Tricks: The Methods and Skills That Make Tech + Tools Stick
🔑 Why Tricks Matter for PMs
Technology and tools can look great on paper. But if people don’t adopt them, workflows don’t shift, or teams keep resisting change, nothing transforms.
That’s where Tricks come in:
- Frameworks like Design Thinking, Jobs-to-be-Done, or Value Mapping help you surface the real pain before choosing tech or tools.
- Change management methods help you win adoption and calm resistance.
- Prompt engineering and structured playbooks let you use AI tools effectively instead of getting “meh” outputs.
💡 PM’s role in Tricks:
You don’t invent frameworks. You don’t run HR’s formal change program.
You do:
- Know which accelerators to deploy.
- Introduce them at the right stage.
- Orchestrate consistency so the organization doesn’t collapse into chaos.
👉 Think of Tricks as the glue: Tech = foundation, Tools = handles, Tricks = adoption methods. Without glue, nothing sticks.
🧑💼 Your Mandate as a PM (Tricks Lens)
When a shiny tool rollout flops, or a tech project loses momentum, people often blame “bad tech.”
In reality, it’s usually missing Tricks — the human accelerators.
Your job is to:
- Frame the problem right (are we solving the right pain?).
- Guide adoption (are people onboard and capable?).
- De-risk execution (are we anticipating blockers?).
- Adapt communication (execs, engineers, users all hear different languages).
👉 In practice:
- CTO / CIO → Care about architecture and scale.
- Ops / IT → Care about integrations.
- PM → Cares about framing, adoption, and orchestration of how people actually change.
🧰 The Essential Tricks Every PM Should Know
Not every PM needs a degree in design thinking or change management. But every PM should have a basic toolbox of tricks — methods you can pull out when tech or tools alone aren’t enough.
We’ll split them into two categories:
🎯 Tricks for Yourself (Personal PM Craft)
These sharpen your own work — saving you time, helping you think clearer, and making you more credible.
| Trick | What It Helps You Do | PM Example | When to Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt Engineering | Get higher-quality outputs from AI tools | Draft a PRD outline with ChatGPT → refine prompts for clarity and tone | When speed is key but quality still matters |
| Value Mapping | Frame pain → process → payoff clearly | 1-pager showing why automation saves Ops 30% | Before pitching tech/tool investments |
| Pre-Mortems | Anticipate risks before they explode | “What could cause this launch to fail?” → build mitigation upfront | Before major launches |
| Storytelling Frameworks | Translate complexity into clear narratives | Executive one-pager: Pain → Solution → ROI | Any time you face non-technical Deciders |
| Decision Canvases | Capture fit, data, TCO, risk | Tech choice memo: “Use RPA now, revisit AI later” | When debating strategic initiatives |
💡 PM takeaway: Start by mastering 2–3 of these tricks. They’ll boost your clarity and make you credible in any room.
🏢 Tricks for the Org (Adoption & Alignment)
These don’t just help you — they help the team adopt and scale transformation.
| Trick | What It Shapes | PM Example | When to Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Thinking | Frame real problems, not pet projects | Workshop: uncover friction in user onboarding | At the start of big initiatives |
| Change Nudges | Help teams adopt new tech/tools | Early champions + short “how-to” videos | During tool or process rollouts |
| Standardized Templates | Reduce chaos across PMs | Shared PRD / experiment template | When scaling teams/orgs |
| Experimentation Frameworks | Drive learning culture | Run A/B via Optimizely, not gut feel | When testing hypotheses |
| Retros & Postmortems | Institutionalize learning | “What worked / what didn’t / what next” → feed back into playbook | After every launch or pilot |
💡 PM takeaway: You don’t need all of these at once. The key is picking the right trick for the right moment, and anchoring it to People + Process, not just “best practice theater.”
🧩 Scenarios PMs Actually Face (and How to Respond)
1) Trick Without Process: The Useless Workshop
- The move: A PM runs a flashy design sprint. Great ideas fill the wall.
- The miss: None of it ties back to real workflows or pains. Execs dismiss it as “post-its theater.”
- Outcome: Stakeholder trust erodes.
- Lesson: Tricks without process alignment = wasted energy.
👉 PM role: Anchor every workshop in the mapped process. Don’t let it float.
2) Trick Without People: The Dead Prompt Library
- The move: A PM curates a massive AI prompt library.
- The miss: Junior PMs try it, but quality varies wildly. Reviewers lose trust, execs fear compliance risks.
- Outcome: What started as a hack becomes a liability.
- Lesson: Tricks ignored by people don’t matter.
👉 PM role: Pilot → standardize → scale. Never force org-wide tricks until adoption proof exists.
3) Trick Orchestrated: Atlassian’s Pre-Mortem Play
- The move: Atlassian baked pre-mortems into launch rituals.
