Ben Graney Green

🚀 Understanding Hick’s Law in Product Management 🚀 Have you ever felt stuck choosing between too many options? That’s Hick’s Law at play! Learn how simplifying choices can dramatically improve user experience in my latest Medium article. In this article, I dive into: How to make sign-up processes smoother 📝 Streamlining UIs for better usability 💻 Prioritizing what really matters to users ⭐ Strategies to prevent information overload ⚖️ Let’s keep it simple and effective! Discover the power of Hick’s Law and how it can transform your product management approach. #ProductManagement #UXDesign #HicksLaw #UserExperience #Simplicity #DesignPrinciples

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As I'm trimming out all the sweet peas in my garden, I'm reminded of why gardening is a far better analogy for intentional system design than architecture. When you tend the garden you plant, you're forced to reckon with the decisions you've made. The plants will grow or not grow; flourish or get sick and wilt; make room for everything equally or overgrow to dominate the sun all based on your behaviors, actions and decisions (or lack of decision). As the garden grows, it evolves and adapts and you get real-time feedback on the effect of the decisions you make. How tall the plants grow, how much space they take, how much water & fertilizer they need, what types of pests and friends they attract. In my case as I was watching my sweet pea grow ever higher and telling myself, I need to trim that back but never doing it, the decision was made for me when they finally collapsed. The plants weren't going to stop growing just like tech debt won't stop accruing. There is a lesson here, but for some reason in our industry we fetishize ivory tower 'architects' as the ultimate career destination. Engineers take offense to being referred to as gardeners. But your system design isn't finished when it's drawn out or even implemented, just like a garden isn't finished when the seeds are planted. The system behaviors you encourage or discourage are equally or more important than the design decisions. The ability to receive signals right to left, the adaptability to respond to change, ease of maintenance, encouragement of learning mean the difference between ad-hoc chaos and intentional design that evolves the way you expect. The system will change, just like a garden will grow. Be the gardener that actively cultivates the system for its lifetime.

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I wrote a blog, inspired by a SheTO slack thread. Advice for VPs of Engineering (VPE) overseeing entire engineering departments is broad and crucial. This blog offers guidance on navigating the 6 Ps - Principles, Products, Platforms, People, Projects, and Processes - designed to empower engineering leaders in effectively leading their organizations. https://lnkd.in/etbtvdaa Happy to hear your thoughts.

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I sat down with Reforge to talk about Sprig on Sprig 🌱 Check out some examples of how I use our product to make impact strategic & product decisions! In-app survey for product experience research: https://lnkd.in/g32rWs4s Process (and FigJam) used to audit a core user journey: https://lnkd.in/gqNQHHxq In-app survey to recruit beta testers: https://lnkd.in/ghmnzhA9

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Imagine a world where you don't have to constantly jump between applications. Where all of your conversations can stay in one place. Where you can get through your email even faster and easier than ever before. Now, stop imagining and go check out the newest release from Superhuman (that my team worked on!!). We've made it incredibly easy to collaborate with your team on email without having to jump over to Slack or another tool! - No more forwarding an email to a manager or colleague for viz. Share it with them and give them full visibility into the past and future messages in the thread. - No more screenshotting and posting an email to another channel to get input. Write a comment directly in the thread and tag them for their input. -And no more switching context and getting out of flow. Stay in one tool and get more done without the stress of going to other tools to resolve questions. Add on top of that all of the amazing AI capabilities we've added into the tool, and you will be set to crush your email in record time! Check us out (and please upvote us) on Product Hunt today and, if you haven't already, update your Superhuman version to get access to all the awesome new features! Many thanks to the AMAZING team who made this happen!

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I’ve spent my last four and a half years at Brex. Joining back in January of 2020, a lot has changed between myself, the company, and the world. Over my time at Brex, I’ve seen or experienced: - Rolling out career ladders, working towards a staff engineer promotion, and moving into management - Onboarding hundreds of engineers, resulting in the growth of the company from under fifty engineers and three hundred employees to over a thousand employees - Surviving three different rounds of layoffs, and countless numbers of re-organizations - Moving from a product engineer helping to build and launch Brex Cash, to an internal platform tech lead focused on developer productivity for a rapidly scaling organization, back to working on product as an engineering manager helping to re-launch our Bill Pay product integrated into our expense management software Since 2023, I've been writing down some key learnings from my time at Brex. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eXRV8NNz #TechCareer #SoftwareEngineering #Fintech #StartupLife #CareerGrowth #EngineeringManagement #ProductDevelopment #DeveloperProductivity #TechInsights #Scalability #OrganizationalGrowth #TechLeadership #Brex #TechLearnings #EngineeringJourney

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I'm a product manager with a communications major. While this might discount how some folks see me as a PM as I'm not from a traditional CS background, I actually see it as my edge. 1) As a communications major, I understand what it means to communicate across different stakeholders, context levels and frameworks. 2) As a communications major, I understand what it means to absorb technical concepts but be able to communicate them clearly and with purpose. 3) As a communications major, I understand what it means to listen to the end-user's needs and wants and solve the underlying issue instead of the symptom. I used to apologise for my atypical background. Now, I'm proud of it.

