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Good Qs, Good Ps. 31 Good Questions Product Makers can ask to build Great Products. by Eli Holder [email protected]

Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

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Page 1: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Good Qs, Good Ps.

31 Good Questions Product Makers can ask to build Great Products.

by Eli Holder [email protected]

Page 2: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“That’s a great question.”

Page 3: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Work Work Work.Eli’s Background

Page 4: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

unblab. “Spent about 10 minutes training it to recognize

my important emails and it's already saved me

hours and hours of sorting through messages.”acquired by

Page 5: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“Until I saw your graphics and your ‘result stories’, I really wasn’t that dissatisfied. Now, I want to view all of my data this way.”

Page 6: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Nodd

Nodd helps team leaders

get honest, constructive

feedback from their

teams at work.

"I loved the emojis and

the survey format was

awesome. I was engaged

the whole time. Excellent

platform.”

“It’s like the slack of 1:1s”

Nodd.co

Page 7: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 8: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Nodd

RESEARCH!Product

Page 9: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 10: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Dumb.

2009

Page 11: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Dumb. Slightly less dumb.

2009 2016

The power of questions.

Page 12: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Goal of this talk:

Hooray Questions!

Page 13: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Why Questions?

“The Unknown Unknowns”i.e. the epistemology of Donald Rumsfeld

Page 14: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Unknown Unknowns

Known Unknowns

When you learn a new question:

Page 15: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Goals of the talk:

1. The power of Questions

2. Asking the right Questions

3. Tons ‘o’ Product Questions

Page 16: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

1. Who are we? Why are we here? (strategy & existential crises)

2. Who’s our audience? What do they want? (user research)

3. What are we trying to do? Why should we? (opportunity assessment)

4. How should we solve the problem? (design sprinting)

5. Are we approaching Product /Market Fit? (build, measure, learn loop)

Big Product Q’s(for each Product Lifecycle Stage)

Page 17: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Related Product Q’s.Who are we? What’s our mission? What’s our aligning metric? What are our organizational objectives for the quarter/year (OKRs)? Who are the

stakeholders? What are their goals? Why invest more in the product (e.g. instead of sales?) Who’s going to be building it? What are their personal

goals and interests? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How much of their time do we have (e.g. are they cross functional? do they have

other projects? are there churn risks?) What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses? What are people’s expected communication styles? What’s

the organization’s culture (e.g. Risk tolerance)? What’s the organization’s perceived brand? What are the expectations for a product manager?

What’s the (target) business model? What stage is the company at? What’s the prevailing role within the company? Who are the other companies in

the space? How is your company different? Tech advantages / debt? Design advantages / debt? Data advantages? What are the religious issues that

everyone’s tired of discussing? External requirements? Whats your support team like? How do you (think) you make money? Who’s our audience?

What do our users think about on the subway? Who are our primary (and secondary) users? What does a typical day look like for them? What

problems are they currently experiencing? (What are the 5 whys for the problems? What are they doing now to solve them? What do they like about

the current solution? What do they dislike about the current solution? What are they feeling?) What are the most important dimensions to describe

them? (e.g. demographics? behavior? company role? values? physical attributes? ) Who are the extreme users? What do our users value? What are

their goals? What are their obligations? What are their frustrations? What are their stresses? What gets them excited? Who are the people in their

lives? How do they typically interact with them? What’s the users value to us? What language do they use to describe their experiences? What other

products / tools are they using? What are they reading? Who are they following? How do they find / buy related products? How do they fit into

purchasing decisions? What can they spend? When do they spend? What’s their organization’s culture like? How do they fit in? What’s their

organization’s business model? How do competitors perceive them? What does academia think about them? What problem are we solving? (value

prop) What problems are incidental (non-goals)? For whom do we solve this problem? (target market) How big is the opportunity? (market size)

How will we measure success? (metrics) What alternatives are out there now? (competitors) Why us? What’s our differentiator? Why now?

