When frameworks overwhelm common sense (and how to rebalance)

When I began working in tech, I 'built' products based on what felt right for customers and the company. Before learning product management, I relied on gut instinct and scraps of user feedback. While many ideas hit the mark, many missed—teaching me countless lessons the hard way:

• Features praised by stakeholders but ignored by users.
• Solutions that worked for one customer but failed to scale.
• Assumptions mistaken for insights.

This was before I understood what a Product Manager actually did, before books like Inspired, and before my formal transition into a PM role.

The frameworks phase: order from chaos

When I discovered frameworks, I tried to apply them by the book—RICE, MoSCoW, Kano Model, Jobs to Be Done, HEART, SWOT, etc.—grabbing whatever looked useful like a kid in a candy store, with little thought to long-term fit.

I spent hours in spreadsheets, scoring features, aligning matrices, and debating priorities. But soon, I realized something: I was optimizing for the framework, not the customer.

The tipping point: frameworks vs. faces

The more I obsessed over frameworks, the less time I spent talking to users. I was prioritizing "process" over people—a trap many PMs fall into. I'd spend hours scoring features or debating prioritization models, while customers just wanted their pain points solved—time that could've been spent listening to them or watching them use the product.

Today, I primarily rely on two frameworks to guide my work—both deeply tied to ongoing customer conversations:

For discovery: The Opportunity Solution Tree (from Teresa Torres' Continuous Discovery Habits), which structures customer research by anchoring decisions to observed needs and pain points.

For prioritization: The Value-Feasibility-Usability-Viability (VFUV) framework, where I score opportunities from 1-3 on:

• Value (does this solve a real problem?),
• Feasibility (can we build it?),
• Usability (will users adopt it?),
• Viability (does it align with business goals?).

My advice to new PMs

1. Start with Teresa Torres' Opportunity Solution Tree (read Continuous Discovery Habits).
2. Use a simple risk framework (value, feasibility, usability, viability) for high-stakes bets.
3. Talk to customers weekly. No framework replaces hearing, "This sucks, here's why…"
4. Build, ship, and iterate. A/B test beats a 50-slide prioritization deck.

Conclusion: frameworks are maps, not compasses

Frameworks organize chaos, but they won't tell you where to go. The best products come from PMs who listen more than they lecture, observe more than they assume, and iterate more than they theorize.

When you know your customers as you know yourself, prioritization becomes intuitive. You'll still use checklists—but as lightweight guides, not crutches.

So close your spreadsheet. Open Zoom and ask, 'Show me how you use our software—and think aloud as you do.' The rest will follow.