The 5 Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor

I'm a big fan of the 5 P's and the author does a great job talking about them.

My very first week at Microsoft, I was looking through internal videos when I saw a video from J Allard titled something like 'How to be a PM at Microsoft'. It made a huge impression on 20-year old me, fresh out of college. J made a ton of good points and a lot of it centered around the 5 P's.

The funny thing about them is that you would think they were obvious and straightforward and every team would have them. But like PG asking people "who wants this/who will pay for this?, the 5 Ps are a surprisingly effective tool and rules to live by.

For folks at MSFT, I suggest digging out the entire video by J. No idea where it is still posted though (used to be on the old AskPM site).

I like the parts where he related the 5Ps directly to WP7's development, the context is useful and interesting.

It also explains, I think, why WP7 is such an un-Microsoft product in so many ways, and why I love using it. It's focused in a way that other products from the company just _aren't_, and it's much better for it.