A Little Product Déjà Vu

5 patterns I keep running into

Introduction

This piece started forming on a Friday evening, glass of rosé in hand, after a week of heavy context switching. I was trying to wind down and my brain wasn’t quite cooperating.

So while winding down, I jotted down five patterns I keep noticing in product teams. None of them are about who’s doing product “right”. They’re more the kind of thing I mentally track when I spot them in a new team.

1. Most product problems are the same problem just dressed up a little differently

The tech stack changes, the industry changes, the org chart for sure changes. But underneath it all there’s usually some version of the same thing going on, which is that people don’t quite agree on what success looks like, so everyone ends up quietly pulling in slightly different directions.

I used to think each new engagement would teach me something totally new. My early sleuthing nearly always lands on the same question: what would a good outcome look like for you, specifically? The differences in answers around the table tell me more than any deep dive ever could.

2. Process matters less than I used to think it did

Early on I really believed that if you could just put the right ceremonies and frameworks in place, good product work would follow. I’ve since watched great frameworks fall apart in companies that didn’t really want them, and watched scrappy, half-formed processes work beautifully in companies where one or two leaders genuinely believed in the work.

I’m not anti-process. But I now spend my first week paying more attention to what leaders care about than to what’s on the Jira board. The board tells you what’s happening. What’s actually possible comes from the leadership. And above all else, “ask for forgiveness not permission” has never failed me.

3. The healthiest teams I’ve worked with have the most boring standups

This one surprised me. I used to associate energy with health, you know, lively debate, lots of opinions flying around. But the teams that ship steadily and seem genuinely happy doing it tend to have standups that are almost dull. Eight minutes. “I’m stuck on this, can someone help after?” Done.

My theory is that when trust is high, you don’t need to perform. You just say the thing. I treat standup energy as a gentle signal these days.

4. Documentation is archaeology not “admin”

Every company I’ve worked with has apologised for their documentation, and I’ve stopped taking the apology seriously because it’s universal. The interesting problem isn’t really that documentation is thin. It’s that the why behind decisions tends to go missing first.

You’ll find a strange product constraint that everyone works around, trace it back, and discover it was a workaround somebody put in place during a 2019 launch crunch. Nobody’s at fault. Context fades faster than content, and one of the quiet superpowers of an outside PM is being new enough to ask why something is the way it is.

5. Fresh eyes are a renewable resource

I want to be careful with this one. I don’t think long tenure is a flaw, and institutional knowledge is valuable, and I’ve learned huge amounts from PMs who’ve been somewhere for years. But one of the most useful things I bring as an outsider isn’t expertise, it’s just permission to ask the obvious question.

Good news is, fresh eyes aren't only available to people coming in from the outside. They're there for anyone who switches teams, takes a break, mentors someone outside their patch, or just gets in the habit of explaining their work to a friend who doesn't share the context. I keep mine fresh on purpose, mostly by catching myself before I get too comfortable.

What’s on your list?

I’d love to know what patterns you notice. Drop them in the comments. And if you’re reading this on a Friday evening, I hope you’ve got something cold nearby.