Product Management

Some of the questions I repeatedly ask:

• Can we re-frame this in terms of the customer’s problem?

• What’s the soonest we could get this done?

• What would you need to get this done tomorrow instead of next week?

• What would we need to do to get twice as many customers? Ten times as many customers?

• How does this relate to our goal? Is this the most

Consistency just feels good to our system centric product/engineering/design brains. But it creates a huge coordination cost and prohibits local experimentation – everything has to be run against a single standard that multiplies in communication complexity as the organization gets larger.

A specific tool that I’ve found critical for staying oriented and updating quickly is a detailed plan for victory , i.e., a list of steps, as concrete as possible, that end with the goal being achieved.

You should schedule at least one 30-minute weekly meeting with everyone working on the project.

The goal of this meeting is to (1) be a backstop for any coordination that needs to happen and didn’t happen asynchronously; (2) be an efficient way to create common knowledge of goals, updates, etc.; (3) help you track whether things are going well.

• Sta

Product 1st, Market 2nd: Most successful new markets begin with a market-sensitive technologist recognizing an inflection point that enables a new kind of product. The next question becomes: “who wants to buy my product?” Start with the product and search for the market as opposed to vice versa. Evaluating a market trying to find holes and develop

The “About Me/Us” section above is externally facing. Guiding principles on the other hand are internal and represent the core values and beliefs that provide a framework for reacting and making product decisions regardless of the situation. It ensures you and your team all react in a manner that is favorable to the success of your products. What w