Product managing my house renovation

In May, after five months of back and forth with builders, electricians, plumbers, fitters and decorators, our new house was finally ready to move into.

And now that the dust has settled (and been thoroughly vacuumed), I’m ready to share some parallels I noticed between project managing a house renovation, and product managing our apps.

It’s hard not having the skills or expertise yourself

I had a pretty clear vision for our home, but none of the requisite skills to pull it off. Honestly, I get a bit nervous at the idea of even putting a picture up by myself! Overseeing a house renovation without having expertise in any of the trades involved is intimidating, but it’s not so different from project managing the development of an app as a non-engineer. You can educate yourself about the technicalities as much as possible to identify what questions to ask, and help you to make informed decisions, but ultimately you need to rely on the professionals and trust their insight and judgement. They are the experts in their field, and have the experience and knowledge to let you know whether some aspects of your vision just may not be feasible or appropriate. Which reminds me…

Strong vision is key

Good luck managing any project (house, software or otherwise) without some kind of vision. The vision helps you plan, and the plan helps you execute. The simplest way I’ve come to think of distilling a vision is to figure out what specific problem we’re trying to solve, whether that’s how to make a living room feel cosy, or how to allow event organisers to sell add-ons to tickets. Knowing what problem you’re trying to solve helps you identify and capture all the relevant requirements and constraints, and from there you can make a plan for delivery. Even once you have a plan in place though, it’s ultimately the vision that keeps you focused, aids in decision making, and helps you navigate obstacles as they arise. Speaking of which…

You need to be ready to compromise and pivot

When I was initially planning my house renovation, I wanted to pull down the existing conservatory and extend the kitchen. The architect advised us that a project of this scale would cost tens of thousands of pounds and potentially take up to 9 months from start to finish. This was money and time we didn’t really have. So we pivoted. We knocked through from the living room to the kitchen instead, which gave us the open space we had identified that we wanted in our vision, while being much cheaper and only taking a few weeks. There were lots of smaller changes and compromises we made as we went along, and this is true of product management as well. As a team, we often need to pivot in response to user feedback or technical constraints. We sometimes compromise on scope for a particular phase of a project based on how much resource we have at that moment. It’s a constant balancing act to adapt gracefully to changing circumstances while finding solutions that align with our stated vision.

There are many more parallels I could draw: the importance of managing timelines, budgets, and expectations; cross-functional collaboration and coordinating different departments to reduce bottlenecks; user testing and quality assurance; you get the idea…

As with our products, our house isn’t “done”, nor will it ever be. Now we’re living in it, we’ll continue to iterate, and to identify areas we want to improve or even change. That’s part of the fun and what keeps things interesting and never stagnating. With that said, the pace has slowed considerably on the house front for now. I definitely don’t miss the intensity of managing a house renovation project on top of my regular Tito work, and I’m glad to be getting back to focusing on what I’m (hopefully) best at!