Forming a Ring: Product Management Ring (ETHProduct)

[adamschmideg]

I just joined the Geth and Swarm teams at the EF as a PM and I’m experiencing new types of challenges, resistance. So I find this ring really exciting and potentially helpful. I’d like to join the call too.

[JamesZaki]

Great discussion in this thread, thanks for kicking things off here.

Recent history - In Feb 2013 the Swedish pirate party shared it’s “swarm” organisation method, there was a ted talk on this too. Some links…

• https://falkvinge.net/2013/02/14/swarmwise-the-tactical-manual-to-changing-the-world-chapter-one/
• http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Swarm_Organization
  I hope people will find it very insightful.

A few points mentioned in the thread that I’d like to further:

• Naming is important
  Starting by clarifying PM is product management (not project management). Both are important, but starting with defining terms like: product, management, and users. Then defining what problem PMs would like to solve

• Decentralised management
  Can come across as an oxymoron, so roles like motivator/coordination-assistant might work better. In this space I feel that managers can serve projects well with “management suggestions” that are backed by data/experience, and then it is up to the developers to opt-in to one

Coming from several angles here (Engineer, educator, and PM) my 2c cents with points of value: leadership through doing, encouraging an open-environment with autonomy, and creating a roadmap that is backed with experience and data.

Lastly, is the Telegram group intentionally hidden, or can a link be shared?

[pet3rpan]

@JamesZaki

Naming is important
Starting by clarifying PM is product management (not project management). Both are important, but starting with defining terms like: product, management, and users. Then defining what problem PMs would like to solve

Thank for the clarification. The reason why we use product management is because there is much more to it than just project management - it’s important to make that distinction - it’s not just development cycles, it’s not just coordination

And yes, I am intentionally not sharing the link out into the public because public join links kill telegram groups (seen too many groups go down this path + admin a few other telegram groups). Rather have it stay high quality and grow organically.

[JamesZaki]

Caught up on some reading and there were some great points in a few places.

Meta-Magicians thread

• " while actions can be carried out in an ad-hoc swarm-like manner, funding allocations don’t quite lend themselves to the same ad-hoc treatment (the latter is zero-sum, while the former is not)."

But primarily from the original SODC thread, Self Organised Development Cycles.
and thought this was well summarised:

@Ethernian

If parts should fit together and this is our goal, so may be we are missing some role like Product Manager (or Program Manager - for bigger cases)? Then we should try to adopt this classical role to our reality without reinventing the wheel.

From other side: there are bigger projects in opensource community releasing products based on work of many SODCs. For example, there are linux distributors, like Canonical with Ubuntu. Do we missing that part in our ecosystem?

I would prefer to find and adopt existing experience instead of reinventing the wheel.

Would love to hear from long-established open-source projects and how they guide products, and thoughts on possible differences with web3 products.
Also making the distinction between consumer products (user = layman), vs protocol “products” (user = developer).

[pet3rpan]

@JamesZaki

But primarily from the original SODC thread, Self Organised Development Cycles.
and thought this was well summarised:

Absolutely agree. Its definitely on the list of things to do ~ but I am only one person doing this on the side Currently I am exploring the problem more, gaining greater understanding our own problems before looking at possible solutions. I foresee a bigger focus on such frameworks maybe later when we begin moving into the realm of trying to solve things.