Grow your product and craft. Learn through deep dive courses into topics such Prioritization & Product Strategy for as little as $149
Joined January 2022
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Product Pathways retweeted
Promise solving problems, not a laundry list of features.
Shoutout to ProdPad for perhaps the best public example I've seen of what this can look like!
Here's an example from their roadmap.
Outcome: "Land the right customers." "Retain the right customers."
Opportunities: "how can we better support our users to close the loop with customers who submit feedback?"
Hypothesis: "We believe that closing the loop is one of the most important aspects of product management... By empowering our users to address customer feedback more efficiently, we can not only improve transparency and engagement, but also foster deeper customer relationships."
Not a single feature.
No dates.
But you still know exactly what they're focused on, why
and in what order (now/next/later).
That's a roadmap!
Full teardown: youtube.com/watch?v=cdjLlkWE…
Product Pathways retweeted
Here's 3 simple examples from this week on how product work changes with AI.
1. Added a hypothesis which triggered Claude to look through my existing data and analytics to see if it could validate it. Played back findings and updated the hypothesis status to 'active'.
2. Mid research Claude suggests one of the insight would make great "on brand" content. Told it to put it in the content backlog.
3. Mid workflow I’m notified me of an "Automation opportunity" to create an agent that pulls data from GA and automatically flags changes to my key metrics - it also then built it for me.
BONUS:
I was just talking with a product team at a client about getting confluence and jira hooked up with the following workflow:
PM writes spec in confluence
→ it's extracted by AI as a md file
→ AI goes through the code base and the spec and determines the best way to slice the work
→ PM reviews → when approved pushes it as user stories into jira
→ engineers can pull md file and linked jira tickets to automate delivery (and they get to just work out of VS Code (no more going back to jira or confluence).
I’m a firm believer in reinventing yourself before your product. FYI this is the topic of my last newsletter post 👉 antmurphy.me/newsletter/the-…
Product Pathways retweeted
💥 exactly what the First 90 Days course was designed to do 👇
A 5/5 review and this nice email from someone who recently took the course (productpathways.com/course/p…)
Product Pathways retweeted
Meet "RampUp"
A fictional company with a full data set and profile;
- Financials
- Product usage
- Customer feedback
- Employees
- etc
Eg. "Founded in 2021, it's raised $43m to solve employee onboarding but of late it's been struggling.”
This is the challenge that the product leaders joining this week's Product Strategy in Practice course are going to be solving.
Each participant will be given:
1. A brief
2. Access to the data through an AI Data Scientist who's able to get data on any question you throw at them.
3. 2x Customers (AI personas) who they can interview
All this would have taken me weeks - if not months - to pull together in the past.
And it wouldn't have been interactive!
Can't wait to run it! I've enjoyed experimenting with novel ways to leverage AI beyond just feeding it content.
There’s still a few spots if you’re keen to join and give it a try!
👉 productpathways.com/course/p…
Product Pathways retweeted
Does prioritization feel difficult?
Perhaps it looks like this; spending hours in spreadsheets, completing complex formulas trying to score everything...
Or perhaps you feel like there's a capacity issues - if only we could increase our velocity...
None of these work.
Because they're not solving the underlying issue.
They're not prioritizing in layers from Vision → Strategy → Outcomes → Opportunities → Ideas
If any of this resonates, then this week's live stream is for you 👉 streamyard.com/watch/3aeN46b…
p.s. still the best meme on prioritization #tooreal 😂
(thanks work chronicles)
Product Pathways retweeted
9 prioritization lessons I learned the hard way (ashamed to admit... the last two took me near 10 years to learn):
1. Prioritization isn't something that happens on your backlog... it's multi-step. You prioritize when you're defining your strategy and you prioritize all the way down to your day-to-day tasks.
2. Impact vs Effort only tells half the story. It's good enough for most things but as complexity increases factoring in things like Confidence and Urgency will change the way you look at things.
3. All prioritization frameworks can be broken down into 4 components: Impact, Effort, Confidence and Urgency.
4. Frameworks can help but they're work best when you have a strategy to anchor against. For example, 'Impact' should be impact on your outcomes which are defined by your strategy. Otherwise what are you defining impact as?
