Field Notes
Field Notes.
Writing from inside real product organisations: AI in practice, product craft, ways of working and the odd note on a portfolio career. Names removed, lessons kept.
Why I Started Anderson & Co
Losing patience with an industry that sold delivery loops as product, what product actually is, why Conway's law matters more than any framework and why a good leader is a coach.
Read the Field Note
AI-Era Practice
Product Metrics After the LLM: What to Count Now
The vanity numbers the AI era added, worked examples from coding assistants, service bots, workspace AI and search, and the six measures that survive contact with a customer.
Measuring AI Outcomes: What to Count
Five measures from the product chair that survive contact with a real customer, and the two everyone reports instead.
Find My Brick: Giving Creativity Back, One Missing Piece at a Time
An early experiment with AI at The LEGO Group, in the service of children's creativity: ten million missing pieces replaced, children building beyond the instructions and educators inspired.
How This Website Was Made
An account of designing, writing and building an AI native website: the decisions I owned, how I direct an AI collaborator, the tools and standards and what the method does for a client.
Product Craft
Product Tools Without a Reason
Productboard, Aha!, Jira Product Discovery, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap, Pendo and Dovetail: what each is really for, the gotchas and how to bring a tool into your product function so it earns its licence.
Product Sense, the Way Meta Grades It
Meta invented the product sense interview and the industry photocopied it. Most candidates recite a framework, and most companies run it without knowing what it detects.
Product Leadership Interviews: FAQs and How-Tos
Questions and working methods for Head of Product, VP Product and CPO loops, written from both chairs: the candidate's and the hiring leader's.
Product Tools, Explained
RICE Prioritisation: How to Score Ideas You Can Defend
RICE scores ideas on reach, impact, confidence and effort. Here's how to use the RICE prioritisation framework well, with a worked example.
MoSCoW Prioritisation: Must, Should, Could and Won't
MoSCoW sorts a release into must have, should have, could have and won't have this time. Learn how to use it without everything becoming a must.
The Kano Model: Basics, Performance and Delighters
The Kano model sorts features into basics customers expect, performance features they compare and delighters they don't expect. Here's how to use it.
WSJF Explained: Weighted Shortest Job First
WSJF orders work by cost of delay divided by job size. Learn how it works, how it relates to Cost of Delay and CD3 and how to avoid scoring theatre.
Cost of Delay: Put a Price on Waiting
Cost of Delay shows what waiting really costs, so urgency isn't decided by who shouts loudest. Learn how to calculate it with a worked example.
How to Write Good OKRs: Objectives and Key Results That Work
How to write OKRs that guide real work: an inspiring objective, two to four measurable key results, a worked example and the mistakes to avoid.
Jobs to Be Done Explained: A Practical Guide for Product Teams
What Jobs to Be Done means, when to use it and how to write job statements, with a worked example and the mistakes product teams make.
User Story Mapping: See the Whole Journey and Slice Releases
A practical guide to user story mapping: build the backbone, add stories under each step and slice a first release that works end to end.
The Opportunity Solution Tree: A Guide for Product Teams
How to build an opportunity solution tree: one outcome, opportunities from research, several ideas each and quick tests to find what works.
Marty Cagan's Four Big Product Risks, and How to Test Each One
The four big product risks from Marty Cagan's Inspired: value, usability, feasibility and viability. What each means and how to test it early.
Ways of Working
Every Tool, Organised by the Need in Front of You
From finding the real problem to steering the work: 58 tools with fillable worksheets and live calculators. Three are free to use.
Cynefin and Complexity in a Nutshell
Four kinds of problem explained with a veg patch, a broken pump and a fox, and why most product organisations treat complex problems as complicated.
When the Board and the Work Disagree
Three full-stack teams at Lloyds, a kanban board that looked healthy and what changed when we measured flow rather than motion. Scottish Feature of the Year, NPS 92.
Careers and a Portfolio Life
Giving Back on an Overseas Posting, and the Product Skills It Gave Me
Every volunteer role, the product skill it proves and the AI-native stories I’m taking back to work.
On Taking Time Out, and What I Did with It
The military-spouse chapter. What stepping back from a full-time career actually looked like, and the three things that made it work.
Every tool mentioned in these notes is on the Freebies shelf, with the gotchas. New notes land here first, then on LinkedIn.