On Product: A Field Manual for the Continuation of Politics by Other Means
Bob Lavania, observer of the theatre
The parade is the prior; Shipping is the likelihood; The court never updates the posterior.
Chapitre I
Definition of the Field
War is the continuation of politics by other means. Product is the continuation of politics by other meetings.
Clausewitz taught that war is not a duel but a trial of force for political ends. Product, in the corporate sense, is the same trial conducted in conference rooms. The stated objective is customer outcome. The actual objective is surviving the next prioritization meeting with your surface area intact. That practice has a name: stakeholder theatre; The audience is internal, the customer is mere scenery.
Chapitre II
Maxims of the Theatre
Collected from the masters, applied to the backlog.
- I All war is based on deception; all roadmaps are based on Jira.Sun Tzu
- II When Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan divided the realm, each called it strategy. When Platform, Growth, and AI divided the backlog, each called it focus.Three Kingdoms (220 to 280)
- III The white rose and the red rose both promised the realm; neither promised a ship date.Wars of the Roses (1455 to 1487)
- IV The empty fort stratagem: publish a PRD so confident that Engineering assumes the army is behind it.Zhuge Liang
- V The Onin War burned Kyoto for eleven years so that two houses might prove a point. Your priority war has entered year three. Kyoto is still on fire.Onin War (1467 to 1477)
- VI Under the bakufu, the daimyo traveled to the capital on schedule and accomplished nothing of note. We call this QBR.Tokugawa / sankin-kotai (from 1635)
- VII In the Bakumatsu, the ceremonies continued while the foreign ships arrived. In product, the all-hands continued while the competitor shipped.Bakumatsu (1853 to 1868)
- VIII The Meiji Restoration restored the Emperor and invented the org chart. Your transformation restored customer-centricity and invented new job titles for the same warlords.Meiji (1868 to 1912)
- IX The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting; the supreme art of product is to kill the other team's initiative in a DACI without shipping.Sun Tzu
- X Know your enemy and know yourself: your enemy is the other PM; yourself is whoever last updated the OKRs.Sun Tzu
- XI A Lancaster today, a York tomorrow: the stakeholder who championed you before the reorg.Wars of the Roses (1455 to 1487)
- XII In the midst of chaos there is also opportunity (usually to schedule another alignment sync).The Art of War, abridged for the PMO
- XIII He who waits for eng capacity will die of old age; he who ships a wedge will be accused of leaving the parade.The Art of War, abridged for the PMO
- XIV The scholar-official remonstrated against the edict. The edict was filed. The feature factory continued.Tang court (618 to 907)
Chapitre III
Ordre de Bataille
A glossary of the court tongue.
- Stakeholder theatre
- The product. Everything else is stagecraft sold as discovery.
- Stakeholder
- Warlord, or baron whose banner switches at Bosworth.
- Roadmap
- Order of battle that expires on contact with the enemy (customers).
- Influence
- Trench warfare, or guanxi of the court.
- OKR
- Propaganda leaflet, imperial edict ignored by the provinces.
- Alignment
- Ceasefire that fails by Thursday, or a Qin coalition that lasts one campaign season.
- Discovery
- Reconnaissance that returns with the brief you were handed.
- RACI / DACI
- Treaties nobody ratified; remonstrance filed and forgotten.
- Reorg
- Change of dynasty: same peasants, new rose on the banner. Or Meiji: new uniforms, same domains abolished on paper.
- North star
- Whichever rose the current king prefers, or the Emperor you restored so you could ignore him in peace.
- QBR / offsite
- Sankin-kotai: compulsory pilgrimage to the capital to demonstrate loyalty.
- Transformation / AI-first
- Meiji bunmei kaika announced; the telegraph arrives; the feature factory remains.
- Priority war (cross-team)
- Onin: the capital burns; the point is never proven.
Chapitre IV
Why the Campaign Never Ends
Victory is not measured in shipped code. Victory is measured in retained scope, defended headcount, and a narrative the crown can repeat without embarrassment. The builder who ships a wedge in production has committed an act of desertion. The parade continues without him.
There is no winning condition in theatre-PM, only territorial defense: scope, headcount, narrative. The Wars of the Roses never crowned a permanent peace. The Three Kingdoms never stayed three. The Onin War ended with ash; the Sengoku still came. Meiji "restored" one sovereign and invented another bureaucracy.
The fog of war is the backlog. The fog of the backlog is the roadmap. Nobody has seen the customer in three quarters, but everyone has seen the deck.
Production returns with receipts. The court reads banners. A screen for logos and influence is not a test of the campaign. It is a test of whether you stayed in the parade.
Chapitre V
Desertion (The Only Honest Move)
The futile game is real. The exit is to ship systems that reduce operational ambiguity and measure whether they worked. To the parade, this looks like desertion. To the customer, it looks like a product.
If you hire for theatre, this page is not for you. Close the tab. The Hall of Mirrors has no exit but more mirrors.
If you hire for production (systems that leave the parade and return with receipts), the deserter's camp is elsewhere: