Get Started On Your Journey to Product Management Mastery

Hokay, Tony didn't know about Lenny Rachitsky, so I gave him something, but the knowledge transfer is massively one-way. He also didn't know about Uri Levine's "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution" - and it was nice to hear this week that he liked it. 

For my part, I loved "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" that he told me about last week. If you haven't read both of these, you're missing out on true classics. Ben Horowitz can't praise "High Output Management" enough, but I think it's overrated - good stuff though. Tony says Raghavendra Arni @ Pivotal (ex) swears by it.

This week, in his product-management basics class :

Product Discovery

What brought you here? What do you want to make or fix? Use your sticky notes. Keep the Desirable Vs Feasible axes on the w.board😊

3Cs : Context, Capability, Consequences

Tom Sowell's rational forcing questions : At what cost? Compared to what? From whose point of view? How will we know?

Dump and Sort (Good for dealing with hippos)

Use sticky notes, one idea per. Unlimited dumping, then, pick top THREE from each cluster. This helps with the diversity (rank, introversion/extraversion, etc) - levels playing field You're driving to finding the most DESIRABLE and DOABLE thing - alignment

4Ts : Time, Toil, Tears, Thrashing - help identify opportunities Thrashing : think CPU wasting cycles

Build up a Painsnake in your office with Post-its

Effective product discovery begins with asking the right questions. The initial step involves considering the three Cs: Who possesses the necessary context? Who has the required capability? And who will face the consequences? This approach is crucial because without identifying the individuals who can provide essential insights, progress may be hindered. For instance, during our time at Pivotal, we encountered a situation with Delta Airlines as our client. They wanted to develop a new ramp for loading luggage and performing other tasks. Despite investing several weeks of effort, no viable solution emerged. However, the breakthrough occurred when we engaged a manager responsible for the ramp for two weeks. This individual possessed the contextual knowledge required to guide software developers in creating the appropriate solution. All of a sudden, people with the capacity to write software are matched with someone with the context to actually tell them what that software should be. While this collaboration brought us significantly closer to the goal, it only addressed a third of the entire process. It is essential to have someone who takes ownership of the consequences associated with the completion or non-completion of the task.

Takes time to plug a genius former co-worker from Pivotal : 

Pivotal developed software specifically tailored for engineers. It was a platform that efficiently eliminated the tedious aspects of the developer's workflow. They could simply have their code base and use the command "CF push" to upload the entire code base. This platform, created by former Google engineers with experience in App Engine, was highly advanced. One notable engineer, Marko Lucovsky, who had worked on Windows NT4 at Microsoft, joined Google and played a pivotal role in building App Engine. App Engine stands out as one of the best Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings to date. The engineers behind it possess remarkable abilities to live patch code seamlessly, which is quite mind-blowing. App Engine is an impressive piece of software that was initially underestimated due to its straightforward and effortless nature. People perceived it as a mere toy because you could simply push your code, and it would run smoothly. Can you currently utilize it for your work? Absolutely! When it comes to running software, Google's highly automated offerings are unmatched in scalability. You can effortlessly push your software to the platform and hardly have to think about it again, even if you expect it to run for a decade. It's cost-effective and offers auto-scaling capabilities.

Moving on, Cloud Foundry, built by Mark Lucovsky after leaving Google, was developed for enterprise organizations to streamline their development processes. It strongly focuses on Java and the Spring framework, which is closely tied to the company. Cloud Foundry is also polyglot, meaning it supports a wide range of programming languages that can run on a Linux box. Even simple shell scripts can be used with it. The engineering marvel of Cloud Foundry lies in its simplicity. When you push a Python application, it attempts to execute the main executable using a list of compatible languages. If it executes successfully, great! Otherwise, it moves on to the next one. When you push code, which may consist of a large codebase exceeding 200 megabytes, Cloud Foundry performs checksums, eliminating the need to repeatedly upload Java libraries. The system establishes a direct mapping to a store, allowing you to push a 500 megabyte Java application but only transmit the actual code, which could be as small as 200 kilobytes. It's an incredibly efficient system. Cloud Foundry also handles auto-scaling, routing, and failover seamlessly. By utilizing multiple zones, you can achieve a guaranteed uptime of three nines (99.9%) out of the box. And with some fine-tuning, you can even reach four nines (99.99%).

New concept : use checksums (to encrypt) to post your predictions on social media. No one knows what the source phrase in simple language is, but, once your prediction comes true, you can show them that your source phrase gives the same checksum.

New concept : 

A Schelling point is a solution or focal point that people tend to converge upon when they need to coordinate their actions but lack explicit communication or coordination mechanisms. It represents a natural or salient choice that individuals perceive as a reasonable decision given the context.

or, when chatGPT tries to tell that to a 10 year old :) :

A Schelling point is like a special spot or decision that people choose when they want to work together but can't talk to each other. It's the place or idea that most people think is the best option without even talking about it. It's like when two friends want to meet in a big city but can't call or message each other. They might both think of meeting at a famous place, like a big statue or a well-known train station. Even though they didn't talk about it, they both know it's a good spot to meet. That spot is the Schelling point. It's the choice that just feels right to everyone involved.

Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, utilize the concept of Schelling points in various ways. For example :

Consensus Mechanism: Cryptocurrencies rely on a consensus mechanism to validate transactions and maintain the integrity of the blockchain. One commonly used consensus mechanism is called Proof of Work (PoW), where participants (miners) compete to solve complex mathematical puzzles. The solution to the puzzle becomes the Schelling point, as it represents the agreed-upon truth and the valid block to be added to the blockchain.

Fork Resolution: In the event of a disagreement or split in the cryptocurrency community, known as a fork, the concept of Schelling points plays a role in determining which branch of the fork becomes the dominant one. The community's consensus and agreement on which branch to support becomes the Schelling point, as it represents the preferred direction and continuity for the cryptocurrency.

Price Determination: The value or price of cryptocurrencies is often influenced by market dynamics and investor perceptions. In the absence of a central authority, the perceived value of a cryptocurrency can be influenced by Schelling points. For example, if a particular exchange or marketplace becomes widely accepted as the reference point for pricing a cryptocurrency, it establishes a Schelling point for determining its value.

Overall, the concept of Schelling points in cryptocurrency relates to the establishment of consensus, decision-making, and coordination among participants in various aspects, such as consensus mechanisms, fork resolution, and price determination. It helps establish agreement and a common understanding within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.