, not a sprint. Repeat the previous steps while applying what you have learned.

Let me help you face reality. The following check comes from my book, Untrapping Product Teams. This is what I call the Bullshit Management Check. Reflect on what you observe in your reality. Be bluntly honest.

Bullshit Management Check from Untrapping Product Teams by David Pereira

As you face reality, it’s time to commit to one change at a time. Let me walk you through each item, helping you understand what it is and how to overcome it. Here’s what we will cover:

1. Focus on Requirements: Doing what the business wants while missing what customers need.

2. Extensive Backlog: A perfect backlog that reflects promises, but nobody knows how it drives value.

3. Output Reports: Beautiful reports on how fast teams deliver while revealing nothing value creation,

4. Consensus-Driven Decisions: Slowing down decisions while creating the worst possible option.

5. Output Approval: Unempowering the team by signing off everything they deliver.

6. Meeting Marathons: Deploying the newest fancy way of working: Calendar-driven-framework.

7. Fear of Saying No: Distributing yes to avoid conflicts while creating expectations you’ll never fulfill.

8. Bridge Communication: Becoming the bottleneck and the biggest reason for broken messages.

9. Opinion-Driven Decisions: Increasing the changes of creating features, nobody cares.

10. Failure Avoidance: The art of killing innovation.

Let’s clarify what you can do today to have a better tomorrow!