You notice it when the engineer starts saying "that's a product decision" about things they used to have opinions on.
Last quarter I watched a team spend three weeks building a RICE scoring spreadsheet, assign numbers to forty-seven features, sort by score, and then...
Your team shipped a new checkout flow behind a flag three months ago. The rollout hit 100% within two weeks.
Last Tuesday your researcher ran five interviews in the morning.
Last quarter, I watched a product org implode over a launch that every team believed was on track. Product had scoped a six-week build.
Last Tuesday, three days into a two-week iteration, our researcher dropped a finding that made me physically uncomfortable.
Last quarter, I watched a team spend three sprints building an integration that had been sitting in their backlog for fourteen months.
Last quarter I watched a PM spend two weeks building a RICE scoring spreadsheet for their team's next planning cycle.
Most PMs treat technical debt like a line item on someone else's budget.
We shipped a research repository six months ago. Notion database, tagging system, intake templates — the works.
Every PM has one.
Every product team claims they do continuous discovery.
Last month I watched a PM present three roadmap options to their VP. Equal weight, equal slide real estate, equal enthusiasm for each.
Last quarter, my team shipped 14 features. The one I'm most proud of is the one we killed in week two.
Somewhere between 50% and 80% of A/B tests end inconclusively. Not "the variant lost.