Jake Archibald

Hot off the press 🔥 - here's a series of my reforge artefacts that showcase how I take a customer problem from discovery to delivery at Octopus Deploy. As a PM its rare to have the autonomy to shape how you work and I'm so grateful to have that at Octopus. I hope you find these artefacts useful. Part 1️⃣ - 🧠 Mindmap for new feature scoping - https://lnkd.in/g5Nuvzcm Part 2️⃣ - 👱🏼 User research snapshots - https://lnkd.in/gKigq-wV Part 3️⃣ - ⚽️ Kickoff workshop - https://lnkd.in/gq8DYpWz Part 4️⃣ - 📝 Pitch document - https://lnkd.in/gbAZtv8u We are always hiring at Octopus. Check out our careers page and get in touch if you'd like to find out more. https://lnkd.in/gkavnwPK Credits: I used Teresa Torres' Interview snapshot template in Part 2 to create the Runbook specific snapshots. See https://lnkd.in/gReyTarg. Our Pitch documents are originally inspired by the Shape Up Pitches. I have changed it to suit my needs. See https://lnkd.in/giACV-yT.

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I really enjoyed Mind the Product and Mews Meet Up at Rich Mix, Shoreditch this evening where the topic was collaboration in product trios (Product manager + Engineering Manager + designer).. check out a recording at: https://lnkd.in/ejTAfGt8 It was the first Meet Up I've been to for a while and I'm keen to go to more and meet more PMs (and non-PMs) and hear how they work and learn from their experiences, which takes me back to tonight's topic: working in product trios. It's not the first time I've heard about this and I've worked this way before but I haven't implemented it where it wasn't already happening, so it was interesting to hear about how Mews (Aldair Borges, Jakub Tkadleček, Zuzana Hrušovská) and Tesco (Amanda Ho, Dr. John McCarthy) work in trios and how they got started. I love working in smaller, focussed groups with an equal balance of perspectives from different disciplines... but how do you ensure others on the squad don't feel excluded? I'm not a fan of huge meetings as they often result in a lot of conversation but little strategic discussion that leads to action, and they tend to be dominated by the loudest in the room. With one designer in a squad and often multiple engineers, the balance is also off... is product trios the answer? How do you ensure it doesn't shut down wider collaboration across the whole squad? Has anyone tried anything different? #ProductTrio #ProductManagement #PMCommunity #TechCommunity

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🙋‍♀️ Hands down the most popular question I get from my mentees is: ⚖ Should I join a startup or a big company? I've done both, but will admit I got my start at a big company, Microsoft, so might be biased, but will try and give as honest answer as possible. Fresh out of college, I was torn between the entrepreneurial pull of a startup and the stability (plus ngl fat paycheck) of a big corporation. At that time, an engineering executive was my mentor and he gave me sage advice: "Join an engineering organization that's established to learn how to build software professionally, then you can choose what works for you with context in your startup." The economic climate tipped the scales and at the time nudged me towards the latter, and in hindsight, it was a wise decision. 💡 Here’s why: Early in an engineering career, joining a startup often means navigating extreme tradeoffs during the first 3-5 years. Resource allocation, technology stack choices, quality control—they all demand compromise. Startups need agility to pivot, and this might lead to hurried implementations and improvised solutions. Trust me, been there all too often. ❌ 🐞 This is not a bug, it is a feature of trying to find Product-Market Fit (PMF) in a startup. However, such an environment might not be conducive for a newcomer to learn how to develop software well or find quality engineering mentorship. I've seen talented individuals pick up unhealthy practices, especially if they've bounced from one startup to another early in their career without experiencing a structured engineering culture. For seasoned engineers, startup culture offers exciting challenges, as they can better appreciate and manage the tradeoffs. Perhaps even throw caution to the wind and feel the exhilaration of just shipping. Early in your career, though, it's essential to understand why things are done a certain way. Yes, exceptions exist, and some startups are impressively organized from the get-go and exceptionally well-funded. But on the whole, a solid foundation in a structured environment helps you understand where to invest effort and where to be lean when you eventually move to a startup. My experience at Microsoft provided invaluable insights and laid the groundwork for making informed engineering decisions later on in the startup world.. particularly if you are seeking to ship efficiently with highest impact. 🧘‍♀️ 🧘‍♂️ As the Dalai Lama wisely said, "Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly."

