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Really good article on the specific skills required for a winning product and how to set up roles in a team to cover these. “Because design oriented culture can only be created by people who understand users and understand the product.” Key points for small/early stage startups: Hire a PM more on the product side, less on the ‘manager’ side and bring on a UX designer as soon as growth allows it.

#Product Management #product design #UX design #startup #roles

Biz Stone's Jelly - Creating new habits via user interaction flows

Some great insight into how Jelly tweaked its interface to create a new user habit.

Okay, so help me with this — as a first-time user, the interface was tough for me to grasp. Am I dumb? Or is that common?

Well, we broke the conventional stream on purpose.

We built an earlier prototype that felt like using Twitter or Instagram. And it felt great; it was really fun to scroll through everybody’s questions, skipping over them, going back.

But what we noticed was that it wasn’t generating the type of activity we were trying to engender.

For example, I’d post a picture of my son in a hat, and I’d be asking if this was the right sort of hat for UV protection. And all the comments I’d get were, “Oh, he’s so cute, he looks like you!” And, yeah, he is cute! But I was kinda asking a specific question, you know.

We realized that the world has plenty of that. We really wanted to make this about getting a short, snappy answer on any mobile phone, as quickly as possible.

So we switched our model to what we were internally calling “one and done.” Which means we show you a question and you have to make a decision right then and there. Do you know the answer? Do you know someone who knows it? Or do you skip it, because you don’t? And when you skip it, it’s gone forever, and you’re on to the next one.

So for the most part, we intentionally broke the familiar model, knowing that it would feel awkward for many people who have become accustomed to it — having faith that it would work to do the job of the application.

Biz Stone Dishes Details on Jelly, His Post-Twitter Mobile Startup

#product management #product design #user flow #habits #user interaction #user interface

Don't settle for small gains by testing changes too close to your target.

Good Read: Product Strategy Means Saying No

If you’re building a product, you have to be great at saying No. Not ‘maybe’ or ‘later’. The only word is No.

#Product Management #NO #product strategy #road map #managing stakeholders #features

There’s that piece of advice that you should start out by saying “no” to new project ideas so that you stay focused on what really matters. Just as important is the ability to say “not now” to ideas you’re going to execute. To be patient with your product and realize that the when is just as important as the what. Sequencing your features and releases in an intelligent way will give people using your product the feeling of “Ah, of course this is what they’re releasing,” and maybe even hint at the future. You also get the side-benefit of not burning out your product team by trying to do too much at once.

Good Read: Managing a Backlog Product management fundamentals #1

Managing a Backlog — Medium

The most important thing is whether or not the product is good enough to pay for. If users are getting the correct value, they will continue paying and ultimately will invite other users or migrate to a higher tier. This is why a measure of product quality is the most critical.

Product Quality Metrics are often referred to as engagement or stickiness, but I think there is something a little misguided about optimizing for ‘stickiness’. You’re not a drug dealer using “first one’s free” tactics to push on your “users”. In fact, stop calling them users. Unless you are pushing drugs, in which case, carry on.

Pre-Product/Market Fit: Just Watch People

This is one of the rare moments where I will take a break from forcing metrics on people and tell them just spend as much time with customers as possible. If you’re pre-PMF, you need to observe people using your product. A lot of people. No metrics required. At this point you just want to validate two things:

You are solving a real problem that people have

They are aware of how to use your product to solve it

You can make this quantitative if you like, but it’s not required. If you can’t live without quantifying everything, use the following testing framework. Source potential users from your target market and hypothesize answers to the following four questions in the voice of each user:

What is your problem?

How does my product solve this problem for you?

How long will it take them to realize this product is the solution to their problem?

What is the trigger that causes them to realize that this is the solution?

Once you have observed the person using your product, ask them to answer the above four questions and additionally to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 5 of the pain point from number 1. Compare your hypothesized answers to theirs and give a “percent similarity” score. Multiply your “percent similarity” score to the pain scale and don’t continue on until you string together a sequence of 4′s or better.

#good reads #Product Management #validation #churn

Good reads: Validate or Die: Using Validation to Build the Right Product

HT to Loic Golliard for sharing this article on validation:

Why Validate?

When it comes to new products, by definition you’re making assumptions, sometimes a lot of them. You need to validate your key hypotheses and assumptions as early as possible. Some of your assumptions are going to be wrong. If the ones you get wrong are significant, you’re not going to be in business for very long.

Validation will help you avoid the most common problem of them all, spending time and money building something nobody wants. If you ever come across a failed product, chances are that it was based on an idea that the founder was enamoured by or found cool and interesting, rather than something that solved a real pain point for real people.

Validation also forces you to get in touch with your users, which could save you the pain of building a product that is hard to use or understand, or something that is ahead of it’s time. (Remember Webvan?)

If you figure out that you’re headed down the wrong path, it’s also easier (and a lot cheaper) to change course sooner rather than later. And, it’s all the less likely that you’ll have to pivot later.

Validation will help you refine your ideas and learn more about your users.

And last (but certainly not least), it will help you figure out if people will buy your product before you build it.

Hit up the article to read on about validation tools and methodology. A lot of valuable insights in it.

#Validation #product management #Good reads

Just how new is the Freelance Product Manager role?

So new that it doesn't exist on LinkedIn...