Author here, thanks for sharing your feedback. To your point, product is a high-stress, demanding role, and in reality, you might not hit every item from this list all the time. This ambitiously attempted to define greatness from when I've been fortunate to get there, see it, or be part of it. Getting to greatness can be done; it's just hard to achieve. I think it deserves that caveat up front, and I will update it.
I also agree that low-level teams might be very far removed from strategy, especially in large orgs. However, that team should have a clearly defined goal or mandate instead. So much of the product is context-driven, and the first few drafts were 3-4x longer to account for these differences between organizations, hierarchy, teams etc. I removed most of that to focus more on basic principles because this guide was starting to look like it was written by Charlie Kelly chasing Pepe Silvia accounting for all the edge cases :)
I did enjoy this article and agree with almost everything.
One piece of advice I’ve learned the hard way, however, is if the road map doesn’t make sense, it’s unlikely that making noise is going to make your life better.
I was reminded by this article of the time when my role as a PM was stymied by a lack of clear corporate strategy - I was told to make a road map without the support of any kind of goal or vision, told even that having a strategy would take “11 weeks” (yeah, an oddly specific number). Of course, I pushed back - but the outcome of doing so was very poor for me.
A road map doesn’t need to perfectly align with the very good points in your article, but there is a point at which it’s probably just better to cut and run.
I also agree that low-level teams might be very far removed from strategy, especially in large orgs. However, that team should have a clearly defined goal or mandate instead. So much of the product is context-driven, and the first few drafts were 3-4x longer to account for these differences between organizations, hierarchy, teams etc. I removed most of that to focus more on basic principles because this guide was starting to look like it was written by Charlie Kelly chasing Pepe Silvia accounting for all the edge cases :)