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Will Lockett

Will Lockett

3 years ago

The World Will Change With MIT's New Battery

More on Technology

Shalitha Suranga

Shalitha Suranga

3 years ago

The Top 5 Mathematical Concepts Every Programmer Needs to Know

Using math to write efficient code in any language

Photo by Emile Perron on Unsplash, edited with Canva

Programmers design, build, test, and maintain software. Employ cases and personal preferences determine the programming languages we use throughout development. Mobile app developers use JavaScript or Dart. Some programmers design performance-first software in C/C++.

A generic source code includes language-specific grammar, pre-implemented function calls, mathematical operators, and control statements. Some mathematical principles assist us enhance our programming and problem-solving skills.

We all use basic mathematical concepts like formulas and relational operators (aka comparison operators) in programming in our daily lives. Beyond these mathematical syntaxes, we'll see discrete math topics. This narrative explains key math topics programmers must know. Master these ideas to produce clean and efficient software code.

Expressions in mathematics and built-in mathematical functions

A source code can only contain a mathematical algorithm or prebuilt API functions. We develop source code between these two ends. If you create code to fetch JSON data from a RESTful service, you'll invoke an HTTP client and won't conduct any math. If you write a function to compute the circle's area, you conduct the math there.

When your source code gets more mathematical, you'll need to use mathematical functions. Every programming language has a math module and syntactical operators. Good programmers always consider code readability, so we should learn to write readable mathematical expressions.

Linux utilizes clear math expressions.

A mathematical expression/formula in the Linux codebase, a screenshot by the author

Inbuilt max and min functions can minimize verbose if statements.

Reducing a verbose nested-if with the min function in Neutralinojs, a screenshot by the author

How can we compute the number of pages needed to display known data? In such instances, the ceil function is often utilized.

import math as m
results = 102
items_per_page = 10 
pages = m.ceil(results / items_per_page)
print(pages)

Learn to write clear, concise math expressions.

Combinatorics in Algorithm Design

Combinatorics theory counts, selects, and arranges numbers or objects. First, consider these programming-related questions. Four-digit PIN security? what options exist? What if the PIN has a prefix? How to locate all decimal number pairs?

Combinatorics questions. Software engineering jobs often require counting items. Combinatorics counts elements without counting them one by one or through other verbose approaches, therefore it enables us to offer minimum and efficient solutions to real-world situations. Combinatorics helps us make reliable decision tests without missing edge cases. Write a program to see if three inputs form a triangle. This is a question I commonly ask in software engineering interviews.

Graph theory is a subfield of combinatorics. Graph theory is used in computerized road maps and social media apps.

Logarithms and Geometry Understanding

Geometry studies shapes, angles, and sizes. Cartesian geometry involves representing geometric objects in multidimensional planes. Geometry is useful for programming. Cartesian geometry is useful for vector graphics, game development, and low-level computer graphics. We can simply work with 2D and 3D arrays as plane axes.

GetWindowRect is a Windows GUI SDK geometric object.

GetWindowRect outputs an LPRECT geometric object, a screenshot by the author

High-level GUI SDKs and libraries use geometric notions like coordinates, dimensions, and forms, therefore knowing geometry speeds up work with computer graphics APIs.

How does exponentiation's inverse function work? Logarithm is exponentiation's inverse function. Logarithm helps programmers find efficient algorithms and solve calculations. Writing efficient code involves finding algorithms with logarithmic temporal complexity. Programmers prefer binary search (O(log n)) over linear search (O(n)). Git source specifies O(log n):

The Git codebase defines a function with logarithmic time complexity, a screenshot by the author

Logarithms aid with programming math. Metas Watchman uses a logarithmic utility function to find the next power of two.

A utility function that uses ceil, a screenshot by the author

Employing Mathematical Data Structures

Programmers must know data structures to develop clean, efficient code. Stack, queue, and hashmap are computer science basics. Sets and graphs are discrete arithmetic data structures. Most computer languages include a set structure to hold distinct data entries. In most computer languages, graphs can be represented using neighboring lists or objects.

Using sets as deduped lists is powerful because set implementations allow iterators. Instead of a list (or array), store WebSocket connections in a set.

Most interviewers ask graph theory questions, yet current software engineers don't practice algorithms. Graph theory challenges become obligatory in IT firm interviews.

Recognizing Applications of Recursion

A function in programming isolates input(s) and output(s) (s). Programming functions may have originated from mathematical function theories. Programming and math functions are different but similar. Both function types accept input and return value.

