William Gill

Writing

This is where you can find all of my writing. I have been writing on this blog on and off since 2010.

2026



  1. Measure what’s important to the customer

2025



  1. Why do Daily Standups?


  2. AI is just a tractor


  3. Voice messages are the worst


  4. Infinite Monkeys, Infinite Pixels


  5. Use ChatGPT to remove Malware from a WordPress blog


  6. AI-powered usability testing


  7. Product Requirements Documents with ChatGPT

2019



  1. How to respect other people’s time with Slack

2018



  1. How to use the weekends to improve your productivity


  2. The Knowing / Doing Gap: Why Product Teams aren’t doing the things they know they should


  3. Christmas Hack Day at FATMAP


  4. Ways to think about working smarter (not harder)


  5. Twitter de-emphasises follower count… by making the font 2px smaller…?


  6. Innovation in tech is just getting started, says Benedict Evans


  7. Companies microchipping employees is real – and we should be scared


  8. How Marty Cagan measures Team Empowerment


  9. Printable sketch sheets for wire-framing by hand


  10. Software engineers are more valuable to companies than money


  11. Branch, a deep linking SDK, is now a unicorn


  12. Apps caught sending location and other data to advertising companies


  13. On Strategy…


  14. Distribution-centric beats product-centric product companies


  15. A general plea on all App Store and Google Play users


  16. On solitude and taking a break for a day


  17. The new way to display outdoor maps on your website


  18. Barrels and Ammunition

2017



  1. On Medium’s new ‘applause’ feature


  2. Product Transparency, and some tips to help increase it


  3. How to prioritise your time and stay sane as a Product Manager


  4. Three Core Characteristics of Great Product Teams


  5. A simple framework to triage and prioritise new ideas


  6. The value of talking to customers


  7. Great PMs don’t work alone


  8. On copying well: apply with caution


  9. The danger of copying

2016



  1. Good Speed: 6 ways to build product faster


  2. How great Product Managers look forward


  3. Why Speed is not the same as Velocity


  4. What would you say… you do here?


  5. How to build a basic Growth Model


  6. Product Managers – Learn from Elon Musk: write down your product strategy in prose


  7. Early Growth: Look for “Pockets of Demand”


  8. Notes on using the iPad Pro for “real work”


  9. User Experience is everybody’s job


  10. Ways to think about Android Instant Apps, and what it means for developers


  11. Growth Product Managers: You should learn to code Python. Here’s why:


  12. The Complete Product Manager


  13. Messaging and Chat are the next big channel for Growth


  14. OKRs: How we use OKRs to empower teams

2014



  1. Amazon Kindle and the Perfect Product Vision


  2. Product Manager in the middle


  3. Kickstarting Potato Salad


  4. Microsoft: Services Everywhere (not Windows Everywhere)


  5. Amazon Dash is another great example of un-bundling the smartphone


  6. What the Whatsapp deal can teach all Product Managers


  7. A Very Simple Model for expressing a Customer Value Proposition


  8. The unbundling of Facebook and the evolution of mobile


  9. Location-Based Services in 2014


  10. Mobile strategy in a rapidly evolving industry


  11. Why you should love your computer and your phone


  12. Are you in love with making software, or making products?

2013



  1. Validation of the freemium model for mobile apps


  2. When good enough is… good enough (and the power of convenience and platform lock-in)


  3. The evolution of the design discipline


  4. On monetising consumer experiences


  5. Your customers are not lucky to have you


  6. Kevin Spacey’s groundbreaking wake-up-call on the television industry


  7. The solution to online media piracy


  8. An idea is not a product


  9. The answer is not inside the building


  10. Why I’m addicted to Rando, a different kind of photo sharing app


  11. Is it Google’s plan to index the world’s information, or to curate it?


  12. What Stalin learned about incentives (and how most companies are still doing it wrong)


  13. Device fatigue and the next connected device form factor


  14. Quick low-light comparison: Nokia Lumia 920 vs the iPad mini


  15. The road to Robocop: how connected devices and sensors are the bionic enhancements that are evolving us


  16. Windows 8.1 will evolve… and respond to consumer feedback


