I take no credit for the authoring any of these thoughts on Product, many of them stem from all the smart people I have worked with. This list of raw thoughts has found ways to make sense to me. Many of the items likely could be refined to make sense to others.
- Vision – directional statements that we work towards. Strategy – is the how, what are the high level strategy items for the next Y months. Problem statements (1:M) – what problems is your customers, business, etc are trying to solve.
- Why Product? The product process shifts the cost (or savings) earlier than later. For instance, the cost of building something. Before we build anything, we should have evidence/confidence that we should build it as building it is / can be the most expensive.
- 4 main risks of products: Valuable, Usable, Technical Feasible, Viable for business. I like to think there is a 5, defining predictability and flow on engineering teams.
- When communicating work, defining categories that work well have been: Now (3 months), Next (3-6 months), Later (6+), Aspirations
- Three phases of product: Discovery, Refinement, Planning. Dual track development is the flow between these phases. Depending on size of team/workflow, dedicating time with team/customer weekly works well.
- “Discovery flow” - rinse and repeat
- Each problem statement should correlate to strategy
- Iterating over problem statements can lead to other problems statements, break out appropriately
- POs role is to weigh priority, high value low effort, actions, sharing direction with team, etc.
- Once the problem is understood, we have evidence, confidence an option is to roll it into a written narrative.
- Discovery is what we work on before we put it in our backlog
- Product thinking example, let's go on a trip:
- Discovery - can kids get out of school, where should we go, should invite the grandparents, do I have the $, take to dog kennel
- Refinement - fill in some of the details, sitting down with family, "we are going to Paris", What are all the things we want to do for success? Is there anything preventing us from getting started (Goal is to have enough questions answered)
- Iteration - Book tickets, make sure child care is available
- Never forget the value of interviewing customers!!!
- OKR is a way point or where we are going, the value we are going to experiment/deliver
- KPI are gauges in the car – how much gas, are there dash lights showing up, etc. Health metrics