Love the focus on reducing ambiguity rather than imposing proces. The part about early-stage PMs being 'half PM, half user researcher, half firefighter' captured something I haven't seen articulated that cleanly elsewhere. Been on teams where heavyweight PMs got hired too early, and it basically paralyzed our ability to iterate quickly becuz everything needed a roadmap review. The 'working backwards' Amazon framing is spot-on as well, giving engineers context instead of just tasks makes technical tradeoffs way more rational and aligned.
Appreciate that and +1 on the “paralysis by roadmap” experience. I’ve seen the same thing happen when structure shows up before there’s real product signal to structure around. Early on, speed of learning beats elegance almost every time.
What I like about the Amazon “working backwards” idea is that it creates clarity without freezing motion. You get a strong narrative and success criteria but engineers still have room to explore the best implementation. That balance context over control feels like the difference between PM as an enabler vs PM as a bottleneck.
Love the focus on reducing ambiguity rather than imposing proces. The part about early-stage PMs being 'half PM, half user researcher, half firefighter' captured something I haven't seen articulated that cleanly elsewhere. Been on teams where heavyweight PMs got hired too early, and it basically paralyzed our ability to iterate quickly becuz everything needed a roadmap review. The 'working backwards' Amazon framing is spot-on as well, giving engineers context instead of just tasks makes technical tradeoffs way more rational and aligned.
Appreciate that and +1 on the “paralysis by roadmap” experience. I’ve seen the same thing happen when structure shows up before there’s real product signal to structure around. Early on, speed of learning beats elegance almost every time.
What I like about the Amazon “working backwards” idea is that it creates clarity without freezing motion. You get a strong narrative and success criteria but engineers still have room to explore the best implementation. That balance context over control feels like the difference between PM as an enabler vs PM as a bottleneck.