Weekly Mix #220 - How to do your annual review

Annual Reviews, Building Unicorns & The Future of Tech

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Happy Monday!

We're almost to the holidays, which I hope means a break for many of you.

In product development, there are two broad ways of working: backlog-driven and roadmap-driven.

Backlog-driven involves maintaining a list of things to do (a backlog), and working through them in order of priority.

The benefit of this approach is that it's flexible.

You work on the next thing whenever you finish the previous, and if something else becomes higher priority, you move it up the list.

The downside is that it requires near-constant planning, as you decide and scope what's up next.

Roadmap-driven work involves planning ahead, sometimes as far out as 12-18 months, scoping the work, and setting timelines.

The benefit is the planning can be batched at the beginning, meaning more up-front work, but less to think about later. Roadmaps get adjusted, but there are fixed goals to work towards. It's easier to communicate, or have other teams plan around your work.

The downside is lack of flexibility. It's harder to move things around. And estimating work is difficult.

Whether it's product development or your own life, the same benefits and downsides apply.

Committing yourself to set goals and timelines—a roadmap—can provide some stability, and focus. You can commit publicly, which can help you stick with it. You can recruit others to join you.

Being more spontaneous, and choosing things to do as you go—being backlog-driven—can help keep you open to new options and opportunities, and focus on what you most want at that moment.

Whichever path you choose—and you can always choose a bit of both—an annual review can provide the foundation for your next year, helping clarify what went well this year, and what you need to improve.

I find it immensely valuable, and I hope you will too.

This week's newsletter has a few resources to help you get started.

Happy holidays!

Graham

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Links

📖 Blog Post: The Complete Guide to Annual Reviews - My post outlining a few popular methods to do annual reviews, and how I do them each year.

📚 Unicorn in the Woods - Gordon Pitts - While this book is about two of the largest tech startups to come out of New Brunswick, the overarching theme is the question: what does it take to build top tech companies in rural, resource-driven economies? (thanks Chris for lending me this one)

📖 Annual Review 2020 - David Perell - Reading the annual reviews of top performers can be a bit demoralizing sometimes, but I think it also provides something good to shoot for. David's is always well-rounded, touching not only on professional goals, but personal ones as well. This is his 2020 review, but his 2021 review should be out soon too.

📖 Gustin Annual Review 2021 - Anthony Gustin - This isn't Anthony's annual review, but rather his format. Feel free to copy the template.

📉 Three Steps to the Future - Benedict Evans - Evans is a well-known tech analyst, and this is his annual presentation about technology trends and the future.

🏠 Eucalypt House by Not All Architecture - This house is bright and warm, largely because of the impressive amount of wood used throughout. Wood + concrete + lots of windows is a combo I'm a fan of.

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Photo of the Week

It's easy to complain about winter in Canada, but like most things, it is what you make of it. This week was the first skating session in the Old Port of Montreal, one of the ways to enjoy the cold weather.

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