MitchellCo Notes

Ideas worth testing.

Practical notes on product management, AI, analytics, robotics, technical systems, and execution. Short enough to read, specific enough to use.

The Best KPI Is the One That Changes a Decision

If a metric moves and nobody knows what to do next, it is probably reporting rather than an operational KPI.

A Roadmap Is a Portfolio of Bets, Not a List of Promises

Roadmaps are more useful when they expose the different levels of uncertainty behind infrastructure, product and 0-to-1 work.

Every Operational Metric Needs an Owner, a Threshold, and an Action

Telemetry becomes operational only when the team agrees who responds, what abnormal means, and what happens next.

An MVP Should Remove Uncertainty, Not Maximize Features

I use MVPs to answer the riskiest unanswered question, not to build a miniature version of the eventual product.

AI Prototypes Usually Fail at the Workflow Boundary

The model is only one component. Most of the product work lives in context, permissions, handoffs, review and recovery.

Build Dashboards Around Exceptions, Not Averages

Operational dashboards are most useful when they make the few abnormal things easier to find than the many normal ones.