Recursion involves calling the same function inside another function. In its implementation, you'll call the Fibonacci sequence. Recursion solves divide-and-conquer software engineering difficulties and avoids code repetition. I recently built the following recursive Dart code to render a Flutter multi-depth expanding list UI:

Recursion is not the natural linear way to solve problems, hence thinking recursively is difficult. Everything becomes clear when a mathematical function definition includes a base case and recursive call.

Conclusion

Every codebase uses arithmetic operators, relational operators, and expressions. To build mathematical expressions, we typically employ log, ceil, floor, min, max, etc. Combinatorics, geometry, data structures, and recursion help implement algorithms. Unless you operate in a pure mathematical domain, you may not use calculus, limits, and other complex math in daily programming (i.e., a game engine). These principles are fundamental for daily programming activities.

Master the above math fundamentals to build clean, efficient code.

Thomas Smith

2 years ago

ChatGPT Is Experiencing a Lightbulb Moment

Why breakthrough technologies must be accessible

ChatGPT has exploded. Over 1 million people have used the app, and coding sites like Stack Overflow have banned its answers. It's huge.

I wouldn't have called that as an AI researcher. ChatGPT uses the same GPT-3 technology that's been around for over two years.

More than impressive technology, ChatGPT 3 shows how access makes breakthroughs usable. OpenAI has finally made people realize the power of AI by packaging GPT-3 for normal users.

We think of Thomas Edison as the inventor of the lightbulb, not because he invented it, but because he popularized it.

Going forward, AI companies that make using AI easy will thrive.

Use-case importance

Most modern AI systems use massive language models. These language models are trained on 6,000+ years of human text.

GPT-3 ate 8 billion pages, almost every book, and Wikipedia. It created an AI that can write sea shanties and solve coding problems.

Nothing new. I began beta testing GPT-3 in 2020, but the system's basics date back further.

Tools like GPT-3 are hidden in many apps. Many of the AI writing assistants on this platform are just wrappers around GPT-3.

Lots of online utilitarian text, like restaurant menu summaries or city guides, is written by AI systems like GPT-3. You've probably read GPT-3 without knowing it.

Accessibility

Why is ChatGPT so popular if the technology is old?

ChatGPT makes the technology accessible. Free to use, people can sign up and text with the chatbot daily. ChatGPT isn't revolutionary. It does it in a way normal people can access and be amazed by.

Accessibility isn't easy. OpenAI's Sam Altman tweeted that opening ChatGPT to the public increased computing costs.

Each chat costs "low-digit cents" to process. OpenAI probably spends several hundred thousand dollars a day to keep ChatGPT running, with no immediate business case.

Academic researchers and others who developed GPT-3 couldn't afford it. Without resources to make technology accessible, it can't be used.

Retrospective

This dynamic is old. In the history of science, a researcher with a breakthrough idea was often overshadowed by an entrepreneur or visionary who made it accessible to the public.

We think of Thomas Edison as the inventor of the lightbulb. But really, Vasilij Petrov, Thomas Wright, and Joseph Swan invented the lightbulb. Edison made technology visible and accessible by electrifying public buildings, building power plants, and wiring.

Edison probably lost a ton of money on stunts like building a power plant to light JP Morgan's home, the NYSE, and several newspaper headquarters.

People wanted electric lights once they saw their benefits. By making the technology accessible and visible, Edison unlocked a hugely profitable market.

Similar things are happening in AI. ChatGPT shows that developing breakthrough technology in the lab or on B2B servers won't change the culture.

AI must engage people's imaginations to become mainstream. Before the tech impacts the world, people must play with it and see its revolutionary power.

As the field evolves, companies that make the technology widely available, even at great cost, will succeed.

OpenAI's compute fees are eye-watering. Revolutions are costly.

CyberPunkMetalHead

CyberPunkMetalHead

2 years ago

I made ChatGPT copy itself.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is an amazing AI-powered chatbot. It can write poetry, stories, and marketing campaigns, and it's also adept at coding. ChatGPT's coding is so amazing that it replicated itself. What happened:

Me: Hi

Hello! Can I help? I'll answer any inquiries you have.

Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.