(market window) Why might this a bad idea? How will we market this? Other considerations for success? How should we solve this? What are all

the different ways we could possibly solve this? How are our competitors solving this? How have academics solved this? How have people solved

similar problems in different industries? Which solution is the best for us to pursue? Which solution is most interesting to the team? Which solution

has the most learning potential? Is it technically feasible? (What’s the relative complexity?) Is it consistent with the behavior / data we’ve collected

so far? What are the main things we expect users to do (Jobs to Be Done / stories)? What would it look like for the user to do that? What user

Page 18: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Who are we? Why are we here?Product Lifecycle Stage #1:

Q:

Strategy & Existential Crises

Page 19: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What’s the mission?Q: Who are the stakeholders? What do they want?

Q:

What are our strengths & weaknesses?

Q:

Strategy & Existential Crises

Page 20: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Why it’s importantFollow your dreams, idiot.

Page 21: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Team Plan: Follow my dreams.

Page 22: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“What’s our one metric that matters”?

“What are our near-term OKRs”?

“What are our product principles”?

Ask:

What’s the mission?Q:

Page 23: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Who are the stakeholders?What do they want?

Q:

Page 24: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

This is not you.This is not you.

Page 25: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

This is you.

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1. Conformity bias

2. Positivity bias

3. They don’t know

4. Don’t want to look dumb

challenges:

Who are the stakeholders?What do they want?

Q:

Page 27: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Who are the stakeholders?What do they want?

Q:

“What are your 3 biggest hopes for this project?

“What are your 3 biggest fears for this project?

“Any other considerations?

Ask:

The Hopes / Fears Exercise:

Page 28: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Hopes / Fears Exercise Results:

Who are the stakeholders?What do they want?

Q:

Answers: Hopes: • That project X opens up a new market for us • I’m optimistic about the chance at a new market • That project X opens up a substantial new revenue

stream for us • That X has interesting technical challenges

Fears: • That project X is much more technically difficult

than we expected • That we get distracted and don’t give project X a

fair shot • That we’re just excited about the revenue

opportunity and not solving a real problem.

Considerations:

Page 29: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Hopes / Fears Exercise Results:

Who are the stakeholders?What do they want?

Q:

Answers: Hopes: • That project X opens up a new market for us • I’m optimistic about the chance at a new market • That project X opens up a substantial new revenue

stream for us • That X has interesting technical challenges

Fears: • That project X is much more technically difficult

than we expected • That we get distracted and don’t give project X a

fair shot • That we’re just excited about the revenue

opportunity and not solving a real problem.

Considerations:

Page 30: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Hopes, Fears, and Psychological Safety.

Page 31: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What’s our mission? What’s our aligning metric? What are our organizational objectives for the quarter/year (OKRs)? Who are the stakeholders? What are their goals? Why invest more in the product (e.g. instead of sales?)

Who’s going to be building it? What are their personal goals and interests? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How much of their time do we have (e.g. are they cross functional? do they have other projects? are there churn risks?) What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses? What are people’s expected communication styles?

What’s the organization’s culture (e.g. Risk tolerance)? What’s the organization’s perceived brand? What are the expectations for a product manager? What’s the (target) business model? What stage is the company at? What’s the prevailing role within the company?

Who are the other companies in the space? How is your company different? Tech advantages / debt? Design advantages / debt? Data advantages?

What are the religious issues that everyone’s tired of discussing? External requirements? Whats your support team like? How do you (think) you make

Strategy: Relevant Q’s.

Page 32: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Audience Q:Any questions so far?

Page 33: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Who’s our audience? What do they want?Product Lifecycle Stage #2:

Q:

User Research

Page 34: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“Set up at least 30 meetings, or you won’t have a good product.

Michael Sippey Former VP Product

Twitter

User Research: Why?

Page 35: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Allison Smith*

27, Cleveland

New Mom

Yahoo Mail User

*Not really Allison But

thank you to this person

for CC Flickr photo.

How does Allison use email?

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Page 37: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What does a typical day look like?

What’s important to them?

What’s holding them back?

What do they think about on the subway or on the highway?

Qs:

Who’s our Audience?Q:

Page 38: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What do users want?Q:

Page 39: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“If I had asked people what they

wanted, they would have said:

Faster Horses.”

