Nostalgia for building product like it was an artisanal craft
Management
Nostalgia. That's what I feel when looking back at my first years building product like it was artisanal work.
No frameworks. No knowledge of what worked or not. It was insanely fun and felt like creating art.
We'd just get a whiteboard, and draw how we'd organize. We mostly followed intuition, and did our best effort, like in the picture.
Since then, I trained on Scrum, used it, and even trained others on it.
Later, I happily ditched it.
Most product engineering environments don't need a prescriptive framework to succeed.
Success happens in the context of:
Clear unanimous direction, meaningful goals, and trust to execute
Agile principles
Talented people
Before I knew any of this, building product was more like a fun creative playground. And while I don't want to go back to that, I do remember those times with a bit of nostalgia :)