CGPT:

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

import openai
openai.api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

@app.route('/chatbot', methods=['POST'])
def chatbot():
    user_message = request.get_json()['message']
    response = chatbot_response(user_message)
    return jsonify({'response': response})


def chatbot_response(user_message):
    response = openai.Completion.create(
        engine="text-davinci-002",
        prompt=user_message,
        max_tokens=1024,
        n = 1,
        temperature=0.5
    )
    return response['choices'][0]['text']

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

To integrate a chatbot with a frontend, use Flask to serve an HTML page with a form for user messages and the chatbot's answer. AJAX can submit the form to the /chatbot route, and JavaScript can show the chatbot's response.

I imported code snippets at the top of the file.

Let's add a frontend interface, I said.

CGPT:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>AI Chatbot</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>AI Chatbot</h1>
    <form id="chatbot-form">
        <label for="message">Message:</label><br>
        <input type="text" id="message" name="message"><br>
        <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form> 
    <div id="chatbot-response"></div>

    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
        $(document).ready(function() {
            $("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
                e.preventDefault();
                var userMessage = $("#message").val();
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "/chatbot",
                    data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    dataType: "json",
                    success: function(response) {
                        $("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
                    }
                });
            });
        });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

To serve this HTML page using Flask, build a new route that returns the page as a GET response.

So far, so good.

Looked quite basic so I got chatGPT to add some tailwind to the project.

Me: Tailwind the chatbot.html page, please. Give it a futuristic style with purple and neon

After a few more prompts, Talk GPT aligned the form to the center, changed some colors, and added padding.

CGPT:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>AI Chatbot</title>
    <link href="https://unpkg.com/tailwindcss@^1.0/dist/tailwind.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body class="bg-black flex flex-col justify-center items-center">
    <h1 class="sm:text-center text-purple-500">AI Chatbot</h1>
    <form id="chatbot-form" class="border-purple-500 bg-purple-800 rounded">
        <label for="message">Message:</label><br>
        <input type="text" id="message" name="message" class="min-w-30 rounded"><br>
        <input type="submit" value="Submit" class="bg-purple-500 border-red-500 transform hover:scale-110 rounded">
    </form> 
    <div class="flex justify-center">
        <div id="chatbot-response" class="text-white rounded"></div>
    </div>

    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
        var colors = ['red', 'orange', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'indigo', 'violet'];
        var colorIndex = 0;
        
        $(document).ready(function() {
            setInterval(function() {
                $("#chatbot-form").css('border-color', colors[colorIndex]);
                colorIndex = (colorIndex + 1) % colors.length;
            }, 1000);

            $("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
                e.preventDefault();
                var userMessage = $("#message").val();
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "/chatbot",
                    data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    dataType: "json",
                    success: function(response) {
                        $("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
                    }
                });
            });
        });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Improved:

A few more prompts like “Add more vertical and horizontal padding to the submit button and vertical margin, and vertically align this file's body.”

The result:

Is it effective? Now, I'll chat with ChatGPT's AI Chatbot. I intervened minimally throughout construction. Chat GPT created numerous files, connected and interacted with its own API, and presented the user request response on the front end by itself.

Me to AI Chatbot: Hey, can you give me 6 name suggestions for a black horse?

Me to AI Chatbot: Write a poem in the style of Jim Morrison. Make sure to mention cacti and black holes

ChatGPTs Chatbot:

In the desert night, I am confronted by cacti, 
Their arms reaching out, As if to grab me and take me away. 
The stars in the sky, Beckon me to come, 
To a world of black holes, Where I can be free. 
I am in a trance, My body and mind, 
In a state of limbo, As I wander the night. 
I hear a voice, Calling me to the unknown, 
I cannot resist, The lure of the black hole. 
The cacti watch, As I take my leave, 
To a place of mystery, Where I can find peace.

Of course, the next question I gave it was to build a chatbot!

Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.

ChatbotGPTs:

import os from flask 
import Flask, request, jsonify 
from chatterbot 
import ChatBot 
from chatterbot.trainers 
import ListTrainer 

# Create a new chatbot 
bot = ChatBot( 
  "My Bot", 
  storage_adapter="chatterbot.storage.SQLStorageAdapter", 
  logic_adapters=[ 
    "chatterbot.logic.BestMatch", 
    { "import_path": "chatterbot.logic.BestMatch", 
      "statement_comparison_function": "chatterbot.comparisons.levenshtein_distance", 
       "response_selection_method": "chatterbot.response_selection.get_first_response" } 
    ], 
    database_uri="sqlite:///database.sqlite3" ) 

# Train the chatbot with a few sample conversations 
conversation = [ "Hello", "Hi there!", "How are you doing?", "I'm doing great.", "That is good to hear", "Thank you.", "You're welcome." ] 
trainer = ListTrainer(bot) trainer.train(conversation) 

# Create a Flask app 
app = Flask(__name__) 

# Define a route for the default URL 
@app.route("/") def index(): return "<h1>Chatbot</h1>" 

# Define a route for the /get_response URL 
@app.route("/get_response", methods=["POST"]) 

def get_response(): 
# Get the user's message 
user_message = request.form["user_message"] 
# Get the bot's response 
bot_response = bot.get_response(user_message) 
# Return the bot's response 
return str(bot_response) 
# Run the Flask 
app if __name__ == "__main__": app.run()

No matter how many times I tried, the second generation always used chatterbot instead of the ChatGPT API. Even when I told it to use the ChatGPT API, it didn't.

ChatGTP's ability to reproduce or construct other machine learning algorithms is interesting and possibly terrifying. Nothing prevents ChatGPT from replicating itself ad infinitum throughout the Internet other than a lack of desire. This may be the first time a machine repeats itself, so I've preserved the project as a reference. Adding a requirements.txt file and python env for easier deployment is the only change to the code.

I hope you enjoyed this.

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Sam Warain

Sam Warain

3 years ago

Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, foresees the next trillion-dollar AI company

“I think if I had time to do something else, I would be so excited to go after this company right now.”

Source: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, recently discussed AI's present and future.

Open AI is important. They're creating the cyberpunk and sci-fi worlds.

They use the most advanced algorithms and data sets.

GPT-3...sound familiar? Open AI built most copyrighting software. Peppertype, Jasper AI, Rytr. If you've used any, you'll be shocked by the quality.

Open AI isn't only GPT-3. They created DallE-2 and Whisper (a speech recognition software released last week).

What will they do next? What's the next great chance?

Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, recently gave a lecture about the next trillion-dollar AI opportunity.

Who is the organization behind Open AI?

Open AI first. If you know, skip it.

Open AI is one of the earliest private AI startups. Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, and Rebekah Mercer established OpenAI in December 2015.

OpenAI has helped its citizens and AI since its birth.

They have scary-good algorithms.

Their GPT-3 natural language processing program is excellent.

The algorithm's exponential growth is astounding. GPT-2 came out in November 2019. May 2020 brought GPT-3.

Massive computation and datasets improved the technique in just a year. New York Times said GPT-3 could write like a human.

Same for Dall-E. Dall-E 2 was announced in April 2022. Dall-E 2 won a Colorado art contest.

Open AI's algorithms challenge jobs we thought required human innovation.

So what does Sam Altman think?

The Present Situation and AI's Limitations

During the interview, Sam states that we are still at the tip of the iceberg.

So I think so far, we’ve been in the realm where you can do an incredible copywriting business or you can do an education service or whatever. But I don’t think we’ve yet seen the people go after the trillion dollar take on Google.

He's right that AI can't generate net new human knowledge. It can train and synthesize vast amounts of knowledge, but it simply reproduces human work.

“It’s not going to cure cancer. It’s not going to add to the sum total of human scientific knowledge.”

But the key word is yet.

And that is what I think will turn out to be wrong that most surprises the current experts in the field.

Reinforcing his point that massive innovations are yet to come.

But where?

The Next $1 Trillion AI Company

Sam predicts a bio or genomic breakthrough.

There’s been some promising work in genomics, but stuff on a bench top hasn’t really impacted it. I think that’s going to change. And I think this is one of these areas where there will be these new $100 billion to $1 trillion companies started, and those areas are rare.

Avoid human trials since they take time. Bio-materials or simulators are suitable beginning points.

AI may have a breakthrough. DeepMind, an OpenAI competitor, has developed AlphaFold to predict protein 3D structures.

It could change how we see proteins and their function. AlphaFold could provide fresh understanding into how proteins work and diseases originate by revealing their structure. This could lead to Alzheimer's and cancer treatments. AlphaFold could speed up medication development by revealing how proteins interact with medicines.

Deep Mind offered 200 million protein structures for scientists to download (including sustainability, food insecurity, and neglected diseases).

Source: Deep Mind

Being in AI for 4+ years, I'm amazed at the progress. We're past the hype cycle, as evidenced by the collapse of AI startups like C3 AI, and have entered a productive phase.

We'll see innovative enterprises that could replace Google and other trillion-dollar companies.