5. Secondly given 1. there's no single framework that will work across everything. Instead think of prioritization frameworks as tools in a toolbox. You need to find the right one for the job. For example, RICE only half-works for prioritizing opportunities because it's hard to define "effort" when there's no solution yet... other times cost of delay will be ideal or you need to factor in opportunity cost.
6. Most of the time you won't need any frameworks if you have an adequately focused strategy.
7. Be data-informed not data-driven. Just because something has a higher RICE score doesn't make it automatically the best thing to do. Treat data as an input and exercise judgement.
8. Not everything can be quantified. Some things are just worth doing.
9. Ignorance tax is paid anytime you choose something that has more unknowns. For example, starting a new idea vs improving what you have today. The new idea sounds nice but once you get into it you'll realise it's not as easy as it seems = ignorance tax. Moral of the story, choose the known > unknown.
Product Pathways retweeted
Q: "I get that your roadmap should be a reflection of your strategy but what if I don't have a product strategy? How do I create a product roadmap then?"
Here's exactly how I tackle this scenario with a PM in the Product Mentorship on Product Pathways:
Step 1: 'Bring Out Your Dead'
I call this step 'bring out your dead' the idea is to go and gathering everything. From ideas, to features, user requests, opportunities, etc. Just pull them all into one place.
Step 2: Extract Narratives
Instead of jumping to prioritizing, go through the list and start to synthesize. Talk to each item, what is it, why do we need to do it, what is it related to, etc.
The idea is to start to extract narratives that explain intent behind the items. The outcomes and the problems they solve.
This is where you start to make the leap from laundry list to a roadmap that tells a story!
Step 3: Prioritise Narratives
Once you have narratives, sequence them. It's important that you prioritize the narratives themselves not the individual features. I'd recommend doing a simply Now / Next / Later.
Step 4: Map the Work
Now that you have your narratives in order. You have your backbone for the roadmap. In a way it's a rudimentary strategy.
Once you've got that, now you can start to map all those features and ideas that you collected in step one to the narratives.
If something no longer fits, it's a good reflection point on whether it's actually going to move the dial.
Note: if you prioritise the ideas first - which is what most people do - you end up with a laundry list that doesn't have cohesion. This way you can look at everything in the 'now' column and you have a story (narrative) as to why they're there.
Step 5: Add Outcomes
Finally, you can start to add outcomes to your roadmap. Ask yourself what success looks like. This could be at the individual item level, or at the narrative level (or both).
And voilà!
You now have a product roadmap that:
→ is strategic
→ tells a story
→ and is outcome-oriented
BONUS and you have the start of a product strategy!
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📌 See this in action. Full live stream where I walked through this exact example: youtube.com/watch?v=9oeeoeRf…
Product Pathways retweeted
Don't rely on a single product roadmap.
This is where I see a lot of Product Managers go wrong.
They overload their product roadmap trying to make it work for everyone and for every situation.
From dependencies, delivery timelines, releases, opportunities, solutions, alignment to high level goals, etc... you end up needing a PhD to read it.
As the adage goes; "if it's for everybody, it's for nobody"
It's then no wonder they're struggling to get buy-in.
And their messages aren't landing.
So if you to influence stakeholders, then you need to start treating your roadmap as a communication tool.
Start with the audience:
→ who am I presenting this roadmap to?
→ what information do they want and what don't they need?
→ what format would be best? (this is important because sending the CEO of a Fortune 500 company a link to Jira isn't going to cut it)
And tailor your roadmap to them.
Of course this doesn't need to mean you're recreating a new roadmap every time.
You'll find that you'll have 2-5 groups of audiences:
The most common I see are:
1) for executives
2) for external teams (eg sales, marketing, even a public roadmap)
3) a detailed version for product and engineering
4) public roadmaps for customers
Different audiences.
Each with different levels of information and formats.
Yes it's more work, but this can be the difference between influencing a stakeholder and getting bogged down into unnecessary details.
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More on roadmaps:
📌 How to Build a Product Roadmap: 5 Steps From Features to Outcome Roadmap (REAL EXAMPLE): youtube.com/watch?v=9oeeoeRf…
📌 Best Practices for Building Effective Product Roadmaps: youtube.com/watch?v=XAnPLKp7…
Product Pathways retweeted
There's no one way to do Product Strategy.
Because it's contextual.
