Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Startup Journey 2015
Product Management Boost Turku, 2015-07-08 Anna Ronkainen @ronkaine [email protected]
Look who’s talking Anna Ronkainen - a lawyer at least on paper (LL.M., U of Copenhagen);
also studied EE/CS & linguistics; researcher in computational legal theory (U of Helsinki) – I’ll also be talking to you about intellectual property on Aug 12...
- Chief Scientist and co-founder, TrademarkNow Inc., head of product 2012–2015
- worked in the software industry since the early 1990s, in project and product management roles since ~2000
- serious design (especially typography) geek; occasional usability scholar as well
About TrademarkNow - founded in 2012, based in Helsinki, NYC
and Kilkenny, now ~30 employees - products based on an AI model of likelihood
of confusion for trademarks, based on my own basic research in computational legal theory (since 2002)
- NameCheck: intelligent TM search - NameWatch: intelligent TM watch
Disclaimer: Everything I’ll say is bullshit – including what I just said!
In other words: If what I say doesn’t seem to make sense to you, it’s probably just not applicable to your vertical. Trust your intuition – but also remember to question your assumptions from time to time!
Product management in a nutshell http://vooza.com/videos/just-say-no/
Of course we’re in favour of automation whenever possible Our latest product management hire (can handle ~90% of all feature suggestions from prospects and customers)
Why you should end up saying “no” to most things - you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) do
everything, product focus is crucial - (most) end-users are not designers: their
suggested “improvements” would usually make the product worse
- still, they are indicative of real problems and tell where you should dig deeper to find out what the actual problems are and how to best address them
End-users are not designers: You get this...
...rather than this:
12 arguments you should say no to 1. But the data looks good 2. But it’ll only take a few
minutes 3. But this customer is
about to quit 4. But we can just make it
optional 5. But my cousin’s
neighbour said... 6. But we’ve nothing else
planned
7. But we’re supposed to be allowed to work on whatever we want
8. But 713,000 people want it
9. But our competitors already have it
10. But if we don’t build it, someone else will
11. But the boss really wants it
12. But this could be “the one”
(from Intercom on Product Management)
Design thinking - Peter Drucker: the job of designers is
“converting need into demand” – figuring out what people want and giving it to them (i.e., innovating)
- Tim Brown of IDEO: The challenge for design thinkers is to “help people to articulate the latent needs they may not even know they have”
- desirable, viable, feasible
Design thinking tools - insight: go out into the world and learn from
the lives of others - observation: watch what people do (and do
not do) and listen to what they say (and do not say)
- empathy: stand in the shoes of others, connect with their emotions.
Getting towards MVP
Minimum viable cake
You can’t outsource product vision The answers to your questions are inside this building. They have to be. But you do have to get out of the building to make sure you are asking the right questions (and to validate your answers)!
You can’t A/B test your way to a MVP A/B testing works (at most) for marginal improvements – and even for them only if you have the volume to draw statistically significant conclusions.
My/our answer: Build something for yourself (and be your toughest customer) (a.k.a. the Steve Jobs school of product management) Works for (almost) anything:
What do you do if you can’t be your own customer - at least try to pretend: empathy, empathy,
empathy! - do get out of the building – often and a lot - being an usability geek helps a lot with
product design and management, but tends to make your life a hell around poor usability
Concrete product design tools - interviews - questionnaires - think-aloud - personas - user stories (“as a ____, I want to ____ in
order to ____”) - doing it yourself - product roadmap - (A/B tests)
The Jobs-to-be-Done framework
Things to consider before saying yes to product features 1. Does it fit your
product vision? 2. Will it still matter in 5
years? 3. Will everyone benefit
from it? 4. Will it improve,
complement or innovate on the existing workflow?
5. Does it grow the business?
6. Will it generate new meaningful engagement?
7. If it succeeds, can we support and afford it?
8. Can we design it so that reward is greater than effort?
9. Can we do it well? 10. Can we scope it well?
(from Intercom on Product Management)
Be agile, don’t “do Agile®” - in a larger project, have some sense of
overall direction, but don’t think you can design everything at once
- plan for something a sprint, do it, get it out to users, evaluate and plan next iteration
- focus on doing things mindfully, use your common sense as well as your own domain expertise rather than just think following some methodology will solve everything
Product management/production cycles - sprint (1–4 weeks each): work planned, and
specified in considerable detail - current & next quarter: split work into sprint-size
chunks, ordered according to critical paths - roadmap: major features and new products in
broad terms per quarter This is usually too much structure to be worth it pre-MVP (unless you’re doing something really really complicated). Also a tool for deciding what not to do! (At least not until...)
What do users (really) want?
Even B2B products are still bought by people! - ... you just may have to convince more of
them - but you still have to make them want the
product on a personal level (in terms of whatever evaluation framework they are using)
- see the market in terms of Unique Buying States, not just Unique Selling Points
Suck threshold
(Kathy Sierra: Badass – Making Users Awesome)
The Flow™ charts
(Csikszentmihalyi 1975, 1990 etc.)
Resources - Steve Blank and Bob Dorf: The Startup
Owner’s Manual - Intercom on Product Management (free
ebook): https://www.intercom.io/books/product-management
- Mind the Product conference, videos of presentations from past editions at http://www.mindtheproduct.com/category/product-management-videos/
- ProductCamp, ProductTank meetups (also in Finland)
- Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things
Questions? Thank you!
