The gold standard for this type of testing is an A/B test. The reason we love A/B tests is because the user doesn't know which version of the product she is seeing. This yields data that is very predictive, which is what we ideally want.

Most product managers start their day with half an hour or so in the analytics tools, understanding what's been happening in the past 24 hours.

Necessity being the mother of invention, this is where Netflix's queue, ratings system, and recommendation engine all came from.

economics and dynamics of your business and your market.

You want to give your engineers as much latitude as possible in coming up with the best solution. Remember, they are the ones who will be called in the middle of the night to fix issues if they arise.

strong in four key competencies: (1) team development, (2) product vision, (3) execution, and (4) product culture.

First, we will usually assess value. This is often the toughest—and most important—question to answer, and if the value isn't there, not much else matters.

first is market sizing,

understanding what they're doing with your product.