Ed Biden
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Ed Biden
@edbiden.bsky.social
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I post super practical advice and templates for product leaders. CPO | Product Advisor | Hustle Badger co-founder LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edbiden
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#product #productmanagement

You need to balance theory with pragmatism.

Talk about risk.
• What are you all comfortable with?
• How can you reduce it as fast as possible?
• What are the alternatives?
And life gets in the way:
• Hitting short term metrics.
• Down-time of engineering.
• Showing you’re delivering at all.

BUT That's all theory.
In reality, discovery is politics.
You need enough evidence to have buy-in.
𝗛𝗜𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗛𝗬 𝗢𝗙 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗙𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘:
• Intuition. i.e. you thinking on your own
• Planning. i.e. you thinking with your team
• Research. i.e. lots of customer interviews, surveys, references
• Data. i.e. AB testing, closed betas, fake door tests

More risk = higher up the hierarchy of confidence.
𝗗𝗥𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗞:
• Effort to build. i.e. engineering cost
• Downside scenario. i.e. what happens if we're wrong
• Company maturity. i.e. revenue at risk
• Opportunity cost. i.e. what else we could build
𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗖 𝗘𝗤𝗨𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗢 𝗦𝗢𝗟𝗩𝗘:
Confidence > Risk
𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗬 𝗔𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗥𝗘𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗞
• Discovery reduces the risk of not making a return
• There are four main risks (value, usability, tech, business)
• Discovery is expensive, so you only do as much as necessary. Faster is better
𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗔𝗡 𝗜𝗡𝗩𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗜𝗡 𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛
• Product teams are expensive (~£1m a year)
• That's an investment in technology from the CEO
• She wants a return on that investment
• PMs are primarily responsible for making sure the CEO gets that return
How much discovery is enough?

That's a tricky question to answer, because as always "it depends"...

Let's start at the beginning.
But what do you think?
Does the product trio still works today?
Or has it quietly outlived its usefulness?

11/11

“𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 — 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱.”
The best teams are already operating beyond the trio.

10/11
It’s about 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 — people who:
• Go deep in one discipline
• Stay fluent in adjacent ones
• And share two common instincts: 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘆 and 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲

9/11
𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧
The future isn’t about trios.

8/11
PMs are prototyping.
Designers are writing SQL.
Engineers are thinking about pricing strategy.

That’s not because of AI magic — it’s because the best teams already worked this way.

7/11
It’s exposing how narrow our role definitions really were.

It’s flattening the walls — showing how much overlap there’s always been.

6/11
𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧'𝗦 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗡𝗢𝗪
AI isn’t replacing anyone.

5/11
The product trio didn't describe a lot of situations.
But it was useful to have a default starting point.

4/11
• Platform teams don’t need a designer.
• Marketing experts are critical to growth teams.
• Scaled B2C products need Data and ML support.

3/11
𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗖𝗞
The product trio was always a shortcut.

It never captured the full complexity of real teams.

2/11
The product trio is dead ☠️

For years, we treated 𝘗𝘔 + 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 + 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 as the holy trinity of product work.

And that's been helpful.
But now it's holding us back.

1/11
Talk about risk.
• What are you all comfortable with?
• How can you reduce it as fast as possible?
• What are the alternatives?

Full article, including template and worked examples here:
www.hustlebadger.com/what-do-prod...

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