PRODUCT STICKY NOTES
Ed's bite-sized tips to help you be an empathetic Product Manager, Product Designer, colleague and leader.
Research with customers is much more valuable than 'Mesearch'
If your report escalates an issue act immediately or lose trust.
What are you influencing today?
Is everybody on board with this plan? Who is unconvinced? Time to align.
Hard decisions are easier if the goal is crystal clear. Take the time to define it clearly.
What is an unintended consequence of your feature? What's the 'anti-goal'?
Make user research as natural as possible for the user.
Designing and building the solution is the fun part, knowing the right problems to focus on is the important part.
Are you taking ownership to make it happen?
Not sure of something? Just ask a few people, especially people who interact with customers daily and the answer will appear.
The people and tactics that got you into trouble may not always get you out of trouble.
Make it simpler!
Delegate and get out of the way.
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Give autonomy with accountability.
The purpose of product is to drive customer value and business outcomes via practical and viable solutions.
Good work takes time. Diligent planning leads to fast execution.
Finding Product market fit:
If you are throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks give the mud an opportunity to be stick, invest a little in the mud.
Grand visions that are leaps ahead are nothing without the planning the incremental steps you need to take to get there.
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Say it in half as many words.
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Product management is not about saying no. It's aligning the whole organization around the right things to say yes to.
Pinging on slack and commenting in Google docs is not effective collaboration.
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Take the time to interact with your colleagues to build trust for better results.
Don't simply seek to understand someone's thinking, identify the assumptions their thinking is based on.
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Many opinions make internal naming of a feature a waste of effort.
Ask customers, a perfect name will appear like magic.
Generating and maintaining momentum is the hardest thing to do. How can you grease the wheels?
It doesn't matter how well you can do something if you are not allowed to do it, you need executive support.
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User Experience debt is as important as technical debt.
Interviews are a conversation not an interrogation.
Start with a blank sheet and ask every person you work with what they want in a roadmap.
Their wishes form your roadmap consideration set.
In the first iterations prioritize function over beauty.
Deeply understand your customer needs, jobs to be done and hypothesis before you design or build anything. This is the most cost effective way to develop software.
Don't mistake activity for progress.
Activity is easy. Progress is hard.
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Output is activity, outcomes are progress.