What happens after AI adoption is scary and unpredictable. How will AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) affect us? Highly autonomous systems that exceed humans at valuable work (Open AI)

My guess is that the things that we’ll have to figure out are how we think about fairly distributing wealth, access to AGI systems, which will be the commodity of the realm, and governance, how we collectively decide what they can do, what they don’t do, things like that. And I think figuring out the answer to those questions is going to just be huge. — Sam Altman CEO

Athirah Syamimi

Athirah Syamimi

3 years ago

Here's How I Built A Business Offering Unlimited Design Services in Just One Weekend.

Weekend project: limitless design service. It was fun to see whether I could start a business quickly.

I use no-code apps to save time and resources.

TL;DR I started a business utilizing EditorX for my website, Notion for client project management, and a few favors to finish my portfolio.

First step: research (Day 1)

I got this concept from a Kimp Instagram ad. The Minimalist Hustler Daily newsletter mentioned a similar and cheaper service (Graphically).

I Googled other unlimited design companies. Many provide different costs and services. Some supplied solely graphic design, web development, or copywriting.

Step 2: Brainstorming (Day 1)

I did something simple.

  • What benefits and services to provide

  • Price to charge

Since it's a one-person performance (for now), I'm focusing on graphic design. I can charge less.

So I don't overwhelm myself and can accommodate budget-conscious clientele.

Step 3: Construction (Day 1 & 2)

This project includes a management tool, a website, and a team procedure.

I built a project management tool and flow first. Once I had the flow and a Notion board, I tested it with design volunteers. They fake-designed while I built the website.

Tool for Project Management

I modified a Notion template. My goal is to keep clients and designers happy.

Screenshot of project management board in Notion

Team Approach

My sister, my partner, and I kept this business lean. I tweaked the Notion board to make the process smooth. By the end of Sunday, I’d say it’s perfect!

Website

I created the website after they finished the fake design demands. EditorX's drag-and-drop builder attracted me. I didn't need to learn code, and there are templates.

I used a template wireframe.

This project's hardest aspect is developing the site. It's my first time using EditorX and I'm no developer.

People answer all your inquiries in a large community forum.

As a first-time user developing a site in two days, I think I performed OK. Here's the site for feedback.

Screenshot of deuxcreators.com homepage

4th step: testing (Day 2)

Testing is frustrating because it works or doesn't. My testing day was split in two.

  • testing the workflow from payment to onboarding to the website

  • the demand being tested

It's working so far. If someone gets the trial, they can request design work.

I've gotten a couple of inquiries about demand. I’ll be working with them as a start.

Completion

Finally! I built my side project in one weekend. It's too early to tell if this is successful. I liked that I didn't squander months of resources testing out an idea.

Caspar Mahoney

Caspar Mahoney

2 years ago

Changing Your Mindset From a Project to a Product

Product game mindsets? How do these vary from Project mindset?

1950s spawned the Iron Triangle. Project people everywhere know and live by it. In stakeholder meetings, it is used to stretch the timeframe, request additional money, or reduce scope.

Quality was added to this triangle as things matured.

Credit: Peter Morville — https://www.flickr.com/photos/morville/40648134582

Quality was intended to be transformative, but none of these principles addressed why we conduct projects.

Value and benefits are key.

Product value is quantified by ROI, revenue, profit, savings, or other metrics. For me, every project or product delivery is about value.

Most project managers, especially those schooled 5-10 years or more ago (thousands working in huge corporations worldwide), understand the world in terms of the iron triangle. What does that imply? They worry about:

a) enough time to get the thing done.

b) have enough resources (budget) to get the thing done.

c) have enough scope to fit within (a) and (b) >> note, they never have too little scope, not that I have ever seen! although, theoretically, this could happen.

Boom—iron triangle.

To make the triangle function, project managers will utilize formal governance (Steering) to move those things. Increase money, scope, or both if time is short. Lacking funds? Increase time, scope, or both.

In current product development, shifting each item considerably may not yield value/benefit.

Even terrible. This approach will fail because it deprioritizes Value/Benefit by focusing the major stakeholders (Steering participants) and delivery team(s) on Time, Scope, and Budget restrictions.

Pre-agile, this problem was terrible. IT projects failed wildly. History is here.

Value, or benefit, is central to the product method. Product managers spend most of their time planning value-delivery paths.

Product people consider risk, schedules, scope, and budget, but value comes first. Let me illustrate.

Imagine managing internal products in an enterprise. Your core customer team needs a rapid text record of a chat to fix a problem. The consumer wants a feature/features added to a product you're producing because they think it's the greatest spot.

