From making AI products without the hype to measuring the real impact of Product Ops, June’s most-read articles offered a few personal stories and an inside look into the job market. Here’s our most-read content on Mind the Product this month.
Product Ops often gets asked, “What do you actually do?” Lucy Pitticas-Rothwell, Head of Product Operations at FreeAgent has a compelling answer. She lays out six types of impact and explains how to track them. If you’re in Product Ops and tired of defending your existence, this is the toolkit you need.
Read the full post by Lucy here.
Chidi Afulezi is a product guy, digital insurgent, creative, educator, and entrepreneur who coaches and consults with leading product leaders and product teams. In his guest post this month, he reflected on building products in the continent of Africa, dealing with constraints, adapting models, and understanding users. One of the key sections highlighted to us by Chidi was the following:
African product teams operate in environments that often require more creative approaches than what traditional frameworks suggest. The teams that are thriving in these conditions have learned to embrace adaptive product operating models while grounding themselves in deep local understanding. They understand that every problem exists in multiple layers, where what appears straightforward on the surface often reveals complex social, cultural, and economic dynamics underneath. They navigate markets where verification comes before belief, where proof must precede trust. They leverage intergenerational wisdom and adapt global frameworks to local realities.
Most importantly, they recognize that doing product in Africa is a communal effort in developing uniquely African solutions to uniquely African challenges.
Read the full post by Chidi here.
Jake Bowen-Bate makes a passionate case for the traditional product triad between product, design and engineering. Far from being a problem, he argues, this tug-of-war is what makes great products possible.
“The benefit of structures like the triad is that having different people accountable for different (sometimes competing) considerations creates better work,” Jake says, “I like to refer to ‘strength through tension’. Like a bridge that stays up because the two ends are pulling in opposite directions, a product is often better because of the healthy tension between members of the triad.”
Jake closes, “We should embrace that and the new efficiencies and opportunities it brings. But we should be much more cautious about making someone else accountable for the desirability, usability or accessibility of products, or assuming that we can vest accountability for everything to do with the product in a single person, and not suffer any adverse consequences.”
No, it’s not just you…hiring product managers is genuinely tough. Eira Hayward digs into why: vague role definitions, generic CVs, and algorithmic hiring systems that miss the point. The piece offers a diagnosis of the broken hiring funnel and offers some advice on what to look out for when hiring great product people.
Everyone’s chasing the AI wave, but Harshal Tripathi argues that before you get swept away, make sure your AI product actually solves a real problem. His playbook offers six habits to help product teams avoid the shiny trap and focus on user value.
What product content have you been reading this month? Anything that you’d like to see us cover? Let us know by emailing editor@mindtheproduct.com!
