Working notes from the practice. Published when something earns a footnote.
3 notes · published may 2026 most recent
What the next person inherits
The PM role I left had 650 documents prepared for whoever came next. None of them said what the team would actually need. On transitions, inherited substrate, and what documentation can't catch.
FIELD-NOTES / TRANSITIONS / PRODUCT-MANAGEMENT / ORGANIZATIONAL-DESIGN / LEADERSHIP
Alert Systems at Scale: When the Cure Is the Disease
Six months designing alerts for an industrial monitoring platform taught me the failure mode the spec couldn't see: alerts and silencing share the same off-switch, and once silenced, the system is structurally lying to itself.
FIELD-NOTES / ALERTS / INDUSTRIAL-MONITORING / UX-DESIGN / SYSTEM-DESIGN
Four kinds of user, and why each one matters differently
For years I treated "user" as a uniform noun. The data didn't. Four kinds of user — First-Level, Second-Level, Passive, Hostage — and what each one's feedback actually means.
FIELD-NOTES / USER-RESEARCH / TAXONOMY / UX-DESIGN