- The orchestration: Teams proactively identify risks, mitigate earlier, and launch smoother.
- Outcome: Fewer post-launch crises, higher trust in PM discipline.
- Lesson: Tricks multiply impact when orchestrated into rituals.
👉 PM role: Pick one trick, institutionalize it, then scale.
🎓 How Deep Should a PM’s Trick Knowledge Go?
You don’t need to become a certified design thinking coach or change manager.
But you do need fluency: enough to pick the right trick, deploy it lightly, and translate outcomes.
Here’s how it plays out by background:
🧑💼 If You’re Business-First (finance, ops, strategy)
- Gap: Human-centered framing.
- Skill up: Join a design sprint, co-facilitate workshops, learn Jobs-to-be-Done.
- PM edge: You bridge numbers with empathy — the exec whisperer and the user advocate.
🎨 If You’re Design-First (UX, creative)
- Gap: Governance + consistency.
- Skill up: Practice translating insights into exec-ready ROI language.
- PM edge: You’re the empathy driver who also proves business impact.
👩💻 If You’re Technical-First (engineering, data, IT)
- Gap: Persuasion + adoption.
- Skill up: Learn change management nudges, storytelling frameworks.
- PM edge: You stop being “the builder” and become “the translator of tech to people.”
🌐 For Everyone: Staying Current Without Drowning
- Gap: Too many frameworks, too much noise.
- Skill up: Keep a small arsenal (3–5 tricks you master). Don’t chase every new fad.
- PM edge: You’re the clarity curator — known for picking the right trick at the right time.
🔗 How Tricks Tie Across the Compass
People:
- Tricks are how you earn adoption. It’s not enough to roll out a new tool or announce “AI is live.”
- Imagine: you introduce a new experimentation platform. The tool works fine — but no one uses it because they don’t know how to design good experiments. A PM runs a design thinking workshop with early adopters, shows them how to frame hypotheses, and suddenly the platform has champions who pull the rest of the org along.
- 💡 Trick applied: Nudges + facilitation turned skepticism into momentum.
Process:
- Tricks ensure workflows transform not just on paper but in practice.
- Imagine: your org “officially” shifts to agile. Jira boards are live, stand-ups are on the calendar, but nothing feels faster. Why? Because teams are treating backlogs like static to-do lists. A PM introduces pre-mortems and lightweight retros. Suddenly, blockers are surfaced early, cycles tighten, and the agile ritual finally maps to real-world process improvement.
- 💡 Trick applied: Rituals anchored the process so it stuck beyond ceremonies.
Power:
- Tricks are what make Tech + Tools usable by humans.
- Imagine: the CTO champions an advanced AI copilot for customer support. On paper, it’s brilliant — cuts ticket handling time in half. But adoption lags; frontline support doesn’t trust the suggestions. A PM builds a storytelling playbook for support leads: “Here’s how to explain AI assist to your teams without making it feel like a threat.” Adoption climbs, the tool delivers value, and leadership credits the PM for making the rollout human.
- 💡 Trick applied: Storytelling + change management glued the tech to the people who use it.
💡 PM takeaway: Tricks aren’t garnish — they’re glue. They’re the difference between a tool sitting in a license spreadsheet, a tech initiative rotting in a backlog, and real adoption that creates value.
🧩 Stories: Tricks in Context — When They Fail, When They Scale
📉 Trick Without Anchor: The Useless Retros
- Teams run retros religiously. But they devolve into vent sessions with no change. Eventually, people disengage.
- 👉 Lesson: Tricks without follow-through create cynicism.
📉 Trick Misused: The Overdone Design Sprint
- A PM insists on a 5-day sprint for every minor feature. Teams burn out, execs roll eyes.
- 👉 Lesson: The wrong trick at the wrong scale hurts credibility.
⚡ Trick Orchestrated: Pre-Mortem Rituals at Atlassian
- Baked into launches, pre-mortems prevented costly failures, scaled trust, and became part of culture.
- 👉 Lesson: Orchestrated tricks = quiet superpower.
👩💼 Practical PM Moves – How to Build Your Own Trick Arsenal
- Pick a few: Don’t overwhelm yourself — start with 2 personal + 2 org-level tricks.
- Pilot them: Test in low-stakes projects before making them rituals.
- Standardize lightly: Simple templates, shared language. Don’t overengineer.
- Evolve: Swap tricks in/out as your org grows — what works at startup scale may break in enterprise.
💡 Final takeaway: Tools and tech will always change. Tricks are the constant — the PM’s glue that makes transformation real.
🚀 Next Steps (Tricks)
📥 Download: PM Tricks Depth Guide (free).
🎯 Micro Learning: “How to Run a Pre-Mortem in 30 Minutes” (gated).
💼 Toolkit: Change Management Nudges Library (premium).