Inspired

different types of people who will be using your product. The persona is an archetype description of an imaginary but very plausible user that personifies these traits—especially their behaviors, attitudes, and goals. The tool was first described in 1998 in one of my all-time favorite books, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, by Alan

that can and should be done in parallel. For example, I have long argued that requirements (functionality) and design (user experience design) are intertwined and should be done together. I don’t like the old waterfall model of a product manager doing “requirements” and handing that off to interaction designers that do “design.” Most teams understa

Moreover, I think it is very important for product managers to be completely transparent in their decision making process and reasoning. You don’t want the team thinking that you’re just following your intuition. Every member of the team should be able to see the goals and objectives you are using, their priority, and how you assess each option. Th

experience, to now I advocate prototyping virtually everything—all pages/screens, and all the major use cases. There will still be some error conditions and corner cases that

The benefits to the customers/users that join: They get early and significant product input—they recognize the problem that this product is trying to solve, they feel the pain, and are anxious to ensure they find a good solution They get early access to the product—again, they feel the pain, so the sooner they can get relief the better Typically, t

different than production software. Prototype software needs to be truly disposable. It needs to be something that can be changed substantially in a few hours. What is necessary for production software is like dragging around a boat anchor for a

The spec must describe the full user experience—not just the product requirements but also the user interaction and visual design. By now, hopefully everyone

sequential is important. The requirements and design happen together, and then implementation and test can happen together.

In my mind, there’s only one form of spec that can deliver on these requirements, and that is the high-fidelity prototype.