Project-minded, I may say;

Ok, I have budget as this is an existing project, due to run for a year. This is a new requirement to add to the features we’re already building. I think I can keep the deadline, and include this scope, as it sounds related to the feature set we’re building to give the desired result”.

This attitude repeats Scope, Time, and Budget.

Since it meets those standards, a project manager will likely approve it. If they have a backlog, they may add it and start specking it out assuming it will be built.

Instead, think like a product;

What problem does this feature idea solve? Is that problem relevant to the product I am building? Can that problem be solved quicker/better via another route ? Is it the most valuable problem to solve now? Is the problem space aligned to our current or future strategy? or do I need to alter/update the strategy?

A product mindset allows you to focus on timing, resource/cost, feasibility, feature detail, and so on after answering the aforementioned questions.

The above oversimplifies because

Leadership in discovery

Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash

Project managers are facilitators of ideas. This is as far as they normally go in the ‘idea’ space.

Business Requirements collection in classic project delivery requires extensive upfront documentation.

Agile project delivery analyzes requirements iteratively.

However, the project manager is a facilitator/planner first and foremost, therefore topic knowledge is not expected.

I mean business domain, not technical domain (to confuse matters, it is true that in some instances, it can be both technical and business domains that are important for a single individual to master).

Product managers are domain experts. They will become one if they are training/new.

They lead discovery.

Product Manager-led discovery is much more than requirements gathering.

Requirements gathering involves a Business Analyst interviewing people and documenting their requests.

The project manager calculates what fits and what doesn't using their Iron Triangle (presumably in their head) and reports back to Steering.

If this requirements-gathering exercise failed to identify requirements, what would a project manager do? or bewildered by project requirements and scope?

They would tell Steering they need a Business SME or Business Lead assigning or more of their time.

Product discovery requires the Product Manager's subject knowledge and a new mindset.

How should a Product Manager handle confusing requirements?

Product Managers handle these challenges with their talents and tools. They use their own knowledge to fill in ambiguity, but they have the discipline to validate those assumptions.

To define the problem, they may perform qualitative or quantitative primary research.

They might discuss with UX and Engineering on a whiteboard and test assumptions or hypotheses.

Do Product Managers escalate confusing requirements to Steering/Senior leaders? They would fix that themselves.

Product managers raise unclear strategy and outcomes to senior stakeholders. Open talks, soft skills, and data help them do this. They rarely raise requirements since they have their own means of handling them without top stakeholder participation.

Discovery is greenfield, exploratory, research-based, and needs higher-order stakeholder management, user research, and UX expertise.

Product Managers also aid discovery. They lead discovery. They will not leave customer/user engagement to a Business Analyst. Administratively, a business analyst could aid. In fact, many product organizations discourage business analysts (rely on PM, UX, and engineer involvement with end-users instead).

The Product Manager must drive user interaction, research, ideation, and problem analysis, therefore a Product professional must be skilled and confident.

Creating vs. receiving and having an entrepreneurial attitude

Photo by Yannik Mika on Unsplash

Product novices and project managers focus on details rather than the big picture. Project managers prefer spreadsheets to strategy whiteboards and vision statements.

These folks ask their manager or senior stakeholders, "What should we do?"

They then elaborate (in Jira, in XLS, in Confluence or whatever).

They want that plan populated fast because it reduces uncertainty about what's going on and who's supposed to do what.

Skilled Product Managers don't only ask folks Should we?

They're suggesting this, or worse, Senior stakeholders, here are some options. After asking and researching, they determine what value this product adds, what problems it solves, and what behavior it changes.

Therefore, to move into Product, you need to broaden your view and have courage in your ability to discover ideas, find insightful pieces of information, and collate them to form a valuable plan of action. You are constantly defining RoI and building Business Cases, so much so that you no longer create documents called Business Cases, it is simply ingrained in your work through metrics, intelligence, and insights.

Product Management is not a free lunch.

Plateless.

Plates and food must be prepared.

In conclusion, Product Managers must make at least three mentality shifts:

  1. You put value first in all things. Time, money, and scope are not as important as knowing what is valuable.

  2. You have faith in the field and have the ability to direct the search. YYou facilitate, but you don’t just facilitate. You wouldn't want to limit your domain expertise in that manner.

  3. You develop concepts, strategies, and vision. You are not a waiter or an inbox where other people can post suggestions; you don't merely ask folks for opinion and record it. However, you excel at giving things that aren't clearly spoken or written down physical form.