Your context drives
→ the constraints
→ the problems to solves
→ the questions you need to answer
→ the choices you need to make
Eg. The product leaders I work with in government and not-for-profit organizations don't need to make pricing decisions, but you might.
However for those new to product strategy I know starting with a blank page or being told "it depends" is not helpful either.
So to make this practical I'd recommend starting lightweight with a one-pager - like this one: productpathways.com/blog/pro…
And answer:
WHY = Vision/Winning Aspiration
WHO = Target Market
HOW = Unique Value Proposition/Differentiation
WHAT = Product Offering/Bets
WHEN = Distribution
+ Success Measures
This will be a small step from where you are today, rather than trying to do a giant leap.
Start here. Iterate and learn.
You’ll still have a long way to go building a detailed product strategy but it’ll be better than doing nothing because it seems to big and daunting.
BONUS: If you're more progressed in your product strategy journey. You can still use one-pagers as a communication tool. Add a link to your product strategy doc for those who want more information.
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🎁 FYI I have just pulled together two templates, plus a bunch of real product strategy examples, all for FREE here: productpathways.com/strategy
Bonus, you’ll also get a couple of emails and videos from me to help you level up your product strategy craft.
Product Pathways retweeted
Let’s be real. You likely don’t need another prioritization framework.
You’ve probably tried them all - RICE, WSJF, value vs effort and a dozen spreadsheets in between.
I’ve been there too. Frustrated by ambiguous advice of "prioritize based on value"
And what I realised was the solution wasn't finding some magical framework. It was understanding how prioritization works from a principle level.
Since then I've gone deep on this topic. I've dissected every prioritization framework I could find and I found that they can all be striped back to four core components.
Understanding this has helped me move past frameworks, pick and choose which and when they're the most appropriate - even create my own when necessary.
And I’m going to share the mental model I use to do all this!
By the end of this live stream my goal is that you stop reaching for a formula and start making decisions from first principles.
If any of this resonates, then join 👉 streamyard.com/watch/Xq3qMDT…
See you there!
Product Pathways retweeted
Here’s why you don’t you see roles like BAs, Scrum Masters, Release Managers, etc in product companies (and why traditional enterprises need them).
First this isn’t supposed to be a throw shade post, it’s for those who haven’t been exposed to this way of working and are thinking “that couldn’t possibly work”
🔸PM feeds engineering → Product, design, and engineering collaborate to define work together
🔸PM writes all tickets → Engineers write their own tickets
🔸Everything falls on PM’s shoulders → Engineering leaders take the load for delivery
🔸Low trust = high communication overhead → High trust from stakeholders reduces communication burden
🔸Manage numerous dependencies → Dependencies are or eliminated
🔸Competing priorities. Low cohesion → High alignment and fewer conflicting goals
🔸Big bang releases → Deploy, release, and launch are decoupled
🔸Large 12 month initiatives → Think big but work small
🔸Every decision needs 15 meetings to satisfy everyone → ok with inconsistency to move faster
A couple more, plus I explain each of them further in today’s newsletter 👉 antmurphy.me/newsletter/how-…
One last thought:
A common theme across all of these is ‘cognitive load’.
The more burden and cognitive load you put on a team, the more people you need to manage everything.
So for those leaders (and future leaders) reading this, I leave you with this reflection:
What are you currently doing to reduce cognitive load for your team?
P.s. and please don't interpret this as product companies being perfect in any way. They’re not. You often trade one challenge for another (eg dependecies for the stress of not having a job if the funding round doesn’t close)
I've seen enough companies to know the ‘grass is never greener’.
Hope this is helpful for some of you!
Product Pathways retweeted
We usually think in additive terms.
Building the next feature, the next 'big bet', or expanding into a new market.
It's always adding more...
Because more is better, right?
There's been a few analysis now showing anywhere between 60-80% of feature are rarely to never used... but it's not just waste.
There's also such thing as 'negative value'
Sometimes more = worse 👎
More complexity = more noise = harder to use...
And you can add the opportunity cost in there.
Whilst you are working on that next shiny thing, you could have been fixing those widespread issues.
So whilst you're all planning Q1 and 2026 - and probably have a long list of stuff you're planning to add - what will you remove?
When was the last time you removed a feature?
or sunsetted a underperforming product?
