Although this blog is entirely focused on my developer-side, this is a part-time (nights and weekends) enterprise. My ‘main’ job is not in development, it has quite a bit to do with product management.
**I promise you this is going somewhere**
Over many years, in many roles, the one thing that I’ve seen consistently differentiate good Product & Project Managers from great ones is their ability to keep tabs on everything.
Great Product & Project Managers:
– Know the strategic intent of every Product Feature / Project.
– Remember the contents and agreements of every discussion.
– Timely act on any tasks they have, or follow up with others if a task is due.
– Know every single person involved and what makes them click.
– Are able to drive on many different initiatives in parallel without dropping a beat.
It seems magical, it seems like they have superpowers… And upon closer inspection, they do: they have a model they relentlessly follow.
To enable the model:
– Some use a notes app (Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes…).
– Others use a notebook / notes (NotePad++, vim/emacs, a real notebook…).
– A majority uses a combination of ToDo app and a notes app (Evernote + Microsoft To Do, OneNote + Things, Apple Notes + OmniFocus…).
No one I’ve talked to seems to be satisfied with the apps they use. It’s not the app’s fault, they are general purpose apps after all.
So… What if we turn this around and create an app build specifically to enable great Project & Product managers?
That’s exactly what the next app I’ll be working on. And will be doing so in the open.
More to come soon,
Marc