{
    "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "title": "Trevor McCormick Blog",
    "home_page_url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog",
    "description": "Trevor McCormick Blog",
    "items": [
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/ten-principles-what-comes-next",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/ten-principles-what-comes-next",
            "title": "Ten Principles for Instrumentation Leadership (and What Comes Next)",
            "summary": "The capstone: ten principles distilled from building instrumentation at scale, and a vision for where the data product function goes from here.",
            "date_modified": "2026-04-12T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams",
                "Strategy & Roadmapping"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/from-data-pm-to-leader",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/from-data-pm-to-leader",
            "title": "From Data PM to Data Product Leader: The IC-to-Manager Transition",
            "summary": "The IC-to-manager transition for data PMs means letting go of schema ownership and learning to lead through others. The skills that made you a great IC won't make you a great leader.",
            "date_modified": "2026-04-05T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/build-vs-buy-analytics-infrastructure",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/build-vs-buy-analytics-infrastructure",
            "title": "Build vs. Buy for Analytics Infrastructure: A Recurring Evaluation Framework",
            "summary": "Build-vs-buy is not a one-time decision. It's a recurring evaluation as your scale, team, and requirements change. Here's a framework for making the call repeatedly.",
            "date_modified": "2026-03-29T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Strategy & Roadmapping",
                "Platform & Architecture"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/org-design-conways-law",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/org-design-conways-law",
            "title": "Org Design for Data Product Teams: Conway's Law in Practice",
            "summary": "The org chart is a product design decision. How you structure the data team determines how your instrumentation system evolves — Conway's Law is inescapable.",
            "date_modified": "2026-03-22T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams",
                "Strategy & Roadmapping"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/building-business-case",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/building-business-case",
            "title": "Building the Business Case for Instrumentation Investment",
            "summary": "Frame instrumentation's indirect value in revenue, cost, and risk terms that leadership understands. Data infrastructure doesn't generate revenue directly — it enables everything that does.",
            "date_modified": "2026-03-15T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Strategy & Roadmapping",
                "Leadership & Teams"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-product-portfolio",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-product-portfolio",
            "title": "Managing a Data Product Portfolio: Where to Invest, Maintain, and Sunset",
            "summary": "You manage multiple data products simultaneously. A portfolio view tells you where to invest more, where to maintain, where to incubate, and where to sunset.",
            "date_modified": "2026-03-08T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Strategy & Roadmapping",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/making-invisible-work-visible",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/making-invisible-work-visible",
            "title": "Making Invisible Work Visible: Internal Marketing for Data Teams",
            "summary": "Data work is invisible by default — pipelines that don't break, schemas that don't drift, quality that doesn't degrade. Make it visible with PM-grade communication.",
            "date_modified": "2026-03-01T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/instrumentation-roadmap-strategy",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/instrumentation-roadmap-strategy",
            "title": "The Instrumentation Roadmap: Balancing New Features, Migration, and Tech Debt",
            "summary": "A roadmap makes tradeoffs visible across three competing priorities: new instrumentation for upcoming features, migration of legacy systems, and technical debt reduction.",
            "date_modified": "2026-02-22T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Strategy & Roadmapping",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/managing-data-product-managers",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/managing-data-product-managers",
            "title": "Managing Data Product Managers: Coordination-Output vs. Code-Output Teams",
            "summary": "Managing people whose output is coordination and influence requires different techniques than managing people whose output is code or analysis.",
            "date_modified": "2026-02-15T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/hiring-for-instrumentation",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/hiring-for-instrumentation",
            "title": "Hiring for Instrumentation: Building a Team With No Existing Playbook",
            "summary": "No job templates exist for instrumentation roles. Build hiring criteria, career ladders, and onboarding from scratch — because the field is too new for standard playbooks.",
            "date_modified": "2026-02-08T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-informed-culture",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-informed-culture",
            "title": "Building a Data-Informed Product Culture Without More Dashboards",
            "summary": "Data culture is a product problem, not a dashboard problem. More dashboards don't change behavior — rituals, incentives, and access do.",
            "date_modified": "2026-02-01T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Leadership & Teams",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/measuring-impact-of-data-products",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/measuring-impact-of-data-products",
            "title": "How to Measure the Impact of Instrumentation and Data Products",
            "summary": "Report outcomes (decisions enabled), not outputs (events shipped). Your VP doesn't care about event counts — they care about what decisions your data made possible.",
            "date_modified": "2026-01-25T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Metrics & Measurement",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-product-maturity",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/data-product-maturity",
            "title": "The Data Product Maturity Model: From MVP to Self-Serve",
            "summary": "A data product matures through stages: MVP (it exists), validated (stakeholders trust it), automated (it runs itself), self-serve (consumers don't need you).",
            "date_modified": "2026-01-18T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Product Management",
                "Strategy & Roadmapping"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/when-to-rewrite-schema",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/when-to-rewrite-schema",
            "title": "When to Rewrite Your Event Schema From Scratch",
            "summary": "The decision to rewrite is a product decision, not a technical one. When incremental evolution isn't enough, here's how to evaluate whether a rewrite is warranted.",
            "date_modified": "2026-01-11T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Schema Design",
                "Strategy & Roadmapping"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/migrating-instrumentation",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/migrating-instrumentation",
            "title": "Migrating Instrumentation Without Breaking Dashboards and Models",
            "summary": "Instrumentation migration is a product launch in reverse — you're replacing something people depend on, not adding something new. The coordination is harder than the code.",
            "date_modified": "2026-01-04T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Schema Design",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/what-not-to-send",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/what-not-to-send",
            "title": "Writing Requirements for What Not to Send: SDK-Level Collection Controls",
            "summary": "SDK-level conditions that suppress event emission — kids mode blocks collection, input events must not contain PII, flags exclude events from marketing use.",
            "date_modified": "2025-12-28T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Schema Design",
                "Product Management"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/analytics-code-review",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/analytics-code-review",
            "title": "The Analytics Code Review: What a PM Should Look For",
            "summary": "The PM's contribution to analytics code review isn't code quality — it's requirements fidelity. Does the implementation capture what stakeholders need to know?",
            "date_modified": "2025-12-21T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Product Management",
                "Monitoring & Quality"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/managing-schema-evolution",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/managing-schema-evolution",
            "title": "Managing Schema Evolution Without Breaking Downstream Consumers",
            "summary": "Every schema change is a negotiation between producers and consumers. Versioning, compatibility rules, and deprecation processes keep evolution safe.",
            "date_modified": "2025-12-14T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Schema Design"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/notification-telemetry-build-vs-buy",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/notification-telemetry-build-vs-buy",
            "title": "Build vs. Buy for Notification Telemetry: Why Third-Party Tracking Falls Short",
            "summary": "Building in-house notification instrumentation vs. relying on third-party telemetry you don't control, can't validate, and may not give you everything you need.",
            "date_modified": "2025-12-07T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Experimentation & Growth",
                "Platform & Architecture"
            ]
        },
        {
            "id": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/validating-audience-segments",
            "content_html": null,
            "url": "https://trmccormick.com/blog/validating-audience-segments",
            "title": "Using Instrumentation to Validate Audience Segment Targeting",
            "summary": "Proper instrumentation helps PMs validate that different audience segments are served the correct experiences — not just that experiments ran, but that the right people saw the right thing.",
            "date_modified": "2025-11-30T00:00:00.000Z",
            "author": {
                "name": "Trevor McCormick",
                "url": "https://github.com/trevormccormick"
            },
            "tags": [
                "Experimentation & Growth",
                "Metrics & Measurement"
            ]
        }
    ]
}