It's why I'm a big fan of creating a 'NOT doing' list.
In fact, I've started to compile a library of real product strategies and you'll see in some of them, they have a NOT doing section (you can access the library here: productpathways.com/strategy)
Because strategy is as much about choosing what you're not doing, as what you are.
Otherwise you'll end up with a product that's a bit like these tv remotes 🙃
Product Pathways retweeted
"How product companies operate without BAs, Scrum Masters, Release Managers, etc." buff.ly/3ymYQ76 @ant_murphy
Product Pathways retweeted
Nothing improved my influence more than understanding this one concept.
It explained so much.
That concept is Cognitive Dissonance
The simple way I explain it is 'brain stress'
It's the stress we experience when what we're experiencing, seeing or hearing doesn't align with our view of the world.
If you believe that pineapple doesn't belong on pizza you might be offended by my dinner choice 🍕
But we run into this all the time in organisations.
It explains
→ why that executive doesn't seem to listen to reason.
→ why you can collect all the evidence in the world and still people won't believe you.
→ why someone else can say the same thing as you and suddenly it's a great idea.
This was a huge unlock because once you understand what's causing these scenarios you can begin to learn to navigate it.
I share a few tactics that work well in the video below 👇
youtube.com/watch?v=4pKFA5Dm…
Product Pathways retweeted
Here's a difference I see between product discovery for 0-1 products vs mature ones...
In 0-1 you need to rely on qualitative data over quantitative.
1. For starters, you usually don't have access to a large / diverse user-base to draw from. This makes it hard to run surveys, look at analytics and run large scale unmoderated tests.
2. You don't have users, so you can't look at data - and even if you did get a beta of early access group going (which you should) getting a statistically significant group is hard.
Therefore rather than trying to get a large group and lots of quant data.
→ Find 1-5 “champions” who are highly engaged and your ideal customer profile.
Spend lots of time with them, interview them, observe them a lot and soak up as much time with them as possible!
The qualitative data you will get from that - even through it's only a small sample size - will be much more rich and high signal than trying to chase large scale quant.
Remember, the goal shouldn't be to come up with the perfect product.
It's to get started.
The only thing you're aiming for is creating a foundation to build from.
As you grow, scale will come and then you'll need to shift your approach.
Product Pathways retweeted
If you felt busier than ever last year but less effective as a product manager, this is probably why.
2025 saw more top down decision making.
More pressure to deliver.
and less autonomy.
(at least that's what the data says: antmurphy.me/newsletter/how-…)
So you're not alone in feeling like you've being losing your weeks to:
☠️ reporting
☠️ status updates
☠️ delivery planning
☠️ project management
But the good news is, it's a new year!
And the perfect time to do something about it.
Here’s what I just did to make time for the stuff I missed last year.
1️⃣ Time audit
First step is to get some data. I looked back the last 8 weeks of the year and categorise where my time actually went (my calendar was a good barometer for this).
2️⃣ Reduce, drop, or delegate
Before you can add, you first need to remove.
If it’s not high leverage, I categorise it as either:
- reduce
- remove
- or delegate
3️⃣ Protect
Lastly I create a list of the important stuff I want to make time for. The way I create space and protect it is predominately through time blocking and time batching.
Batch small admin tasks together.
Block large portions of time to focus on strategy, customer interviews, etc.
Pro tip; you can also used these timeboxes to reduce. Eg something that you were spending 2 hours a week on before, create a 1 hour block for that task. You get as much done as you can in the block.
I do these audits regularly about 2-3 times a year.
It's helped me for near a decade now.
Curious:
👉 What about you? How do you protect calendar and make time for what's important?
Product Pathways retweeted
Join live and help me reboot my strategy!
See a real product strategy get built live!
For the first webinar of 2026 I will be peeling back the curtains and sharing how I build my own product strategy live.
See the actual product strategy process, step-by-step I use and have coached dozens of product leaders and founders on as I reboot my strategy for 2026.
The goal is to share my approach and thinking in the hope that it helps give you a mental model and structure that you can use to improve your own product strategy.
And if you do join live - you can even help me work through decisions, make tradeoffs, etc - love the idea of doing it together!
See you there.
Register: streamyard.com/watch/EnFXDvZ…