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One of the most challenging problems for engineering leaders is rewriting a complex system. This series of articles will set you on the right path starting from planning to decommissioning your old system.

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Build vs Buy, the great internal debate every developer product has to overcome when selling to companies of all sizes. I had a great chat with Han Wang at Mintlify on how he sees Build vs Buy. Whether its docs, sdks or any part of the developer stack you will always meet great product teams that believe they should build and maintain exactly what your product does in house. Here are some takeaways 👀 ⏹ Its all about control. You're product needs to increase your users ability to ship high quality product. Think deeply about where you should blackbox vs expose controls to the user. ⏹ Quality. Do you think your product reflects the quality at which they could build AND maintain this themselves ? ⏹ Our job as vendors is to grow with companies over time. As your product matures the gap between what you can do vs what can be built in house will quickly diminish. If you're buyer of docs or sdks how do you think about build vs buy ? 👇 Speakeasy #sdks #docs #buildvsbuy

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“…it sure does feel like it’s increasingly unlikely that any sort of revolutionary hardware is going to come from anyone not named Apple or one of the big Android hardware partners, if not Google itself.” This has been nagging at me about software recently too, and I’ve heard/read it from others as well. The majority of exciting things as of late have almost entirely come from large, established companies. Perhaps the barriers to entry are so low today that discovering truly great, exciting things is more difficult than ever and large, established companies are better at getting noticed? Or perhaps because of the low barriers to creation there’s less thought/passion being putting into creating something truly unique and delightful? https://lnkd.in/gg247kmd

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Network HELP! I’m looking to chat with other product managers or companies that work with fitness trackers as part of some discovery research. Please DM me or email ellie@openplay.co.uk if this applies to you and you’re willing to chat briefly. Furthermore, any intros to connections would be welcomed! Moves+ is an app that rewards your community for physical activity, users sync their fitness app or wearable device to their Moves+ account and log their daily activity. Users can spend their Moves+ points on real-life rewards; a proven way to support behaviour change. OpenPlay

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Calm meets Code - Zen Spinner UX Visit my blog for an illuminating side by side demo comparing Copilot's elevated spinner UX to traditional ones. https://lnkd.in/dqer-mk6 Last week, I immersed myself in Copilot and noticed something fascinating—I felt surprisingly refreshed after hours of intense work. This led me to explore further. It turns out, Microsoft's design ethos for Copilot is all about creating a low cognitive load and infusing relaxation into a mesmerizing user experience Delve into the serenity of Copilot's Zen Loading UX, crafted with Microsoft's ethos for minimal cognitive load. Sharing a Zen Page Loading approach that caught my attention and more on Copilots UX design philosophy in my blog. Enjoy!! #copilot #microsft #paypal #fintech #UX #generativeai #aiml

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Your app + native checkout. Here’s what we’ve been working on.

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Shopify is such a cool story because of the way their existence totally changed their own total addressable market. Shopify made going direct-to-consumer easy. It's not just the storefront bits - it's the app ecosystem. Shopify enabled companies like ShipBob to turn highly physical processes into a software abstraction, dramatically reducing the capital required to launch a real-world DTC business. AWS did the same for software. Twilio did the same for software/telephony interactions. There's no way to "size" the market for category definers like this before they happen... because their very presence creates new markets.

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Unpacking Figma's success: Understanding the pivotal decisions from stealth mode to leveraging AI that redefined their market 👇 Jaryd Hermann, Author / Creator at HowTheyGrow.co, offers valuable insights into Figma’s strategic approach to building an enduring product, overcoming challenges, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI in “How Figma Grows: Design Beyond Designers”. Check out the key insights in the attached presentation 👇 ───── 👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors

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If you are interested in levelling up in Product, why not check out Reforge. Reforge provides content from people working at LinkedIn, Lyft, Dropbox, Uber, Netflix, Meta, SurveyMonkey, Google ..... Their free content is superb but I've also heard very good things from students of their paid courses. On the 25th June they are also running a half day event on ✨ AI ✨. You can register here https://lnkd.in/efrdK5R2 #product #productmanagement #productdesign #ux #learn