  17. A FlashBuild – the Flash Mob for product development


  18. Whose line is it anyway? (Don’t block your colleagues)

2012



  1. The users lose


  2. The stand-in Lumia 920


  3. Inspiration from Tennyson (and Bond)


  4. The Product Owner – the poster


  5. Apple Maps and the Tall Poppy Syndrome


  6. The “tweet pitch”: an elevator pitch in 140 characters


  7. Microsoft gives all its employees a new phone, tablet and PC… and I think that’s real smart


  8. The Law of Two Feet – every day


  9. ALE 2012: My presentation: “The Product Owner – The Accidental Profession”


  10. On new solutions to old problems…


  11. A brief memoir of my days as a barkeeper (and why ex-barkeepers make great employees)


  12. 5 viral product marketing myths


  13. Dear NULL


  14. Seeing the future


  15. The Product Vision


  16. Attention to detail


  17. The Competitive Landscape


  18. Beyond the flat digital map: what’s next for digital map services


  19. Cracking eggs


  20. The Product Definition


  21. When you want something done right…


  22. The Complete Product Owner


  23. Good Design is…


  24. Consistency is not a rubber stamp


  25. Urgency isn’t panic


  26. Where Conference 2012 – Highlights


  27. We’re not a factory


  28. Evolution and the software Big Bang


  29. Simplicity


  30. Focus


  31. 6 principles for a productive agile development team


  32. A Scrum Master/Agile Coach job description


  33. Everyone’s a marketer now


  34. Rallying the “troops”: how things can be misunderstood

2011



  1. Around Here Wiki: put your surroundings on the map


  2. It’s ok to be second


  3. 5 reasons Agile is like a cult


  4. 7 reasons your Scrum Master may be underperforming


  5. Soundtrack: Life – give your life a soundtrack


  6. Customer Feedback is important


  7. Advertising – the good and the bad


  8. Who cares if you’re doing scrum or not?


  9. Software update cycle: faster every day


  10. SCRUM User Stories, Part 2: User value over business value?


  11. SCRUM User Stories: As a User, NOT As a Manager


  12. Move fast


  13. Classic product management wisdom from one of the fathers of industrial design


  14. The most important career skill for this century: fixing what’s broken


  15. Driving innovation with agile: a short case study


  16. User testing: an input to innovation, not a source of it


  17. Release it: now


  18. GPS, turn-by-turn guidance and location-based services: what are they doing to my brain?


  19. Tracking software bugs: keep the important ones; drop the rest


  20. Let the team decide…


  21. Continuous delivery: release early, release often


  22. Better SCRUM User Stories: Connect the story with the real user value


  23. Darwin and the theory of software evolution


  24. The space between


  25. The sign is not the solution to the problem


  26. Be like water


  27. Maximise success


  28. Not my job


  29. Pay off your debt


  30. Communication in standups: watch the team, not the speaker


  31. Software’s worst enemy: consensus


  32. Focusing on your product vision


  33. The dinosaur might be the solution


  34. Another reason working in silos is wasteful and inefficient


  35. Better scrum user stories: Split stories horizontally, not vertically


  36. Get it over with


  37. Stick it out


  38. Copywriting is interface design

2010



  1. Don’t be evil (product designers)


  2. How to remove HDD Low malware without paying for Anti-Spyware software or installing anything


  3. Analytics, data and product innovation


  4. Better scrum user stories: save the solution for the spec


  5. A good scrum sprint demo


  6. Seek understanding – not insurance


  7. Be delightful


  8. What makes a good Product Manager?


  9. Recipe for a good SEO strategy: content worth linking to


  10. Teamwork: The product manager and UX designer


  11. 5 product management lessons from the MacBook Air


  12. Chasing rabbits


  13. The Lexus Response


  14. Quality is boring


  15. The focus manifesto


  16. Personalisation is not overrated


  17. The right to satisfaction


  18. A half product is better than a half-arsed product


  19. The danger of cc and reply-all


  20. Recurring impediments


  21. Change the unchangeable


  22. What’s getting in your way?


  23. Scrum is not a solution to your problems


  24. Why the Product Owner is not the Scrum Master


  25. Shooting the messenger


  26. Bienvenue!