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Do any folks in my network have good resources / community suggestions for getting feedback on software products I'm considering? More broadly any good groups for Tech/Startup operators? I've been using reddit a bit, but haven't had a ton of success. Finding that I often have specific requirements that make or break the appeal of an off-the-shelf solution; I'm getting tired of filling out forms/setting up meetings with sales reps who need to then check with their engineering teams to answer my handful of burning questions. Thank you! 🙏 #tech #startups #operations #software #saas

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Hi folks! Exciting news! Starting in July, I'll be offering individual product management coaching to two new clients. My coaching is personalized and goal-oriented, designed to elevate aspiring, new, or senior product managers through situational mentorship, tools, and frameworks. Interested? Check out https://lnkd.in/g4qnibEs for testimonials. Please feel free to DM me if you need more details. All likes and comments to help spread the word are greatly appreciated! #productmanagement #coaching #mentorship #productmanager

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🚀 Exciting News: Why I Helped to Co-Found Skillibrium 🚀 For months now, I’ve been heads down, working with Bart Fanelli and a talented team of strategic advisors and product experts to bring an amazing platform to market. Today, I wanted to share why I chose to embark on this path. For years, I've been passionate about Revenue Enablement, Sales Optimization, Productivity, Adult Learning, and Professional Development – anything related to helping people succeed in their roles – constantly seeking ways to innovate and make a meaningful impact to Go-To-Market teams. To be honest, although I’m really proud of the Enablement work I’ve done in the last two decades, about 80% of things I worked on were shelved (the baby and the bath water - thrown out in good measure) – not because they were bad, but because they were impossible to activate. The best content is often seen once and then forgotten –  1000s of gems hidden in shared drives, learning management systems, content management systems, sales enablement systems, or presentations in classes or kickoff events. Over the years, I found that to truly make change possible at an organization, you need to be able to find and activate that content – through executive alignment, consistent messaging, standard playbooks, repeatable coaching, and practice – lots of practice. There is a significant opportunity to help more teams get away from paper processes and silos – to help them truly optimize their customer-facing function. With #Skillibrium, we are taking a modern approach to tackle this problem, leveraging AI, best practices, and thought leadership. And we are rapidly iterating with customers to design technology that fits their needs. #salesenablement #revenueenablement

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🎉 Exciting Update! 🎉 I'm thrilled to share that I've completed the Product Management Bootcamp! As someone already in the field, this experience deepened my understanding, especially around discovery and research. Key takeaways: ✅ Understand and apply product management principles and best practices ✅ Mastering when to trust my instincts vs. letting discovery data guide decisions ✅ Conduct market research and analyze user feedback ✅ Improved strategies for developing user-centric products Thank you to the instructors and my fellow participants for an enriching journey. I'm eager to apply these insights to create impactful products. Diginext Academy #ProductManagement #ContinuousLearning #Discovery #Research #Innovation

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As promised, here is another look behind the curtain of our latest pilot with Ebb, Headspace's new reflection space for members to write out their thoughts, find gratitude, and see things from a new perspective -- powered by conversational AI. I am so proud of the work of our mighty team that brought Ebb to life, especially William Kearns, PhD, Leah Braunstein, Priyanka Marawar, Aram Sheroyan, Ian Kwok, PhD, Nick Hayward, Akhil Chaturvedi , Sandy Sanchez, Crystal Small, Samantha Edu, LPC, Amy Howard, Tina Hardison, Lauren Allik, Dani Balenson, Jacob Peace, Alex Baranov, and Ryan Routon. #genai #conversationalai

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Weekend Reading: Do you pitch in to help your overloaded team? This article by Raw Signal Group takes us through a better way to help overloaded teams. What to think about before pitching in: 1. We talk ourselves out of making work better --> Before making a case for fixing the overload 2. You can cover the skills gap --> But it usually isn't that easy 3. A structural issue is causing the overload --> Pitching in prevents you from fixing the issue Read the article before pitching into an overloaded team. 🔥 https://lnkd.in/gR5uF57B #productmanagement #leadership #product

