To “toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals. A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control.
Stochastic refers to a variable process where the outcome involves some randomness and has some uncertainty. It is a mathematical term and is closely related to “*randomness*” and “*probabilistic*” and can be contrasted to the idea of “*deterministic*.”
At the core, I see three critically important differences between the strongest product companies and the rest: The first is how the company views the role of technology. The second is the role their product leaders play. The third is how the company views the purpose of the product teams—the product managers, product designers, and engineers.
a roughly six‐page document that describes in narrative form the problem you're trying to solve, why this will be valuable for your customers and for your business, and your strategy for solving the problem.
As former Netscape engineer and longtime Amazonian Brad Porter puts it, “Speed and scale are weapons, and Amazon has already told everyone its secret … if only they have the discipline to implement it.”
Your highest‐order contribution and responsibility as product manager is to make sure that what the engineers are asked to build will be worth building. That it will deliver the necessary results. This means working with designers and engineers to come up with solutions that are valuable, usable, feasible, and viable. That is product discovery, and that is what takes on the order of four solid hours a day.
