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Deciding What's Worth Building
The product planning problem - and what comes next.
The Shift
The bottleneck moved - from the hands that build to the mind that decides. What comes next isn't management. It's steering.
By Michael Tor · March 2026
Read →Then → Now
Why AI PRDs Are an Expensive Trap
Generating 10x more documentation doesn't mean you are shipping 10x faster - it just means you are building the wrong things with absolute confidence.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Your Backlog is Just a List of Unmade Mistakes
When AI makes building cheap, a long backlog is just a list of expensive maintenance liabilities you haven't had the discipline to kill yet.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Stop Shipping Your Way Out of Thinking
When code is cheap to generate, high shipping velocity is no longer a sign of execution strength - it is a symptom of lazy upstream deciding.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Discovery is for Killing Ideas
When building becomes cheap, the real waste isn't the calendar time spent researching - it is the capital lost when teams use discovery to justify building instead of deciding what to kill.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →The 5-Week Spec Bottleneck
Writing the document was never the hard part - the calendar friction of alignment is what kills your momentum.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Stop Grooming Your Backlog
Backlog grooming is a performative ritual that hides a failure to make hard decisions upfront.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Before the Ticket: Where Alignment Actually Dies
Alignment is not a coordination problem you solve in your task tracker - it is a reasoning problem you must win before writing a single ticket.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →Why Fast Shipping is Your Biggest Liability
When code is free, the most expensive mistake is executing a bad decision at terminal velocity.
By Michael Tor · July 2026
Read →AI PRD tools keep shipping tickets. They don't finish the decision.
Generators speed up the typing, but they leave the hard part of deciding what is worth building completely untouched.
By Michael Tor · September 2026
Read →ChatGPT for product planning: why a chat transcript is not a plan
General-purpose AI can brainstorm, but it leaves the actual deciding unfinished.
By Michael Tor · September 2026
Read →AI product discovery tools: synthesis is not a kill decision
AI discovery tools accelerate interview clustering, but a drafted opportunity tree is not a finished decision.
By Michael Tor · September 2026
Read →Backlog grooming tools: a refined ticket is not a decision
Teams treat ceremony polish as the decide, leaving the real product questions unresolved.
By Michael Tor · September 2026
Read →Product prioritization tools: a score is not a decision
A ranked list looks objective, but it cannot allocate scarce capacity.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Product roadmap tools: a timeline is not a decision
A filled board makes the choose look planned, but dropping features into dated columns does not close the bet.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Customer feedback tools: a feedback pile is not a decision
Customer feedback tools make the choose look customer-driven, but a feedback pile is not a finished product bet.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Bagel AI alternative: a ranked opportunity is not a decision
An autonomous platform can read the signal and rank the revenue, but a person still has to own the call.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Product decision log: a verdict is not a reason
A log entry is worth keeping only if it records why the call was made, not just what was decided.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Two-way door decisions: price the undo first
The test is not whether the code can be reverted. It is what it costs to undo for customers, data, and promises.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Working backwards: finish the go call
A filled template and a warm review meeting are not a decision.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →DACI framework: write the call, not the roster
A filled roster of four names is where the work starts, not where it ends.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →MoSCoW method: when everything is a Must
A board where nearly everything is a Must and nothing is a Won't has sorted nothing.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →WSJF: when Cost of Delay stays vague
A sheet of relative numbers that nobody can challenge is not an economic call.
By Michael Tor · October 2026
Read →Coming soon
Coming soon