Happy New Year 🎊 🍾

Most relevant IT books 2025, IMHO: 📕 "Architecture for Flow" by @suksr.bsky.social 📗 "User Needs Mapping" by @richallen.info 📘 "Frictionless" by @nicolefv.bsky.social and Abi Noda 📙 "Code Health Guardian" by Artie Shevchenko Thank you for sharing your experience 🙏

Curiosity gets mislabelled all the time: “Too many questions.” “Overthinking.” “Negative.” “Always poking holes.” I wrote about why curiosity is a strategic advantage and why most people don’t use it: I'd love to hear your take below... medium.com/thrivve-part...

I’ve spent 25 years getting things wrong in product. This week, I finally wrote down the lessons I wish I’d learned sooner. No hero stories. No “guru” voice. Just the stuff that would’ve saved me a lot of pain. Do you recognise any of these? It's here: medium.com/thrivve-part...

It’s easy to mistake confidence for cognition when working with AI, but it doesn’t reason; it reacts. The real skill is knowing when to hand over ambiguity and when to take it back. Post here: When Pattern Recognition Pretends to Think (and How to Work with It) medium.com/thrivve-part...

AI is starting to think outside us. I call it System 0 - where machines anticipate what we’ll need before we know we need it. The challenge isn’t speed anymore. It’s staying human inside it. medium.com/thrivve-part... #AI #FutureOfWork #Flow #Thrivve #TechAndHumanity

Stop setting bigger goals. Fix your system. My latest post digs into why teams keep confusing ambition with progress, and how flow metrics, feedback, and system design make the difference. paulisthrivving.medium.com/you-dont-ris...

“Can we just squeeze this one in?” That’s how it starts. Expedites feel good in the moment, but they’re a loan you’ll pay back with interest. How does your team price urgency? paulisthrivving.medium.com/every-expedi... #ProductManagement #Flow #Leadership #Kanban #Delivery

Reminder: The Call for sessions for next year's Agile Manchester is open: agilemanchester.net/call-for-ses... The event will take place from 13-14 May...

45 pages in to ‘User Needs Mapping’, and already, I find myself nodding along with every paragraph in @richallen.info new book - love it already! Grab your copy here: userneedsmapping.com/book-orders/

Retros. Interviews. Experiments. Six months later: same roadmap. Because reflection isn’t learning. Learning’s what changes afterward. medium.com/thrivve-part... #ProductManagement #LearningCulture #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement

Your dashboard has 19 widgets, but if your charts don’t change today’s choices, they’re not delivering insight; they’re just noise dressed as wisdom. You need four flow metrics and just two charts to actually steer delivery; convince me I am wrong... paulisthrivving.medium.com/stop-admirin...

The wait is over — the IAF Europe & Middle East Conference program is live! Special thanks to SessionLab for sponsoring this year’s conference agenda! Review our agenda and secure your ticket today: ilovefacilitation.ro #Facilitation #IAFEME #Leadership

We keep pretending roadmaps are strategy. They’re not. They’re shopping lists dressed up as certainty. New blog post: medium.com/thrivve-part...

Most strategies don’t die in the boardroom. They die in Jira. Lists coordinate. Loops adapt. Here’s how to keep your strategy alive: medium.com/thrivve-part...

I’ve seen beautiful dashboards hide bad decisions. Precision feels safe, but without meaning, it’s just data theatre. Numbers should drive insight, not decorate slides. Here’s why I’m challenging pretty data without purpose: paulisthrivving.medium.com/beautiful-ba...

My new post is for every team still pointing stories and wondering why it’s not working. From Story Points to Flow: A Migration Guide → How to spot the rot, escape the theatre, and build a system that actually delivers. medium.com/thrivve-part...

Everyone says, “Talk to users.” Few know how to translate what they hear. I have written about how the best features weren’t requested; they were understood - I'd love to hear what you think! medium.com/thrivve-part...

“I’m 70% confident this will work.” That’s what I told the CEO. Not a bluff. Not fake certainty. Just honesty. She leaned in and said: “Tell me about the other 30%.” New post: Why “I don’t know” is a leadership superpower medium.com/thrivve-part...

Think your team is outcome-driven? Don’t show me your roadmap, show me what you didn’t ship, and tell me why. medium.com/thrivve-part... #productmgmt

Most teams don’t fail because they break the rules. They fail because they only follow them. I wrote about the quiet evolution of high-performing teams and why it causes so many organisations to panic. medium.com/thrivve-part... #Leadership #TeamCulture #ProductThinking

You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. The roadmap’s full, the metrics look green, and nobody’s quite sure what changed for the customer. A story about motion, meaning, and the return of the Feature Factory 2.0. medium.com/thrivve-part... #prodmgmt

I’m rather excited - coming soon 😍 #gamestorming2.0

Ever watched a team review a dashboard and… do nothing? No swarm. No pause. No fix. Just charts and silence. Visibility ≠ Control. Dashboards don’t drive delivery. Flow doesn’t fail from lack of data but from lack of permission. New post: The Visibility Trap medium.com/thrivve-part... #flow

Not all leadership is loud. Some of it happens quietly, in the gaps, holding the system together. This post is for the ones doing the product work behind the product work. medium.com/thrivve-part...

