Posts tagged “product strategy”

4 February 2019

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

I’m adding Good Strategy/Bad Strategy to my reading list, based on some of the quotes in this review:

Every organization faces a situation where the full complexity and ambiguity of the situation is daunting. An important duty of any leader is to absorb a large part of that complexity and ambiguity, passing on to the organization a simpler problem — one that is solvable. Many leaders fail badly at this responsibility, announcing ambitious goals without resolving a good chunk of ambiguity about the specific obstacles to be overcome. To take responsibility is more than a willingness to accept the blame. It is setting proximate objectives and handing the organization a problem it can actually solve.

28 January 2019

The power of “why now?” as a prioritization technique

I imagine that if you made one of those pull-string dolls of a Product Manager, it would just say “Why?” over and over1. We love figuring out the real reason behind an idea or a customer problem — as we should. But I think we often miss an important follow-up question: “Why now?”

We have so many methodologies for prioritizing problems and features, but I’ve found that this one question is able to cut through all the complex reasoning and (rightfully) stop unneeded projects in their tracks. Most things we could work on in a product are important. But going through the thought process of why it’s important to work on something right away is really helpful to separate the truly worthy projects from the ones that can wait.

The problem is that “Why now?” is not always an easy question to answer. It’s too vague, too broad. But if you flip it around and ask it a different way, things start to become clear very quickly. So here’s a question I recommend you ask yourself and the team the next time you debate a project:

What is the danger of not doing this project right now?

If we don’t solve this problem or add this feature right now, what do we lose? Are sign-ups going to drop? Are we going to lose customers? Are we going to miss a major shift in the market? If so, then, yes, now is a good time to work on it. But if the room suddenly falls silent and everyone comes up short on the downside of skipping over the idea — or if the downside is something like “this one customer will stop sending us angry emails” — that’s a pretty good indication that this thing can wait for later.

I say “wait for later”, and not “forget about for forever and ever”, because it’s quite possible that a few months from now you’ll answer that question differently, and suddenly now becomes the perfect time to work on it. The point is that we should never do something now if later is a better option.

Like Woody but for Product Managers? I want one! ↩

14 January 2019

The business case for support-driven growth

Support is a revenue driver, and a personal touch at scale is a great way to grow a business.

— Nick Francis, The Business Case for Support-Driven Growth

3 January 2019

Product teams exist to serve customers

Empowered Product Teams is another gem of a post from Marty Cagan. This part stood out to me:

In most companies, technology teams exist “to serve the business.” That is very often the literal phrase you will hear. But even if they aren’t explicit about it, the different parts of the business end up driving what is actually built by the technology teams.

However, in contrast, in strong product organizations, teams exist for a very different purpose. They exist “to serve the customers, in ways that meet the needs of the business.”

The distinction is subtle, but important. If you only serve “the business”, you’re going to make decisions without asking whether something is user-hostile or not (see, for example, scroll-jacking, or Twitter’s tendency to “forget” that you prefer a timeline that shows latest tweets). Bringing customer needs into any conversation about business needs is the way to build something that’s profitable and sustainable.

29 December 2018

Data-driven vs. data-informed decision-making

The Netflix Data War is a very interesting post about the internal discussions that happen between Netflix’s content team and their data team. In short, data isn’t everything:

[…] in almost any decision-making situation involving data, there is some non-zero percentage of the process that involves “gut”. The reason is because not all information about a process can be incorporated into a data analysis, and it’s important for data analysts to realize that.

That’s an important point to reflect on. It doesn’t matter how complete a data model is. There are some variables that simply cannot be included, because it’s impossible to know what should be included in any particular model.

Apart from that, it’s also just a fascinating look at the internal workings of Netflix.

6 November 2018

When it comes to roadmaps, focus on outcomes, not features

Here’s a pragmatic approach to roadmaps that I can get behind. Escape From the Feature Roadmap to Outcome-driven Development:

You’re exploring new lands. You know where you want to get to — that’s your outcome — but there’s no established route to get there. So you’ll probably set out, and if you’re measuring yourself correctly and you’ve got good feedback loops in place, you’ll be able to course correct and quickly iterate towards your outcome. But you could only draw the complete roadmap with hindsight.

So it’s time to take a new approach: forget the features and focus on the outcomes.

Roadmaps that include a bunch of features are doomed to fail. Instead, say “here’s the problem we want to solve in this iteration.” That allows you to be flexible on scope, and ship solutions to customers quickly.

5 November 2018

A thought on product thinking

I feel like we’re trying too hard to make “product thinking” a thing with fancy words and lofty concepts. Like we have some kind of inferiority complex with other disciplines we’re trying to make up for.

Talk to customers, understand the market and the business, and experiment until you get it right. That’s pretty much what product management is, right? How you do that looks different for every company, but that’s where the art comes in.

You can’t codify product management.

13 September 2018

Product managers and the prioritization of problems vs. solutions

Scott Colfer writes about product roadmaps in this article, but it includes what I think is a pretty valuable overview of the core role of a product manager:

Product management makes promises to solve problems over commitments to specific solutions. We take the human tendency to specify the means of doing something, rather than the result that is wanted, and redirect it by specifying what is to be achieved, rather than how to achieve it. Product managers are usefully agnostic about solutions — we help teams to prioritize the most valuable problems to solve and then help them to prioritize the solution that requires the least work for the most value — and we’re happy when we learn something that helps us to refine and simplify our solution.

3 September 2018

Prioritize themes, not features

Mind the Product has a good write-up of C. Todd Lombardo’s talk called Roadmaps are Dead! Long Live Roadmaps! I’m also in the “prioritize themes, not features” camp:

Every theme on your roadmap should have a problem, an objective, and even some potential ideas you have to solve those problems. In practice, this changes how your roadmap looks. Rather than being a list of features, it might start from an objective of reducing support costs, and then show themes that might help reach that objective such as improving invoicing options or expanding payment types. By removing the details of what features will be built to fulfill these themes, it gives the team the freedom to figure out how best to solve the problems presented.

This is similar to some thoughts I had in a 2011 post called Product roadmaps are safe.

23 August 2018

Vinyl Me, Please and the power of product thinking

I’ve been a Vinyl, Me Please customer since January 2015. Back then things were pretty basic. For roughly $25/month they would send you a “Record of the Month”, along with a custom art print and cocktail recipe. It was cool, and helped to expand my musical palate quite a bit.

But sometime over the over the past year or so they kicked things into high gear. VMP now offers a “Classics” track (my favorite!) and a “Hip Hop” track in addition to their “Essentials” track (the original “Record of the Month”). But what’s even more apparent now is how Vinyl Me, Please has grown into a role model of how to provide value to music lovers in the digital era. The thought and care that went into this month’s “Essentials” release proves it once again.

I noticed yet another example yesterday. The Vinyl Me, Please store now shows the “nutrition content” of each record they sell:

Vinyl nutritionn facts

Ask any vinyl collector and they will tell you how much this small detail improves the shopping experience. This is all the information we usually have to hunt for on product pages and do multiple Google searches about — but presented in a consistent, easy-to-read format. It’s such a relief and a breath of fresh air.

I’ve seen quite a few attempts to define “product thinking” lately. This example, to me, sums it up perfectly. “Product thinking” means gaining a deep understanding of what users need and what kind of friction they experience, and then providing a product solution that makes that friction go away in a delightful way.