Tor Blomdell

This piece on Group Product Managers from 1998 might be the best thing I've read in years: Group Product Manager is the most important non-executive position in a software company. In fact, it is more important and has higher impact on the company than many executive posts. A failed product can sink the company. A successful product can literally redefine the course of the business. Nobody is more responsible or more accountable for a product than the Group Product Manager. As a result, the job is characterized by massive success, massive failure, and little in between. Most GPMs are either promoted or end up leaving the company or being assigned to less hazardous duty within a short period of time. Everyone wants to be a Good Group Product Manager, but relatively few succeed. Good GPM: Knows the Good PM / Bad PM principles cold and constantly strives to execute them Dead GPM: Forgets about the basics Good GPM: Owns the overall product strategy and success Dead GPM: Overdelegates, doesn't think broadly enough, or fails to deliver Good GPM: Asks questions, listens and learns -- about everything -- necessary to meet their responsibilities Dead GPM: Ignores important areas, assumes the best, fails to ask tough questions Good GPM: Asks questions, listens and learns -- about everything -- necessary to meet their responsibilities Dead GPM: Ignores important areas, assumes the best, fails to ask tough questions Good GPM: PMs and the GPMs have a CLEAR understanding of what they need to do to excel Dead GPM: Subordinates and GPMs have murky or different understandings of what is needed to excel Good PM: Creates exciting jobs with clear opportunities for visible success and failure Dead PM: Creates mushy jobs that aren't visible Good GPM: You set and maintain the strategy, executives provide input and leverage Dead GPM: Rely on direction from executives Good GPM: Knows when and how to get organizational buyoff on product strategy and marketing plans Dead GPM: Inadequate knowledge and skill navigating the organization It's amazing how little the GPM role has changed in 25 years. Ben Horowitz (the Z in A16Z) knows his stuff.

Can we please take a moment to appreciate Slack? It's magical. But even a magically easy-to-use product like Slack has so many elements! It really busts the myth the great information architecture is simple. The software we tend to interact with these days, even in B2C, is not simple. But it is designed for usability. While the Slack page has lots of things, we can basically break it up onto three major categories of elements: 1. The big central part: the conversation and message editor 2. The left bar: channels and workspaces 3. The top bar: search, help & profiles That’s the magic of great information architecture (IA): it wonderfully sections up the page and giving focus to what’s important. It’s doesn't just present an empty screen. This overall information architecture is something that Slack borrowed from IRC. But it's the little details that Slack really nails. For instance: 1. There’s plenty of blank space in the top right: This gives the entire page a feeling of “breathing room.” 2. Slack also minimizes elements intuitive elements, like the help and profile in the top right: They're not words, just little icons. These details make the page much more spacious and allow you to focus on your core job to be done. It's brilliant. It's interesting that Slack also has kept constant from its initial IRC-inspired design. Over time, Slack has added things like: • Workspaces • The away message • And other little complexities they tucked in over time. These definitely impose an additional burden on the user. But Slack can get away with it, because everyone is familiar with Slack. And that's what I want to end on: Once your core product is widely used (Slack has >100M DAU), then you can slowly complexify it. Slack has done that brilliantly.