Building successful products means focusing on outcomes over outputs, continuously discovering through customer stories, and aligning the team around clear, evolving goals.
#Things to consider
- How do you ensure that what you are working on is improving over time?
- Shift from an output mindset to an outcome mindset.
- Deciding what to build is discovery, and the work you do to build and ship is delivery.
- Discovery should continue evolving over time.
- A ”product trio” consists of a product manager, a designer, and a software engineer.
- We want to measure success by impact. The impact we’ve had both on our customers lives but also for the sustainability of our business.
- You can’t simply ask your customers about their behavior and expect to get an accurate answer.
- As product leaders assigns new initiatives, ask them to share more of the business context: Who is the target customer for it? What business outcome are we trying to drive with this initiative?
- Distinguish in your interviews what it is you are trying to learn from your interview questions. The best way to learn about our customers is to ask them share specific stories and experiences.
- Instead of asking, “What criteria do you use when purchasing a pair of jeans?”—a direct question that encourages our participant to speculate about their behavior—we want to ask, “Tell me about the last time you purchased a pair of jeans.”
- Weekly touchpoints with customers, by the team building the product, where they conduct small research activities, in pursuit of a desired outcome.
- Visualize what you know.
- Map out the opportunity solution trees.
- Remember to focus on one outcome at a time, instead of splitting your focus between different outcomes.
- The problem space and solution space evolves together.