Topic: Opinion (13 articles)
Punctuated Equilibrium: Why a Two-Week Sprint Is Two Weeks
Every agile team does two-week sprints, and almost nobody can tell you why two weeks. The answer is borrowed from evolutionary biology. Eldredge and Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium explains why a two-week rhythm is the engineered punctuation of organisational stasis — and why a one-week cadence exhausts teams while a four-week cadence lets decay set in.
Sometimes People Have to Grab Hold of the Electric Fence
Sometimes people have to grab hold of the electric fence. Sometimes you have to pull them back from it. The craft of leadership is knowing which is which — and a Type A vs Type B decision framework that helps you get it right more often than wrong.
Users Do Not Experience Averages
No user ever experiences an average. Every user experiences a single point on a distribution — and dashboards that report means are lying to boards about the real user experience. A primer for analysts, PMs and CPOs on standard deviations, common-cause vs special-cause variation, wing-to-wing outcomes, and how to actually present data to a board.
Work On the Org, Not In the Org
Every CTO I have watched get ejected from a senior role had the same root cause — they worked in the org rather than on it. Your job is not to pull the train. Your job is to build an engine that can pull the train. A practical guide to the 1:1 cadence, the hiring standard, and the cultural discipline that produces CTOs and CPOs who last.
The Grain of a System: Why Some Platforms Absorb Change and Others Fight It
Every software system has a grain — shaped by its data model and early architectural choices — that determines how easily it absorbs change. Learn how to read the grain for technical due diligence, M&A platform assessment, and everyday product development.
The Product Operating Model: A Practical Guide From Inside Cagan's Trainline Case Study
From Specs-Over-the-Wall to Empowered Teams — And the Tool We Built to Make It Work
The product operating model is how the best tech-powered companies work. I know because I was there — as CTO at Trainline, featured in Marty Cagan's Transformed. Here's what the product model actually looks like in practice, how we aligned 650 people around outcomes, and why I built RoadmapOne to make it repeatable.
The Culture of Adequacy: Your Customers Don't Want Minimum — They Want Magnificent
How Product Leaders Accidentally Train Teams to Be Mediocre
Many teams have been conditioned into adequacy: shipping the bare minimum of everything and the full potential of nothing. Here's the spectrum from Minimum Product to Maximally Awesome Product, and why your crown jewels deserve obsessive, beautiful, category-killing investment.
Crown Jewels: Why Your Most Important Feature Is Slowly Dying
Every product has two or three capabilities that disproportionately matter to customers. Over time, product teams lose sight of these crown jewels—until a competitor does them slightly better and the loss ratio spikes. Here's how to identify, protect, and relentlessly improve the features that define your product.
Ship It and Move On: The Recipe for a Mediocre Product
Great Features ALWAYS Need a Second Act
Your roadmap shows Feature X shipping in March, then the team immediately moves on. That's the recipe for a mediocre product—an agglomeration of half-baked MVPs where nothing makes customers go 'wow'. Here's why great products need a second act.
Priority Whiplash: Why Your Best Engineers Are Updating Their CVs
Constant reprioritisation destroys engineering morale faster than anything else. If your team never finishes anything because leadership keeps changing direction, here's what's actually going wrong—and how to fix it.
Feature Factory to Outcome Team: Breaking the Pattern That's Killing Your Product
Is your product team a feature factory—shipping features without measuring impact, celebrating releases instead of results, burning out your engineers? Here's how to recognise the pattern and break free.
Outcome-Based Roadmaps: A Practical Guide for Product Teams
Outcome-based roadmaps focus on measurable business results rather than feature lists. Learn how to shift from output-driven planning to outcome-focused product strategy that aligns teams, satisfies boards, and actually moves the needle.
Stack Ranking: The Prioritisation Panacea That Never Works
Why 'Just Put Them in Order' Ignores Reality
Stack ranking feels like the ultimate prioritisation solution—just order everything from 1 to N and execute. In practice, it ignores capacity, dependencies, and team skills. The item ranked last often must be built before the item ranked first. Roadmaps are art as much as science.