Improving product roadmaps, and a framework for becoming a better manager
Hi there, and welcome to another edition of Elezea! This is a newsletter focused on interesting and helpful reading about technology, software development, and internet culture. Improving product roadmaps, and a framework for becoming a better managerOh, and I guess we also have to talk about TwitterHey everyone, I’m back for the first time in months, so if you have no idea what this is or how it landed in your inbox, I understand! But since we’re all ditching Twitter this week (see you back there next week when this all blows over!) I thought I should probably make another attempt at resurrecting the newsletter. I also rewrote the About Page if you need a refresher of what this thing is about (or hopefully going to be about). I’m really going to try to send this out more regularly, so for today, let’s start with a bit of a link roundup… Fine, I guess we have to talk about TwitterPeople are like "ugh I'm leaving Twitter" but I just saw a viral thread where someone argued it's classist to know how to boil an egg. You can't put a price on this, you'll have to drag me out The takes are hot, and I’m sure you’re already tired of reading about it, but I do want to highlight two pieces that I think are very much worth your time. You’ve highly likely seen the first one, Nilay Patel’s Welcome to hell, Elon, which I’m pretty confident will become a classic of internet writing that we still talk about a decade from now, similar to Paul Ford’s WWIC and Merlin Mann’s Cranking. If you haven’t read Nilay’s piece, please do so, because it gets to the heart of the matter:
This topic is taken further brilliantly by Clive Thompson in his piece Running Twitter Isn’t Rocket Science. It’s Harder:
Ultimately these takes could all be wrong, and the $8/month subscription could be a huge success? Who knows. Stranger things have happened. But it sure is interesting to see it all play out. Product and leadership readingI wanted to highlight a few product and leadership-related articles I found helpful recently. First, I’ve been digging into different viewpoints on roadmapping quite a bit, and Itamar Gilad’s Your Roadmap Isn’t Really a Road Map is really good. He first goes into the issues with timeline-based roadmaps:
He then moves on to walk through a different approach of goal-based roadmaps. We are in the process of adding Jenna Bastow’s Now/Next/Later views to our current roadmap, and so far I am finding it really useful. It’s in that sweet spot of avoiding the perils of timeline-based roadmaps, while also giving the broader organization all the information they need. I really enjoyed this Interview with Badrul Farooqi, first PM at Figma. So many helpful advice here, but I’ll pull out just this one on working with the rest of the org:
Josephine Conneely asks Why are there so many bad managers? She walks through “7 components which impact a manager’s overall effectiveness and also how effective a manager they will be for a particular individual.” Very insightful. Desert blues at its bestI am a huge fan of Desert Blues like Elwan by Tinariwen and Afrique Victime by Mdou Moctar. But my all-time favorite Desert Blues artist is Ali Farka Touré (start with his self-titled album). Ali’s son Vieux Farka Touré followed in his father’s footsteps and put out a great album this year called Les Racines. But that’s all just pre-amble to my actual recommendation. Khruangbin is one of my favorite bands (start with Con Todo El Mundo). A few weeks ago they released a collaboration album with Vieux Farka Touré simply called Ali. It is an album where Vieux covers and reimagines some of his father’s songs, and it is one of my favorite releases of the year so far. Highly recommended. Oh, one last thing. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here 👇 That should do it for today. Have a wonderful week, friends. 💛 If you liked this post from Elezea Newsletter, please share it with someone you like! |
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