Product Management Frameworks are EVIL!

A bit of the rant about the things that matter and that things that don't across product management.

I’ve said it before as a side comment, but it deserves a full rant: the darling word of product advisors everywhere these days, “framework” will soon become the next dirty word — just like “process”.

Open up LinkedIn (gingerly) or trawl the newsletters and podcasts (with a long stick), and you’ll immediately notice two things:

• Scrum, SAFe, and any kind of process are slagged as evil!

• But we have a framework to rescue you! (Purchase here)

Really?

Here’s the thing. If you buy into something (process, framework, methodology) with the expectation that you put it in place, crank a handle, and get a sausage, you are in the wrong business.

Maybe you need a career change? Photo credit: Pixabay

Product Management is inherently messy (a beautiful mess, as

John Cutler

calls it, but a mess nonetheless). Company boards have borrowed a military term to describe the world we operate in — VUCA, which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. Any of those ring a bell for your day-job in product management?

Side note: this article on the Harvard Business Review neatly explains these dimensions and how to address them — if you’ll forgive the title: A Framework for Understanding VUCA… 🤦 Someone else has come up with with Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility to counter the original acronym. They probably aren’t wrong, even if it’s another framework-as-a-service.

Anyway, back to my rant. However you want to look at it, product management is complex (many interconnected parts), has a high degree of ambiguity and uncertainty, and the rate of change in our modern world can safely be classified as volatile. In such situations, expecting to put in something that promises to standardise outputs from inputs, is an exercise in 20th century Taylorist thinking. Implement this process, sorry framework, in place, push a button, and presto! Humans have been abstracted and you’ll get the good results every time!

Right.

So what can you do?

First, Study all the Frameworks

Wait, what?

Yes, go study using tools. Frameworks, processes, methodologies are all just that — tools. Just like you wouldn’t expect a carpenter to just use a hammer (sorry, a two-part pointed-percussive framework) in every instance, you too need to read up on everything out there.

You need to know which tools are available and when are they appropriate. I mean, good luck inventing Opportunity Solution Trees or User Story Mapping from scratch, even if they are just mind-mapping and stickies on steroids. There’s a gap between knowing about a technique to using it effectively, of course, but that is something you can learn and improve when the right circumstances suggest it.

Frameworks are perhaps more like scaffolding around a building project than the frame around which walls are built. They aren’t the core that holds your product or operations together, more a crutch to aid you in building them. They will not always be useful, and even when they do there will come a time when they are no longer needed. Understanding their principles and utility is what matters, not zealous following.

If you need a starting point,

Paweł Huryn

collects good resources and publishes them in curated lists. Enough to get you immersed in pretty much anything product management related. Go follow his learning plans.

This is the technical side of product management, which is important but only half the picture. The other half is, for me, the core of product management.

Second, Constantly Adapt

Dealing with humans, with complex and ambiguous situations, requires constant adaptation. In the same way that at the core of agile software delivery is some sort of build/inspect/adapt loop, many of the product management frameworks are trying to guide you to do the same. Just don’t follow them blindly, and always remember to:

Get out of the office and talk to users

No matter what, you are trying to deliver value to customers and users in ways that grow your business. You can’t understand that value — the pain-points, needs, constraints, desires, context — without being in touch with your customers and users.

Actually listen to your stakeholders

Get off your soapbox, and build empathy across your business. It’s a good bet no one has created a feature factory just to make your life miserable. I’m not expecting you to change it, but you need to understand your stakeholder anxieties if you’re to do that whole “… work for the business” part. If you want to change something as complex as humans and culture, you must first understand them — and who knows, they might be seeing something you don’t.

Know your tradeoffs — the WHY

Want to hear a secret? You will never have enough resources.

Shocking, right? But remember that there is a good reason for this, because you constantly need to reevaluate if what you’re doing is the best use of your resources in achieving goals. This means that every choice you make is a tradeoff of some kind. You should be conscious and transparent about this: consider each tradeoff, and communicate back out why it helps move in the right direction. In fact, the better you can communicate the principles behind the decision, the easier it will be to align everyone around the product's strategy.

Keep communicating and keep trying

So much of product management (heck, of any type of creative work and leadership) is communications. It’s why soft skills are so crucial. They are much harder to build (though there are ways you can improve). Technical skills are absolutely needed to deliver results, but you can find a lot of frameworks (err, sorry) to help you.

Communications is more art than science, and like any art you improve with practice. So communicate and then over-communicate, and do it both ways - listening as much or more than telling. Never fall into the ‘just’ trap (if we just did this, if you just agreed to this one thing, if they just saw this truth), but keep exploring situations with curiosity and transparency whatever framework you use to organise the work.

In summary

Frameworks aren’t evil, and neither are processes for that matter. They are just tools. You need to learn just enough about a great many, not with the expectation of finding The One True Method, but to build up your repertoire. When the opportunity arises, reach for the right one and work with it so long as it helps, and then dismantle it like scaffolding when the house is built.

Never lose sight of the core of product management — communicating with and across various audiences, from customers to stakeholders. Use storytelling to build empathy, keep trying different metaphors to see what lands with the audience. Accept that complex situations are manipulated from the outside as a black box, by constantly applying gentle pressure and reviewing the results. And remember that leadership (and product management is a type of leadership) is how you act, not your title or the role you fill in any process or framework.

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