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Hey y’all. I’ve launched and run a distributed, thimble-sized software company, and we’ve created a government so small you can fit it in your pocket. Our customers are mostly indigenous and separatist movements, including this one in the Pacific Northwest (see the link).Domestically our target market is the large percentage of Americans that live in unincorporated communities and in small towns, most of whom have not felt the beneficial halo of a government for generations, if ever. Internationally we focus on transitional and developing economies with a large “shadow economy,” which is not the same as a black market. A “shadow economy” is that which would be technically legal if people were declaring the income to the tax authorities, and our value proposition is incentivizing people to formalize this shadow economy, which helps them maintain a state of communal autonomy, vis a vis criminal enterprise and black market which tends to seek a safe haven within shadow economies during times of hardship and political upheaval. Our technology is “private label,” and our customers publish the app within their communities without the necessity to reveal that we are behind the scenes, anonymously maintaining the platform. The app and architecture itself has the capacity to function almost invisible to mass surveillance, making it attractive to those seeking autonomy within the malignant halo of oppressive governments. The app is what’s called a progressive web application (or a “PWA”), which is an architecture first introduced by Twitter in 2017, enabling apps to be distributed outside the stores without the necessity of a device being jailbroken. The app handles ordinary currency, but is technically a web3 app, so if and when a community is ready, we can help them transition to the use of a complementary currency which is introduced as a “buy local first“ program. Outside this endeavor I volunteer my experience within a variety of open-source projects, most of them related to privacy and security, putting into service my decades of hard/earned professional experience in the domain of product development in Fortune 1000 and large privately-held corporations in the information security and anti-fraud space.

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Great read by my sister and Trust & Safety expert Naomi Yarin. Exploring how we can build trust with customers and empower users to proactively check in on digital platforms!

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We are in a consultancy bubble. Currently, clients pay software agencies to build their products, often leading to failures because clients hold all the leverage. Consultancy firms must cover their backs to avoid financial loss, resulting in high margins due to "difficult stakeholders." I hope that soon, clients will realize that successful products require more than just outsourcing development. I hope they will understand that punishing agencies for mistakes or threatening to leave isn't productive. I hope that eventually, clients will hire individuals who share their vision, provide them with resources and flexibility, and take on the associated risks. I hope that this shift will allow product professionals to focus on the product itself, rather than navigating internal politics. I hope.

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We've had an EM role open on our team for several months. This is a post about everything we learned from why we haven't filled it yet. I'd love to get your help in filling it! 🤝 The role: - EM for our 0-to-1 team within Postman, with the goal of defining and winning our category for a new kind of API-level monitoring/observability tool. Our team came into Postman through an acquisition and we're now building the Postman version of our product, using the same tech. - Help scale our product and team from alpha into beta. We are a department with six engineers and approved headcount to grow a lot more in the next year. - The role is 60% prioritization/roadmap management, 40% building the team. The current team members are high-ownership, independent, founding engineer types. 🤔 Misconceptions, miscalibrations, and lessons: - Initially, the role was called "Senior Engineering Manager, Observability." Instead of getting the product engineering managers we were looking for, we primarily got interest from platform/infra EMs. We got thousands of inbound applications and spent months zeroing that out. 🙀 - Previously, our recruiters were sourcing a lot of folks with observability backgrounds. We've learned that since we're actually building a new kind of observability product, much more focused on UX, the profile we're looking for is product-focused rather than tech-focused. No observability experience required. - When people think Postman, they often think of our core product: the API client. So we were getting more interest from folks looking to scale a product, rather than 0-to-1 "I want to build a team and product" types. Postman actually has several other products, for instance testing and Flows, our no-code tool. There is a lot of interesting 0-to-1 work on our way to growing as a multi-product platform! - Some people have the perception that Postman isn't one of the high-growth companies because they're not seeing lots of their friends joining Postman. Postman has quadrupled since 2020, BUT a lot of the engineering growth has been in India. (Postman is the biggest SaaS company to come out of India!) Our team is part of a recent change to grow our US engineering presence. Many of us leaders across the company are looking for folks to join early cohorts of US-based product engineering and platform teams. 💡 What we've changed on our end: - We've deemphasized the "observability" part of the job and emphasized the "new product" and "product engineering" parts of the job. - We've also switched our own reachouts to look for people with product engineering experience at SaaS companies with product-led growth. 👩‍🚀 Help us find our EM! We now have a solid pipeline, but haven't yet made a hire. We'd love to hear from you if: - You have thoughts about how to improve our EM search. - You know someone we should meet. - You're a scrappy EM looking for an opportunity to build a new product while growing a team. Look forward to hearing from you!

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