Anti-BS Product Management: Driving Value When Everyone Distracts You – By David Pereira
The reality of being a product manager is often different from what many might expect. Instead of being at the helm and steering the product development process to maximize its value, you become a glorified backlog manager at the whim of your stakeholders.
Sounds familiar?
If yes, the “Anti-BS Product Management: Driving Value When Everyone Distracts You” talk by David Pereira at this year’s Product Drive is a must-view.
This article covers the key takeaways from the talk to give you a taste of what to expect.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR
- David Pereira is a product manager, coach, speaker, and the author of Untrapping Product Teams.
- In his talk at this year’s Product Drive, “Anti-BS Product Management: Driving Value When Everyone Distracts You,” he will share tips on how to put value creation at the core of the product development process.
- Bullshit management happens when low-impact activities distract product owners and managers from generating customer and business value.
- Teams often fall into the traps of prioritizing stakeholder wants over customer needs, having too many meetings, and not saying ‘no’ enough.
- To avoid it, PMs need to ensure alignment between product strategy, discovery, and delivery.
- They also need to be in charge of the product discovery process to identify the true value drivers and conduct regular product delivery health checks.
- To learn more about David’s methodology, sign up for his talk, and find out how Userpilot can help you implement it, book the demo!
Who is David Pereira?
David Pereira is a product management expert with over 15 years of experience.
He’s well-known in the product world as the author of the bestseller Untrapping Product Teams in which he shares practical insights from his extensive career.
David is currently the CEO of Omoqo GmbH and works as a key speaker and trainer, helping product teams improve their product discovery and management practices and build successful digital products.
What is bullshit management?
David defines bullshit management as “the art of spending time doing things that bring no value but drain your energy.”
Creating value is a deliberate process. If you don’t know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, there’s a big chance that you’re doing BS management.
Given that you have limited resources, the more BS comes your way, the less valuable your work becomes.
Common traps product managers fall in
Why do product managers turn into bullshit managers? There are a few reasons.
Focusing on stakeholders’ wants instead of users’ needs
Accommodating stakeholders’s wants is one.
This is an issue because stakeholders often have no idea what users really need: their genuine problems, needs, and desires.
The result?
You build a product that nobody needs.
Attending an excessive number of meetings
Meeting marathons are a plague of today’s workplace. Unlike in physical offices, video conferencing tools allow for unlimited meetings with unlimited participants.
The consequence is that people are invited to meetings even if they don’t need to be there. And they’re afraid to say ‘no’ not to upset the people who give you your job.
Having to attend such pointless meetings leaves the product manager little time to do actual work.
What’s the optimal number of meeting hours a week?
Under 20, while over 30 is dangerously high.
Fear of rejecting unnecessary requests
“Every yes you say is a responsibility you take, while no is a decision to remain focused” is one of David’s favorite sayings.
Saying no effectively is hard, though. Saying yes is definitely much easier.
Picture this: you get a request to include something in the backlog, you say ‘no,’ the person requesting it emails your boss, and you get strong-armed into putting it in the backlog after all.
By acting like this, you don’t achieve anything. The unwanted item is in the backlog anyway, and the whole situation puts a strain on your relationship with the stakeholder (and your boss). Next time, you just say ‘yes’ to avoid it.
What’s a better way to handle such requests?
Don’t give ‘no’ as a default answer. Instead, ask the person to provide evidence-based reasons why it needs to be done. Make them do some work as well.
3 ways for untrapping product teams
How can you overcome bullshit management and untrap your product team? David shares 3 strategies.
1. Align the elements of product management fundamentals
There are 3 elements of product management: product strategy, discovery, and delivery.
Each of them feeds into the other.
Product strategy guides product discovery, which informs what you build. What you learn while building the product feeds back to the strategy.
Building valuable products requires alignment of the 3 elements.
2. Be the driver in the product discovery journey
The product discovery journey starts with understanding the goals.
Clarify what you want to achieve, define the guardrail metrics to protect, and the trade-offs you need to make.
Next, understand your audience: what are their JTBDs, and what behaviors are natural to them (not rational).
Once you have a solid understanding of your audience, you can identify the value drivers. Not all problems or opportunities are value drivers. Some of them aren’t worth exploring, so be ruthless in your prioritization to maintain focus and maximize value.
Once you choose the problems and opportunities, look for innovative ways to tackle them. David calls this reinventing the future.
After coming up with solution ideas, test the assumptions behind them. Are customers willing to pay for it? Is it feasible? Ethically correct? Will it deliver business value?
Finally, use the evidence to progress. Evidence is essential to secure stakeholder buy-in.
The key takeaway: the product manager can’t be a passenger, they need to be the driver. Decide when to move forward – and when backward.
3. Do product delivery health checks
The final recommendation is conducting product delivery health checks.
Do it by answering 5 questions:
- Do you try to get it right from the beginning or build to learn and only then scale? The latter allows you to save time and resources building things that don’t work.
- Do you prioritize output or outcome? While your velocity may be impressive, a feature factory rarely delivers value.
- Do you remove features that don’t create value?
- Do you avoid failures at all costs or embrace them to learn?
- Do you add everything to the backlog or only the things that contribute to your goals?
Learn more about anti-BS product management
As a product manager, you have the choice: accept the status quo and get trapped forever or challenge it and move on.
If you’re ready to do the latter, David is going to share more ideas on how to do it in his talk, so why not sign up for it?
Conclusion
Creating digital products that drive value requires alignment between product strategy, discovery, and delivery, and consistent prioritization to ensure distractions don’t sap your energy and drain resources.
Userpilot is a product growth platform with advanced feedback and analytics capabilities. To learn how it can help you improve your product discovery process and make evidence-based decisions, book the demo!
