What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are exclusive to premium subscribers of Product Management IRL.
This week’s backstory is how a decision log saved time:
What Prompted This Article?
The program managers were avoiding me. My PRD was done and the requirements were assigned to each functional team.
And then silence. No questions. No updates in product team meetings.
I’d ask about a schedule risk. The response: “That’s a good question. Could you investigate?”
Due to launch requirements, I couldn’t take time to investigate. Escalation to the leadership team of peer program managers would cause more trouble.
I remembered a technique from engineering: a decision log.
I needed a decision log to get agreement that all the independent work would come together in the end.
I’ve never seen a product manager use a decision log. I adapted my old way of raising a risk to a decision log. Here is the adaptation:
I tried the decision log on two issues and my worries about those 2 risks evaporated. But the real question: Will the decisions stick?