Henry Ford* Model-T Inventor

*Not really

Page 40: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What do users want?Q:

1. They can’t say what they want

2. They won’t know what’s possible

3. It’s not their job to know

challenges:

Page 41: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

What do users want?Q: “How do you currently do [area you want to explore]?”

“What are the top 3 things you love about how you’re doing it now?”

“What are the 3 biggest frustrations with how you’re doing it now?”

Ask:

Page 42: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Happy Event

Frustrating Event

Emotion Timeline Exercise.What do users want?Q:

"If you were to draw a chart of your emotions throughout your experience [doing X], with peaks when you're most happy and valleys when you're most unhappy, what would that look like?"

Ask:

Page 43: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

A designer describes the 360 performance review experience.

Choose my reviewers.

Find out it’s perf review time.

Find out I have to write 4 reviews

I write the reviews, feel relieved

A long time goes by and I forget

about it. Boss emails to say it’s time to have the talk.

Talk day.

Promotion!

Emotion Timeline Exercise Results:What do users want?Q:

Answer:

Page 44: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Who are your competitors’ customers? What do they value?

Q:

Page 45: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“[your industry]” (testimonials|our clients|our customers)

site:[competitor_site] filetype:pdf

site:twitter.com "apple maps" ("is a”|"sucks"|"can't"|"fuck"|"shit")

https://twitter.com/search?q=to%3A[COMPETITORS_TWITTER]%20%3A)

:

Who are your competitors’ customers? What do they value?

Q:

Page 46: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

User Research: Relevant Q’s.

What do our users think about on the subway?

Who are our primary (and secondary) users? What does a typical day look like for

them? What problems are they currently experiencing? (What are the 5 whys for

the problems? What are they doing now to solve them? What do they like about

the current solution? What do they dislike about the current solution? What are

they feeling?)

What are the most important dimensions to describe them? (e.g. demographics?

behavior? company role? values? physical attributes? ) Who are the extreme users?

What do our users value? What are their goals? What are their obligations? What

are their frustrations? What are their stresses? What gets them excited? Who are

the people in their lives? How do they typically interact with them? What’s the users

value to us?

What language do they use to describe their experiences? What other products / tools

are they using? What are they reading? Who are they following? How do they find /

buy related products? How do they fit into purchasing decisions? What can they

spend? When do they spend? What’s their organization’s culture like? How do they fit

in? What’s their organization’s business model? How do competitors perceive them?

Page 47: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 48: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Product Lifecycle Stage #3:

Q:

Opportunity Assessment

What are we trying to do? Why should we?

Page 49: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

From The PM Handbook

(mostly).

Opportunity Assessment: Huh?

Page 50: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

1. What problem are we solving? 2. What problems are we not solving?

3. For whom do we solve this problem?

4. How big is the opportunity? 5. How are people solving it now?

6. What’s the competitive landscape?

7. Why us? What’s our differentiator?

8. Why now? Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

9. How will we get this product to market?

10.How will we measure success?

11.What factors are critical to success?

12.Given the above, go or no-go?

The Opportunity Assessment:

Page 51: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

1. What problem are we solving?

2. What problems are we not solving?

3. For whom do we solve this problem?

4. How big is the opportunity?

5. How are people solving it now?

6. What’s the competitive landscape?

7. Why us? What’s our differentiator?

8. Why now? Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

9. How will we get this product to market?

10.How will we measure success?

11.What factors are critical to success?

12.Given the above, go or no-go?

The Opportunity Assessment:Reason #1 for

Page 52: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

1. What problem are we solving?

2. What problems are we not solving?

3. For whom do we solve this problem?

4. How big is the opportunity?

5. How are people solving it now?

6. What’s the competitive landscape?

7. Why us? What’s our differentiator?

8. Why now?

9. How will we market this?

10. How will we measure success?

11. What factors are critical to success?

Page 53: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q:What is the #1 Most Important

Question about a Product?

Page 54: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

The Most Important Question:

What problem are we solving?*Q: *Independently of how we might solve it.

Page 55: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

*Independently of how we might solve it.

Advil.

Features are for suckers..

