BYOMSPM

Decision-making and prioritization are hard. As such, I found the following articles that collectively touch on the topics of effective decision-making for product managers, more advice on making product decisions, and a case study on Slack. I only had the energy to do minimal critical responding to what I found (in bold), but there are still a lot of really good points highlighted from the articles.

Grade I gave myself for this assignment: 90/100 (because I think I compiled some really good tips)

First, Sachin Rekhi outlines key elements of healthy team decision-making. The article centers around product management, but I think these are pretty broadly applicable:

1. All inputs get heard & considered
2. There is a clear understanding of how and when decisions are made
3. There is trust that the best decisions usually get made, or if not they usually get reversed

Rekhi then emphasizes that the process & culture of decision-making is usually more important than the actual decisions being made. This is both reassuring and inspiring; it would be very unrealistic to claim that the only standard of good decision-making is simply making good decisions 100% of the time. Rather, if you can establish trust and respect for the process of making, analyzing, and undoing decisions, you can manage the inevitability of making some less desirable decisions.

Rekhi then proposes that product managers can foster a culture of healthy team decision-making by doing the following:

1. Product managers should own curation of opinions rather than just the creation
2. They should make sure people feel heard
3. They should be transparent during the decision-making process
4. Unless they’re waiting on specific additional information, it’s better to make a decision as soon as possible

Again, I appreciate that the emphasis is not on making perfect decisions but about fostering strong culture around decision-making.

Side note: A key term mentioned in this article is “hippo,” which stands for highest paid person’s opinion. This is a process for making decisions where the highest paid person has all of the decision-making power and others’ opinions are not taken into account. Rekhi offers that this is usually not the most effective way to foster a strong team culture around decision-making.

Then, to get more specific information about making product decisions, I found two articles discussing feature decisions. The general idea of the first article, “The Tax of New”, is that every new feature has a “tax,” meaning that even if it’s fairly simple to add a feature, it still adds clutter to an existing product as well as additional difficulty to maintain and/or remove it. This was reiterated in the second article (“The One Cost Engineers and Product Managers Don’t Consider”), which argues that engineers and PMs often neglect to consider the additional complexity new features contribute to the task of maintaining and updating code. In light of all of the software modernization efforts and migrations that I imagine will continue on forever (is that pessimistic?), this feels particularly true.

The “Tax of New” article suggests that one way to combat or lessen the effect of feature complexity cost is to run A/B or beta tests and set objective criteria as a threshold for implementing features full-scale. Another strategy it offers is to clarify the intended effect of a feature before starting to develop it as well as the amount of time you will dedicate to working on it and the criteria it must meet to continue being worked on. The other article firmly reiterates this: new features need to prove their value before being fully accepted. One thing that I’ve noticed sometimes gets in the way of the practice of testing to validate feature value is various pressures from a company on individuals to produce tangible results that they can brag about, whether to leadership, in performance reviews, or elsewhere.

The other strategy mentioned throughout these articles to power more effective product decision making is developing a deep empathy for users. This is demonstrated by a case study on Slack, which emphasizes that Slack’s success is largely because of its focus on user needs and providing value in reaction to those needs.

The other key point I took away from the Slack case study is that a critical part of strong decision-making is embracing opportunities to pivot or revert decisions. I would add that a key component of the reversibility of decisions is a high degree of humility of the decision-maker so that they don’t take it too personally if it is later determined that a decision that they made should be reversed.

Hope this was helpful.

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Works Cited

Rekhi, Sachin. “The Art of Decision Making as a Product Manager.” Sachin Rekhi. https://www.sachinrekhi.com/the-art-of-decision-making-as-a-product-manager.

Zhou, Julie. “The Tax of New.” Medium. 6 June 2013. https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-tax-of-new-f777ec49f24a.

“The One Cost Engineers and Product Managers Don’t Consider.” The Review. https://review.firstround.com/The-one-cost-engineers-and-product-managers-dont-consider.

Wilson, Amy J. “Slack: Case Study.” Medium. 6 July 2021. https://medium.com/empathy-for-change/slack-case-study-5833a57289d2.