I have been training all month for the MacMillan ‘Swim the Chanel’ event which kicks of on Sunday - I’ll be swimming the 21 miles in the month of June (in the pool 🏊‍♂️), so if you can donate even a few pounds, I and they would very much appreciate it! swimit.macmillan.org.uk/fundraising/...

The illusion of certainty is comforting. But it doesn’t ship value. Flow doesn’t make false promises; it reflects the system you’ve built. I'm trying Substack again. If you find this useful, I'd love a follow and to hear your thoughts! open.substack.com/pub/paulisth... #honestdelivery #product

The updated @prokanban.bsky.social Kanban Guide removed the explicit requirement for WIP limits, and a lot of people panicked. I didn’t. I built a system to show what real WIP control looks like without rigid limits. Full post here → medium.com/thrivve-part...

WIP isn’t dead. But it is misunderstood. Too many teams treat Work in Progress like a checkbox or a board column. But it’s not just about limits — it’s about learning. My latest post, and a first with @prokanban.bsky.social www.prokanban.org/blog/wip-wha...

I got some tough feedback this week. “I don’t care about what you did. I want to know what’s next.” It stung. But it got me thinking. Are you creating clarity? Or just contributing to the noise? medium.com/thrivve-part...

Me: Stop doing 3 questions during daily meetings. Scrum people: It was never part of Scrum Guide! And a bad practice all along! Me (genuinely curious, looks up an older version of the Scrum Guide):

I asked a room of leaders to forecast with dice. No tools. No slides. Just pages read, a 12-sided die, and a shift in mindset. New post: I Asked a Room Full of Leaders to Predict the Future, With Dice medium.com/thrivve-part... #Flow #MonteCarlo #Forecasting #Throughput #Uncertainty

Founder: But they said they loved the idea! Me: You literally asked them whether they like your idea?! Founder: Sure! What's wrong with that? Me: Well, our interns during their first month know better than that. Also, do yourself a favor and read Mom's Test (www.momtestbook.com)

We spend hours ranking maybes. We call it backlog refinement. But most backlog management isn’t about moving forward — it’s about feeling like we might, someday. Here’s why your backlog might be slowing you down instead of speeding you up: medium.com/thrivve-part...

“Trust the team” sounds noble. But if your system is broken, trust becomes a burden. I wrote about what real trust looks like — and how to design for it, not just declare it. medium.com/thrivve-part... #agile #product #teams #delivery #trust

My two decades of experience tell me this: most delivery problems aren’t caused by bad Agile — they’re caused by invisible flow dysfunction. If you’re not managing how work moves, you’re not managing delivery — you’re just organising chaos. medium.com/thrivve-part... #prodmgmt #agiledelivery

RICE made my roadmap look smart. BRICE made it make money. New blog post: medium.com/thrivve-part... #product #prodmgmt I'd love to hear about your experiences with prioritisation frameworks...

May your troubles be as few and as far apart as my grandmother’s teeth! Sláinte! Enjoy the celebrations! 🍀🍀Happy St Patrick’s day🍀🍀

Success isn’t what holds teams back—it’s what keeps them stuck. I call it The Success Trap—when teams stop questioning, stop adapting, and start optimizing for yesterday’s wins instead of tomorrow’s. I break it all down here: medium.com/thrivve-part... Let me know what you think!

Some teams commit to ideas too soon and pay the price. Others test, validate, and invest wisely. I call them Deciders and Seekers. Which one is your team? medium.com/thrivve-part... #productmgmt

I have moved my blog to Substack - I am still committed to creating helpful and free content :) This week, I have written about the success delusion - I'd love to hear what you think. open.substack.com/pub/paulisth...

I started working with a new set of teams this week, and one of the first conversations we had was on adoption; I have written about my thoughts on it - Why ‘Better’ Products Fail: The Hidden Forces That Drive (or Kill) Adoption medium.com/thrivve-part...

If like me, you spend a lot of time with clients supporting either product or with flow work, you likely talk about (potential) value - hat tip @prokanban.bsky.social - I have written about the common mistakes I see when thinking about defining, measuring and managing it medium.com/thrivve-part...

• You don’t lead a group of PMs for the benefit of the product org. • You're the product representative for a section the business • Be as close as possible to your peers Templates to set expectations with your team: www.hustlebadger.com/what-do-prod... 8/8 #product #productmanagement

When Steve Jobs changed everything by unveiling the world's first product manager back in 2007

The current state of AI integration into office products (like Google Workspace, O365) is so disappointing. Demos suggest these things can do reliable data manipulation. But every time I try things like "create a comma-separated list from these columns" it makes stuff up.

I have worked with tens of product teams in my career, and one thing I have noticed in the best teams is their ability to keep their options open. I have written about that in my latest blog post - what do you think? Does this resonate with you? medium.com/thrivve-part... #prodmgmt

When UX leaders don’t have a seat at the table, there will be signs… 🤣 Somewhere, a UX designer and brand manager are screaming into the void. #UX #Design #ProductDesign #ProductManagement #ContentDesign #AI

The value of your product lies in what gets used, not what gets built.