December 2023 2hr Saturday Workshop

Get to the crux! A two-hour, hands-on workshop for product leaders to practice shaping focused initiatives with John Cutler live.

John Cutler

Scoping and Shaping for Success

Product Managers often get bogged down trying to juggle trade-offs, check all the boxes, and keep everyone happy (and busy). This hands-on 2-hour workshop is all about escaping the overmaximization trap and increasing your product’s chances of success.&nbsp; I will teach a flexible framework for shaping product initiatives, goals, roadmaps, and strategies to be more impactful (and more sane!) for everyone involved. The framework—focusing on drivers, limiting constraints, floats, and enabling constraints—gives you and your team a common language for cutting to the crux of an opportunity, and focusing without killing creativity and adaptability. Through my full-time and advisory work, I’ve spent thousands of hours of pattern matching the struggles across different organizations. I’m excited to make some of those insights actionable through this workshop. In this workshop, we’ll walk through:• An applicable framework for driving product initiatives and roadmaps forward (which I’ve coached dozens of teams through)• Templates for identifying your drivers, limiting constraints, floats, and enabling constraints• Exercises for you to practice applying the framework yourself (with feedback!)• Advanced guidance on implementing the framework in more complex scenarios Workshop format:• Two-hour workshop• Direct feedback• Interactive exercises• Access to the recording and all resources (templates, bonus readings) Thursday, March 21st, 2024: 7-9AM PDT, 2-4PM GMT

Escape the tradeoff trap.

This 2-hour workshop is for product managers, designers, and developers who want to deliver more impact with less risk and investment.

This 2-hour workshop is for leaders who want to get better at advocating for more focus even when stakeholders want it all...yesterday.

This 2-hour workshop is for readers of The Beautiful Mess who want to move past the theory and apply some of the frameworks.

Who is this workshop for?

What you’ll get out of this workshop:

Perceived trade-offs are everywhere in product development. The trick is distinguishing the right tradeoffs to pay attention to and when tradeoffs aren't really tradeoffs (they are polarities).

Learn a language to describe more abstract trade-offs and polarities

"You just have to figure it out!" is not very satisfying advice. Intuition can be practiced, and this workshop will jump start your practice journey.

Hone your intuition by practicing with realistic, hands-on scenarios and real-life cases

By the end of this 2-hour workshop, you will have a concrete set of options for shaping a current initiative or project.

Apply the principles to shape your next product initiative

We'll build on the basics and explore advanced tricks to de-risk your work, learn faster, and keep your team motivated.

Some parting wisdom and advanced tricks

Bonus: get live feedback from John as you practice applying the principles!

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

Testimonials

Meet your instructor

Cohort 3: March 21st, 2024

Cohort 2: January 20th, 2024

Cohort 1: December 16th, 2024

Workshop Schedule

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Active hands-on learning

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Interactive and project-based

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

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