Collection · 25 entries

Kill the…

Things to stop doing. Each post here argues for retiring a PM ritual that solved a problem you no longer have. Some are uncomfortable; that's the point. If a habit was rational in 2015 and isn't now, the cost of keeping it is the cost of every wrong move it produces.

The full reading order

25 entries
  1. 01Lenny Counts 3.8 Open PM Roles per Designer. Kill the Ratio. Count the Surfaces With a Rubric.Lenny's job report puts 3.8 open PM roles against every design role. The ratio counts who draws, and drawing got cheap. Count surfaces with a current rubric.9 min readNov 26
  2. 02Cutler Says Let the Customer Pick the Score. Kill the Scorecard Menu.John Cutler says prototype three versions of the engagement score and let the customer choose. In an FDE engagement the score was fixed at signature.9 min readNov 26
  3. 03Figma's Agent Made Three Prototypes From 'Surprise Me.' Kill the Brief. Write the Rubric First.Figma's workflow lab briefs its agent with 'surprise me,' picks the option the designer likes, and writes the spec last. Write the rubric before the prompt.8 min readNov 26
  4. 04Salesforce's AI Org Routes Field Feedback Through One Slack Channel. Kill the Channel as the Loop.Salesforce's 700-person Agentforce org puts FDE feedback in a Slack channel with two tags. A channel is an inbox. The loop is a packet, a date, and a decision.8 min readNov 26
  5. 05Salesforce, Snowflake, and Atlassian Shipped the Agent Budget Cap. Kill It as the Control.Three control planes shipped the agent budget cap in one week. The cap fires at the end of the money. The bill was set when someone changed top-k from 5 to 20.10 min readNov 26
  6. 0643 Skills, 39 Auto-Activate. Kill the Skill Count. Keep the Four You Type.Paweł Huryn's pack auto-activates 39 of 43 skills. Figma's PM OS has 31. In my library 30 of 51 commits have no author. Count fires and acted-on, not skills.8 min readNov 26
  7. 07Kill 'Find the Root Cause Yourself' on the AI-Native CSM ScorecardChad Horenfeldt's 150 interviews want CSMs who find the root cause themselves. Kill that line: triage to the layer, name the keys holder, know the recall rule.8 min readOct 26
  8. 08Kill 'The Team Would Be Slower Without It' as the Test of a Leader's Real WorkPatrick Neeman wants design leaders making again, and his test for real work is that the team would be slower without it. That test selects for the bottleneck.8 min readOct 26
  9. 09Kill the Thumb. The Preset Reason Is the Rubric Dimension.Nielsen says the thumbs that train AI deserve usability testing. The widget was never the failure. A thumb is one bit with no dimension, output id, or slice.8 min readOct 26
  10. 10Personal Agents Will Call Every Few Hours. Kill the Front Door.Salesforce says personal agents will call your contact center every few hours; put a business agent at the door. They are polling a field you never published.11 min readOct 26
  11. 11Ramp Built Its Harness in Six Weeks. Kill the Build-Versus-Buy Memo.Ramp built its agent harness in six weeks. Building got cheap, landing did not. Kill the build-versus-buy memo. Three lines instead, and buy if any is blank.10 min readOct 26
  12. 12Kill the Correction Queue: The Agent Lands When the Fix Stops Waiting for Its BuilderMarco Di Santo built an agent fast and became its bottleneck. Kill the queue where every fix waits for the builder. Three replacements, and a weekly ledger.9 min readOct 26
  13. 13Kill the Batch of Forty: Count the Unopened, Not Review TimeJakob Nielsen says to put review time on the AI invoice. 13 of my 39 agents produced work nothing ever read. Kill the batch of forty, count the unopened.8 min readOct 26
  14. 1486% Engaged, 20% Resolved: Kill the Engagement Rate HeadlineSalesforce's Tottenham release leads with 86% engagement for Ask Spurs and buries 20% resolved alone. Kill the engagement headline, lead with resolution.7 min readOct 26
  15. 15Kill the Hidden BufferDr Bart Jaworski says plan at 70% of capacity and keep the buffer quiet. Keep the 70. A hidden buffer works once per stakeholder. Publish the variance.7 min readOct 26
  16. 16The Kill Switch Has Nothing to Trip OnAT&T, Sammons, Databricks, and Google all named a kill switch this week. Matthew Green described the agent failure that trips none of them.8 min readOct 26
  17. 17Kill the Per-Call Agent MeterJason Lemkin puts Salesforce's agent meter at 60x to 1,200x its integration rate. I ran product there. A meter on the seat takes the trough and skips the move.8 min readSep 26
  18. 18Kill the System-of-Record SlideServiceTitan cut off Podium, kept 1,000 customers, and added zero revenue. Why 'we are the system of record' is a retention fact, not a growth slide.8 min readSep 26
  19. 19Kill the 'I Built It in a Weekend' FlexSpeed to demo is a vanity metric. The 'I built it in a weekend' flex measures the cheapest, least durable thing. Ask if it was still running the weekend after.4 min readJun 26
  20. 20Kill the AI Office Hours. They're 2026's Agile Transformation.AI office hours are 2026's agile transformation: ceremony, no shipped output. Three replacements: paired shipping sessions, eval reviews, kill list reviews.8 min readMay 26
  21. 21Kill the OKR. The Quarterly Cycle Is Now a Liability.The 12-week OKR cycle is now a liability. Replace it with a Rolling Outcome Ledger: 3-7 active bets, 2-4 week decision deadlines, no end-of-quarter scramble.12 min readMay 26
  22. 22Kill the Feature Request Queue: Your Backlog Is a SignalYour 847-item backlog rationed scarce engineering time. Three replacements: signal synthesis, prototype-first investigation, and an outcome bet ledger.10 min readMay 26
  23. 23Kill the APM Program. Hire, Train, Promote Builders.LinkedIn CPO Tomer Cohen killed the APM program. The 12-week Product Builder apprenticeship replaces it: four prototypes, one production ship, no rotation.10 min readMay 26
  24. 24Kill the PRD. The Prototype Is the Spec.The PRD was a 2015 solution to a 2015 problem. Three artifacts replace it: a working prototype (built in Claude Code), an eval rubric, and a one-page README.11 min readMay 26
  25. 25The PRD Is Dead. Here's What Replaces It.Product Requirements Documents were a necessary evil in a world where building was expensive. That world is gone.3 min readMar 26
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