CHAPTER 14Product and Technology Buts
When I'm not writing, I make and manage products. The two practices are more similar than you might think. Product people imagine something, turn it into a story, and then—here's the product trick—persuade others to invest their time, creativity, and resources to make it real.
People who make products for a living face complexity every day, and applying Momentum Thinking to product management is useful for anyone dealing with any kind of complex challenge.
The next three cases involve transforming social networking platforms, balancing product focus and feature creep, and dealing with the regulatory implications of artificial intelligence products.
The 2B Product Review
Before we get into the cases, a product management approach that fits well with the Two But Rule is worth a brief mention.
Ian McAllister is a product management expert known for explaining Amazon's “working backwards” approach to what he calls the internal press release. Before beginning work on a new project, product teams write an internal press release to be used as a touchstone to crystallize ideas and maintain alignment during development.
One way to apply the Two But Rule with this approach is to write not a press release but a product review—a product review from the near future—narrated in the voice of a future reviewer describing both what they liked and didn't like about the product: “I liked the price point, but I didn't like the cheap build quality. It broke ...