Break work into incremental launches and validate early

To probe deeper, try the following questions: Can you walk me through how you would use the feature you're requesting? What happens before you use it? What happens after? Is that task part of a larger goal? What are some of the challenges you run into with that task? Have you tried anything to help with this problem before? What stopped it from wor

Before you create your own principles, you can first take a look at the design and product principles other companies have created. Design principles often involve universal design, consistency, tone of voice, and delight.5On the product side, common principles are created around user trust, innovation, and lean development.

Product principles are a set of values that your company uses to guide designs, evaluate solutions, and resolve difficult tradeoffs. They require extensive collaboration and buy-in to create, but once you have them, they'll simplify many future decisions.

Reduce Noise: Consider slicing or filtering metrics in ways that reduce variance and noise. For example, you might look at the number of users who comment, rather than the raw number of comments.

Create milestones and checkpoints Big projects need to be broken down into milestones and checkpoints. This allows you to assess how well the work is going and adjust it if needed. Beyond that, milestones are great for morale and creating a sense of accomplishment. In general, it's very hard to estimate what percent of a big piece of work is done.

The core product team at most modern tech companies is called the triad: Engineer (or Tech Lead), Designer, and Product Manager. Engineers are responsible for the technical solution. They'll plan the data structures and algorithms that will make things fast, scalable, and maintainable. They'll write the code and tests. Designers are responsible for

Engineering doesn't start until the Discovery and Design phases have gotten a large enough head start.

Always start with the goals: Taking a few minutes at the beginning of each piece of work to get everyone on the same page about why you're doing it and what you're hoping to accomplish can make a huge difference in your success. Frequently revisiting the goals not only keeps people on track, it helps morale as well!