tech · 2009–20149 min read
Slack's pivot from Glitch
How a failing game studio noticed it had built the wrong product — and shipped the right one to itself in the process.
product discoverystakeholderproduct metrics
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// real-world PM cases · sourced + cited
What people
actually did.
The simulator teaches what to do under pressure. These cases teach what people actually did. Each one cites authoritative public records — government reports, founder interviews, peer-reviewed retrospectives — and walks through the decisions, the consequences, and the lessons.
aerospace · April 197011 min read
Apollo 13 Mission Control
How a flight director's risk-management discipline turned a near-fatal accident into NASA's most-studied recovery.
riskcommunicationsintegration
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government · 2010–201413 min read
Healthcare.gov launch (2013)
How a federal program that hit every milestone shipped a system that didn't work — and what the rescue team did to fix it.
integrationstakeholderrisk
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telecom · 1987–199911 min read
Iridium's satellite phone constellation
How a program that delivered everything it promised, on time and on technical spec, still went bankrupt nine months after launch.
scoperiskstakeholder
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aerospace · 2011–202013 min read
Boeing 737 MAX & MCAS
How cost-driven scope decisions on a derivative-airframe certification program compounded into two fatal accidents.
scoperiskcommunications
read the case
aerospace · 1988–199610 min read
Ariane 5 Flight 501
How reusing flight-proven software on a new vehicle, without re-validating it for the new flight envelope, destroyed a $370M rocket 37 seconds after liftoff.
riskqualityintegration
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medical · 1982–198712 min read
Therac-25 radiation therapy accidents
How removing physical interlocks on the strength of software validation arguments produced six massive radiation overdoses, three of them fatal.
qualityriskcommunications
read the case
Why cases?
The simulator gives you reps on decisions. Cases give you receipts: what happened when somebody actually made the call. Both are required. Pretending you’d do better than the team that shipped Healthcare.gov is the cheap version of PM training; reading what they actually did and why is the durable one.