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Two clear signs that we're on the right track at Monk and on our way to $1M ARR: - Shopify merchants/agencies using the app across multiple stores - Word of mouth led growth increasing quarter on quarter

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🔥 Google SGE just went live 🔥 I've got some good news: Google scaled SGE coverage down before the launch. - Only 14% of queries return SGE results automatically - 28% of queries return SGE after pressing the "generate" button (forced) - 58% of Google queries have no SGE enabled (up from 9% in February) We are waiting for Google to finalize rolling out new SERP layouts, and we'll publish more data next week at Onely - Organic growth through practical innovation & Search Engine Journal Data Source: ZipTie.dev Google SGE launch announcement: https://lnkd.in/gysHhDvm Google SGE features: https://lnkd.in/gP2P7ArQ

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When you’re a millennial product manager, attempting to share her knowledge of product, with the wider community and one of the most successful artists in the world is currently on a mass tour of the UK, there’s only one question on your mind: What would the dangerous animals of product management be if they were Taylor Swift songs? If you've been asking yourself the same question then have I got a blog post for you! https://lnkd.in/dYxE_QDq #product #productmanagement #tech #UX

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A big thing I disliked about embedded wallet (and WaaS) pricing when I was looking at solutions from the customer point-of-view was the set of hidden costs and general misalignment with our core business success metrics. 1. "Monthly Active Users" are rarely an accurate representation of the user base segment that does contribute meaningfully to revenue growth for the app or platform. Few users activate, an even fewer users drive businesses forward (80-20 Rule). 2. Hidden costs: the bill gets pretty $$$ when you start layering AML & sanctions screening on deposits & withdrawals to comply with US regulations, acceptable SLAs & support, white labeling, custom auth methods, RPC node provider, spam users creation, etc.. Time to change this broken model! 📖⤵️ https://lnkd.in/ew83TxRh

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One key takeaway from the Google AI Hackathon I took part in is the importance of UX best practices in AI-powered products. How can we make users feel confident and comfortable when they’re interacting with AI? 1. Trust and Verify - This means being able to explain how, from where, or why your LLM has generated the output it has. - It’s much easier to build trust with users when you can show them where your model has taken the data from when it comes time to provide a response. 2. Fail Gracefully - Even when things go wrong, be prepared and know how to handle them. - Be transparent with your failures; whether that means allowing users to retry generating an output or adjusting their prompt. - On a more technical level, if your model’s API is down, ensure you have an alternative backup model to not disrupt any UX or user flow, as shown in the example above. 3. Guided on-boarding - Make sure users understand not only how your product works, but how they can use it and where its limitations lay. - Provide examples of successful inputs and outputs to educate users on how they can start using your product. 4. Guided Prompting - Guide users in how they should set up their prompts so your product supports them accurately and successfully. - In some instances, you might decide to constrain the user input altogether and provide structured options when you want to guarantee certain outcomes or reduce cognitive overload. 5. Provide Value - Even if things go wrong, you should always have a way to ensure your product is providing some sort of value to your users. - In some instances, this might be defaulting to a non-AI solution. 6. Check for Assumptions - Ensure that your training data is diverse and inclusive, as bias and assumptions are a direct result of what a model has been trained on. - Make sure you provide ways to easily correct, call out, or report any inaccuracies; whether that’s text, image, etc. Source: Artificial intelligence mini-certification from Product School (highly recommend this course!) Stay tuned as I continue to share more learning notes and insights on AI product management. #AI #ProductManagement #UXDesign #TechInnovation #AIHackathon #GoogleAI #ArtificialIntelligence #TechCommunity #ProductSchool

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That's it for Google I/O 2024! Recordings & lots of bonus talks are now available to watch online. Thanks so much for tuning in! Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads 🔥 Watch the recordings and bonus talks in our new playlists for both web (https://lnkd.in/gcdu-ptR) and AI (https://goo.gle/io24-ai-yt) #softwareengineering #programming #google

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