What problem are we solving?Q:

310M Americans experience

mild headaches and body pain

due to inflammation at least

once per year. We’ll make that

pain go away.

This:We’re manufacturing doses of

ibuprofen. They’ll come in blue

or brown pills. The bottle is

child proof. We’re advertising

the hell out of them.

Not This:

Page 56: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

“Shiny feature X.”

CEO: It needs to be social. Add share buttons everywhere!

PM: Sir, it’s a porn site. How many people share porn on Facebook?

CEO: The investors say we’re not growing fast enough. And some site called “Buzzfeed" is really taking off because of the sharing.

PM: It sounds like you’re saying the real problem is growth? Are there other ways we could solve that?

*Independently of how we might solve it.What problem are we solving?Q:

Get to the root of the problem. Avoid building things that don’t add value.

Page 57: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

80M Americans have have a hard time finding things on the internet.

Finding information on the internet.Problem

Idea #1 Portals and directories (yahoo)

Idea #2 Search by phrase matching (altavista)

Idea #3 search by phrase matching and back links signal (google)

Problem framing leaves room for multiple solutions.

*Independently of how we might solve it.What problem are we solving?Q:

Page 58: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

PM:

Designer:*Quits. Goes to Facebook.*

Problem framing helps PMs avoid irritating designers and engineers.

The signup button must be big and red so more people will see it and click on it.

*Independently of how we might solve it.What problem are we solving?Q:

Page 59: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q: How big is the opportunity?

Page 60: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Expected Ransom:$1 Million

Cost of Space Laser:$16 Septillion

??????

Page 61: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q: How big of an opportunity is it to hold the world hostage?

Cost of Space Laser:

Opportunity Size:

+$6,300,000,000,000(available cash, top 5 countries)

-$15,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000(estimated cost of death star)

Page 62: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q: How big of an opportunity is holding the world hostage?

Opportunity Size:

$6,300,000,000,000(available cash, top 5 countries)

(market size) (ransom)x $1.26T = $6.3T

(opportunity)top 5 countries

Page 63: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q:

Ask:

How big is the opportunity?

q1: How big is the market?

q2: What’s the unit impact?

Then: What’s q1 × q2?

solve: (market size) × (impact) = (opportunity size)

Page 64: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 65: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

(market size) (revenue)x

7B people ×

10% w/o internet =

$3.73 = $2.6B/yr(opportunity)

700M people

Page 66: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 67: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 68: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Q: How big of an opportunity is typography for Medium?

(Medium Readers /mo) (credibility acts)

x +1.5% = 510k ♥’s(opportunity)

34,000,000

Page 69: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers
Page 70: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

5,000,000 x 10

x 365 5,069,444

~8

users

seconds

days

hrs/yr

lives/yr

Page 71: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

1. What problem are we solving? 2. What problems are we not solving?

3. For whom do we solve this problem?

4. How big is the opportunity? 5. How are people solving it now?

6. What’s the competitive landscape?

7. Why us? What’s our differentiator?

8. Why now? Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

9. How will we get this product to market?

10.How will we measure success?

11.What factors are critical to success?

12. Given the above, go or no-go?

The Opportunity Assessment:

value > features

worth it? worth it.

Page 72: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Big Product Q’s(for each Product Lifecycle Stage)

1. Who are we? Why are we here? (strategy & existential crises)

2. Who’s our audience? What do they want? (user research)

3. What problem should we solve? How big is it? (opportunity assessment)

4. How should we solve the problem? (design sprinting)

5. Are we approaching Product /Market Fit? (build, measure, learn loop)

Page 73: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Big Product Q’s(for each Product Lifecycle Stage)

1. Who are we? Why are we here? (strategy & existential crises)

2. Who’s our audience? What do they want? (user research)

3. What problem should we solve? How big is it? (opportunity assessment)

4. How should we solve the problem? (design sprinting)

5. Are we approaching Product /Market Fit? (build, measure, learn loop)

} Let’s talk!

[email protected]

Page 74: Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Summary:

1. The power of Questions

2. Asking the right Questions

3. Product Questions

4. Let’s talk! [email protected].