No.40 / strategy
Pause the referral program test
As expected
A confusing incentive is worth pausing to fix.
Demo mode
You're looking at Jordan Ellis's Lumo.
Senior Product Manager at Relay, 8 months and 40 decisions in. This is what Lumo looks like once it knows you. Nothing here calls an API. It already happened.
On your mind right now
Ship the new booking flow on October 14, or hold three weeks for Brightline?
Your first instinct says A, confidence 4. Here's what you might not have noticed: Your gut got the ship date right. You missed that Brightline cares more about a date than the feature.
Watch how it played outThe map
Vendors went well. Dates you promise are where you keep getting it wrong.
Your 40 decisions, grouped by type. The further a bar runs right, the more often that kind of decision turned out worse than you thought it would.
Left means better than you thought. Right means worse.
Vendors
None went worse
Scope cuts
1 of 8 went worse
Hiring
None went worse
Strategy
None went worse
Team calls
1 of 6 went worse
Dates you promise
7 of 10 ran late
What to do about dates
Ask Marco for his worst case before you give anyone a date.
Next time you put a date into Lumo, it stops you and asks whether you did.
Your October summary
Delivered Sunday, 8:00 am
Where your instinct is strong
Hiring and vendor decisions. These have turned out the way you expected, or better.
Where your instinct is off
Dates and deadlines. You made 10 decisions about dates where you rated your confidence 4 or 5 out of 5. Seven of them turned out worse than you expected. You feel most certain right before a date moves.
One thing to try
When you give a customer a date, add your engineering lead's worst case first.
Something you might not have noticed
18 of your 40 decisions affected the support team. You told Priya on that team about 5 of them.
Recent calls
The last few, and how they landed.
No.39 / scope
Include the mobile view in the redesign or defer
Better than expected
When half your traffic is mobile, do not defer it.
No.38 / strategy
Sunset the old notification system over 90 days
As expected
Tell Priya before a sunset, not after the tickets land.
No.37 / timing
Commit a demo date to a prospect before the build
Worse than expected
Do not demo-date a feature that is barely started.
The open decision, start to finish
No.41, played out.
Jordan Ellis is a sample product manager. This is Jordan's 41st decision in Lumo.
Before you decideWrite down your first instinct before you see anything.
What's happening
Ship the new booking flow on October 14, or hold three weeks for Brightline?
Slack #booking-launch
Dana BrooksSales lead
Brightline wants the multi-location view before they sign. They're talking about a three-year deal.
Marco DiazEngineering lead
Multi-location is three weeks, minimum. Can't do it alongside the payments fix.
Linear REL-412
Payments fix. Double charges on rescheduled bookings. 40 customers affected.
Google Doc "Q4 plan"
New booking flow ships October 14.
Google Calendar
Launch review with Maya, Friday 10am.
1 / 9 The situation
This is what 40 decisions later looks like.
- One pattern found. Nine of the 40 calls went worse than expected. Seven of them were dates.
- One rule that stuck. When you give a customer a date, add your engineering lead's worst case first.
- Nothing dropped. All 40 revisited and rated, including the ones that stung.
Yours starts with one.
Bring a real decisionWhere Jordan Ellis started
Rebuild search from scratch
Confidence3 of 5
Gave upTwo clean sprints
No. 1 · Turned out better