Product management and product design
Someone who decides what gets built next, and can defend it
Discovery, a roadmap tied to outcomes, prioritization you can explain to a board, specs engineers can build from, and design that follows from all of it. Product management and product design from people who have shipped over 50 products, as a project or every month.
Bring the backlog as it is, however messy. The state of the backlog tells us more than any slide.
- How it starts
- A written brief or a file you already have, then a call. Both free.
- Who does the work
- Nikola, plus a named collaborator where the work needs one: named before they start, never a bench.
- What you get
- Artifacts you own and can hand to any team, including one that is not us.
- Payment
- Split across agreed milestones. Nothing hourly by surprise.
How a project works
Where products drift
Most teams are not short of ideas. They are short of decisions.
When nobody owns the product, the loudest customer, the newest competitor feature or the last meeting sets the roadmap. The result looks busy and moves nowhere.
- A backlog nobody trusts
- Three hundred tickets, no order that anyone can explain, and the same items moving to next sprint every sprint.
- Features without a reason
- Work ships because it was requested, not because anyone wrote down which number it should move. Nobody checks afterward, so nobody learns.
- Engineers guessing
- Specs say what the screen looks like and nothing about edge cases, permissions or empty states. Engineers fill the gaps, differently each time.
- Design as decoration
- Screens are designed after the decisions are made, so the design can only make the wrong flow look nicer.
- No contact with users
- The last real conversation with a customer was months ago. Opinions fill the space where evidence should be.
- A roadmap that is really a wish list
- Dates without estimates and goals without owners. It survives until the first quarter review, then quietly gets rewritten.
What you get
Decisions on paper, and a product that follows them
Every artifact here is meant to be used on Monday morning by your team, your engineers or your AI coding tools.
- Product discovery: user interviews, a map of the jobs people hire the product for, and the evidence behind each decision
- A product strategy on one page: who it is for, what problem it solves, what it will not do
- An outcome-based roadmap with owners, estimates and the number each item should move
- A prioritized backlog with a method you can explain, such as impact against effort and risk
- Specs engineers can build from: flows, rules, edge cases, permissions and empty states
- User flows, wireframes and high-fidelity UI designed against those specs
- Analytics plan: the events to track and the dashboard that shows whether a release worked
- Release reviews: what shipped, what it moved, and what we will change because of it
How it runs
Evidence first, then decisions, then design
01
Audit the product
We go through the product, the backlog, the data you have and the last few releases. You get a short written view of where it stands.
02
Talk to users
Five to ten conversations with real customers or prospects, and a summary of what they actually said.
03
Set the direction
Strategy on one page and a roadmap tied to outcomes, agreed with you before anything is designed.
04
Specify and design
The next releases specified and designed in enough detail that engineers stop guessing.
05
Ship and measure
We stay with the release, check the numbers and adjust the roadmap based on what happened.
06
Keep it running
Continue monthly as your product lead, or hand the system to a product manager you hire, with us helping you hire them.
When this is the wrong thing to buy
- You already have a strong product manager and need more hands. Then you need engineers or designers, and we will say so.
- You want someone to take requests and turn them into tickets. That is project administration, and it will not change where the product goes.
- You are not willing to drop anything from the roadmap. Prioritization means some good ideas wait, and some never happen.
- There is nobody to build what gets decided. A roadmap without engineering capacity is a document. We can provide both, but not one without the other.
Why take this from us
We have made these decisions on our own money
Every product in our portfolio was decided, designed, built and measured by this team, and many were shut down when the evidence said so. That is the experience a product lead needs: knowing what to build, and knowing when to stop.
- 50+
- products this team has built and shipped
- 1
- page for the product strategy, so it actually gets read
- $6,000
- a month for 16 hours, as an ongoing product lead
- 10 hours
- minimum for project work, priced after the call
Questions
Product management, in detail
- What is the difference between product management and product design?
- Product management decides what to build and why: the problem, the users, the priorities and the outcome to measure. Product design decides how it works and looks: flows, interaction and interface. They fail when separated, which is why we do them together.
- Can you act as our interim head of product?
- Yes. That is the most common arrangement: a few days a month of product leadership, running discovery, the roadmap and the release reviews, until you hire a full-time person. We help write that role and interview for it.
- How is this different from your product design consulting?
- Product design consulting is a monthly arrangement for design decisions inside a product that already has direction. Product management covers the direction itself: strategy, roadmap, priorities and measurement, with design following from it.
- Do you work with our existing engineering team?
- Usually. We write the specs, join planning, answer the questions that come up mid-sprint and review what ships. If you have no team, we can build the product as well.
- How much does it cost?
- As a monthly arrangement, from $2,500 for 6 hours of advisory to $6,000 for 16 hours. As a project, $300–$400 an hour with a 10 hours minimum. The exact shape is agreed after the first call, in writing.
- What tools do you use?
- Whatever your team already uses for tickets and documents, plus Figma for design and your analytics tool for measurement. We adapt to your tools rather than moving you to ours.
Related
UX/UI design
Interfaces designed around the decisions users make.
Product design consulting
Monthly design decisions on the same rate card.
Product & system design
A full blueprint before the build starts.
AI agents
When part of the product should be an agent.
Business consulting & risk
The business decisions around the product.
Startup partner
Product, design and engineering as one arrangement.
Send it over
Tell us about the product
What it does, who uses it, how big the team is and what feels stuck. Attach the roadmap, the backlog export or a few screenshots, whatever state they are in.
We reply with what we would look at first and whether a project or a monthly arrangement fits better.
