Alan Wright: About
I am Alan Wright. Product lead at Climate Policy Radar. Formerly of GOV.UK & BBC. I have been working in digital since 2008. Check out my blog| Alan Wright
I am Alan Wright. Product lead at Climate Policy Radar. Formerly of GOV.UK & BBC. I have been working in digital since 2008. Check out my blog| Alan Wright
Product teams often face more opportunities than they can act on, with new ones arising all the time. This post explores the link between strategy and priorities, when prioritisation frameworks help or hinder, and how to empower teams to make smart, timely decisions as new opportunities emerge. Why strategy must precede prioritisation Effective prioritisation starts […]| Alan Wright
As a product manager, one of my favourite ways to prioritise problems to solve for users is to understand their Jobs to be Done (JTBD). The best way to get this data is by having conversations with many users, but this is not always something users have time for. Surveys are a great complimentary method […]| Alan Wright
I have been using tools like ChatGPT more and more in my work. A key part of learning how to use these tools well is learning how to write good prompts – also known as prompt engineering. This post covers why I think prompt engineering is an important long-term skill for everyone to learn and […]| Alan Wright
At Climate Policy Radar, bets are things we might do that might improve our product. We frame these as problems we need to solve or solution ideas that we think might add value. This post explains how we keep track of bets from initial idea to completion. Most other organisations would probably call this a […]| Alan Wright
I am working at a startup of 13 people with big plans for the future. Notion is one of the main tools everybody in the team uses. This post describes how we have set up Notion to make information easy to find across multiple growing teams. What is Notion Notion is a note-taking and productivity […]| Alan Wright
I have been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for about 6 months now. To celebrate, I wrote a blog post about 6 ways I as using it to help me get things done in life and at work. 1. Coding assistant “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves” is one of my […] The post 6 ways I like to use ChatGPT appeared first on Alan Wright.| Alan Wright
In 2021, I wrote a blog post on running effective show & tells. If I were writing that blog post again today, the first thing I would add would be kick of the event with trumpet time. What is trumpet time? A chance to celebrate the achievements and contributions of your team over the past […]| Alan Wright
Design sprints are a technique used by teams to ideate, prototype and test product ideas in 5 days. I have been involved in a few of these over the years, and I have always found myself getting the most value out of the sketching part. So much so that I have started running sketching workshops […]| Alan Wright
Buying a house is apparently one of the most stressful things you’ll ever do. You have to make lots of big and expensive decisions. Going through the process for the 3rd time this last few months got me thinking about the cognitive biases involved in the house buying process. Naturally I then started comparing them […]| Alan Wright
I have spent most of the past decade developing digital products in domains where truth and accuracy really matter, including government services and public policy. More recently, that has involved a lot of working with AI. This blog post summarises some of the approaches to AI product management that I have seen work well and […]| Alan Wright
As a product manager and all-around data nerd, analysing product and user data is something that brings me joy. This is convenient, as understanding the users and data are two of the biggest parts of my job. In this post, I share some of the tools and data sources I like best. Product analytics Useful […]| Alan Wright
Tools for learning about travel times, traffic noise, aeroplane noise, air pollution, floodrisk, planning, sun/shade & house value| Alan Wright
Pre-discovery. How to prepare for product discovery. Strategic context, cross-functional team, start together, remove blockers & plan ahead| Alan Wright
For years I used Evernote to store my notes and Trello to track my actions. For the past 2 years, I have been using Obsidian for both. This post summarises how and why I am using Obsidian. Credits again go to Henry Franks for putting me on to this! Why I like Obsidian Obsidian is […]| Alan Wright
In this post, I use my experience of playing Settlers of Catan online during lockdown and onboarding to Arc Browser to illustrate why solving problems for a user is critical if you want them to switch to using your product, and why user value often comes before usability. Product #1: Settlers of Catan (online version) […]| Alan Wright
Personal vision, regular reviews and habits - how I try to keep myself organised and focused. Some of the personal productivity techniques that work best for me| Alan Wright
Make Time is one of the best books I have read in the past decade! This post covers how this book has helped me focus on what matters| Alan Wright
How I am using AI to help me be a better product manager: includes writing content, generating ideas, finding information, coding and more!| Alan Wright
Roadmaps, delivery plans, timelines and dependency maps - how and why I like to use these artefacts when working with product teams| Alan Wright
I have been working with teams on digital products & services for 15 years in a combination of product, program and delivery manager roles. Throughout that time, I have always been a bit frustrated by how little I know about the underlying technologies that power the web. I don’t come from a computer science background, […]| Alan Wright
This post describes the simple approach we have settled on to keep track of our work at Climate Policy Radar: actions on Linear and documentation on Notion.| Alan Wright
Why we do user research and what we have learned so far When we started building Climate Policy Radar, we had lots of assumptions about who our users were and what solutions would help them. User research has helped us ensure our research tool meets the needs of the people we’re building it for – […]| Alan Wright
