To process or not to process
When to apply in the right stage
I recently took a course on Revenue Architecture©, where they emphasized which processes to implement at each growth stage—Seed, Startup, Scale-up, etc. This really stuck with me because, as a younger product manager, I made some mistakes in this area. The kind of mistakes that make you look back and think, Wow, past me really had no clue.
One of the most common mistakes? Implementing processes too early. It slows you down, clutters your workflow with unnecessary structure, and suddenly, instead of building a product people actually want, you’re drowning in meetings about meetings. Congratulations, you’ve successfully created bureaucracy in a five-person startup!
At this stage, your only priority should be:
- Finding product-market fit & pricing-market-fit
- Identifying the critical moments that make customers crave your solution
- Embedding yourself so deeply into their workflow that switching to a competitor feels like a painful breakup
Frameworks aren’t magic spells
The trap of blindly applying Agile, OKR, RICE, AARRR, Scrum, or any other metrics & framework is believing that following a formula will make you as successful as the company in the book.
News flash: every team is different, every company is different. Just because Spotify implemented Tribes and Guilds, doesn’t mean it is already needed in your organisation. Fun fact: Spotify adapted this topology 3 years ago.
Yes, learning from best practices is important, but before adopting a habit from a framework, ask yourself:
• What outcome do we expect when applying this? (If the answer is “because the book said so,” try again.) • What problem does this solve? (Or are we just adding structure for structure’s sake?) • Does the team see the value in it? (Sometimes you need a forceful push to make it happen, nobody likes change, this also applies to product teams 😉 )
Get your team on board and try it out. If it feels forced and no one sees the benefit, kill the habit—kill it fast. Every hour saved per day or week can make a big difference in the long run.
A good rule of thumb: if a process slows your team down or delays another team from getting things done, it might not be the right process, the right place, or the right time. Some things are only necessary a year or two later when the team has grown (or maybe never).
So, before you spend hours debating the perfect workflow, remember: The best process is the one that actually helps you build, sell, and scale—not the one that looks impressive on a Notion doc. 🚀
