Inspired

http://www.amazon.com/Inspired-Create-Products-Customers-Love/dp/0981690408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343058047&sr=8-1&keywords=inspired

A good project manager: urgency, frame & context, clear thinking, data driven, decisive, good judgment, good attitude

Design & UX: interaction, visual, prototyping, testing. Interplay between users, QA, designers, builders

Right Product vs Product Right

• keep engineering involved early
• keep design & prod involved late
• smallest viable product first
• minimize churn once dev starts
• flush out questions early

Product Manager:

• Give 20% for dev to rewrite and refactor
• Customer empathy & product passion
• Hard working & take work home - it’s a holistic problem
• Integrity
• Confidence - attitude
• Know the tech
• Focus on the main thing
• Manage time & distinguish between important and not
• Good writer and speaker
• Product management is tough & everything rides on ‘em - choose wisely
• Tell design & dev what product needs to do - let them solve it
• Give fellow employees anonymous shoutouts. Describe under appreciated people and strengths

Managing and management

• Measure and plan for churn, but minimize churn
• Product opportunities
  • What will this solve?
  • Target market
  • Market size
  • How do we measure success
  • Competition
  • Why us? Differentiator
  • Why now?
  • Product-to-market strategy
  • What’s critical to success
  • Go or no go?

Discovery vs Execution

• Once in execution mode, minimize invention and churn
• If need be, start a parallel 2.0 version once 1.0 goes into build mode

Product Council

• Keep to 10 or less
• Milestone 1: select opportunities to be investigated
• Milestone 2: review & issue go/no-go
• Milestone 3: Review prototypes, test results, cost estimates
• Milestone 4: review final product, QA, launch status
• Charter user program (beta testers)
  • They don’t pay you for it
  • Don’t just let everyone in - be choosy & get the right folks
  • If nobody wants in, your product sucks
  • Make sure they’re your target market (not early adopter)
  • Reinforce that it’s not a custom solution
  • Treat them as colleagues
• Market research
  • Use surveys, analytics, data mining, over-the-shoulder watching, competitive * analysis
  • Product discovery is: what tech can we use to solve this problem in a better way, * what should the experience be?
  • Winning products come from deep understanding of needs and capabilities
  • Focus groups suck because: customers don’t know what’s possible or what they want
  • Use personas and try to be in customers’ shoes

Specs

• Should describe interaction
• Represent behavior
• Communicate requirements to all groups (qa, eng., etc.)
• Needs to be a single master spec
• Use a hi-fi prototype - not a massive Word doc

Design & Implementation

• Don’t do UX & implementation simultaneously
• Don’t wait for beta to test designs
• Prototype software should be easily trashed & changed in hours
• UX can’t be stubbed out like code
• Designers can be pressured for time & deliver half-baked UX
• Keep engineering the the loop to assess feasibility

Minimal Product

• Product manager and designer come up with prototype of minimum functionality
• Engineering should represent to point out pitfalls & constraints
• Test prototype with target users
• This forces you to think upfront about min. product & you can’t severely cut or change * later on
• Only then do you start building & slip release if snagged

Validation

• Feasibility testing: what’s possible and what does it cost?
• Usability testing: test on real people
• Value testing: is it valuable?

Prototyping

• Round up test subjects
• Define tasks to test
• Start them from zero - don’t provide extra context. This lets you see how they think * about the problem outside of your solution
• See if they can figure out what it does & how it works at first glance - or if they * notice the important parts
• Only now do you begin having a conversation
• Ask about net promoter. Would they recommend it? If so, you’ve got value
• Ask how much they’d pay for it
• Ask what they’d expect to happen if they hit a dead end

Prototyping/Testing Environment

• Record them if possible
• Go to their office
• Face-to-face is preferable
• Product manager should be there - don’t delegate this
• One administers, another takes notes
• Don’t butter users up - you want an untainted opinion
• You’re testing a prototype - your feelings won’t be hurt, & they can’t pass/fail - * only the prototype
• You’re testing use & value - not design
• Keep quiet
• Either they a) did it easily, b) hunted but eventually did it or c) gave up
• Don’t lead the witness
• No running narration of what they’re thinking
• Parrot them
• You’re looking for problems spots - inconsistent with how they think
• +/- 6 users that can do the taks is a signal that it works
• Unusable/unclear doesn’t equal failure - you’ve saved a ton of time and resources

Improving Existing Products

• Decide what metrics are important & breathe them
• Analytics & changes that actually move the needle
• Study & work the numbers

Gentle Deployment

• Don’t be too disruptive with releases
• Parallel deployment - opt in to the new style (or the reverse)

Rapid Response

• Don’t quit after launch
• Assume there will be issues & be prepared to handle them

Agile Success

• Product manager is product owner - anything else is folly
• Stay 1 or 2 sprints ahead of team
• Break work into small, manageable chunks
• Let engineering break work up however they see fit
• Manager/owner & UX at every standup - constant previewing & presenting
• End of sprint doesn’t necessarily = launch - product has to be ready & gentle deploy * considered
• Make sure everyone understands agile

Large Companies

• It’s harder there
• Big companies are risk-averse
• Skunk works & just get it done

Fear, Greed, & Lust

• Understand the human side of a product
• Try to speak more directly to these emotions

Do’s

• Have a product manager
• UX is all-important
• Assess before jumping in
• Charter users
• Product principles
• Personas
• Discovery: value, usable, feasible
• Prototype
• Test prototype with real users
• Measure to improve - not just by adding features

Always Ask

• Is it compelling
• Is it easy to use as humanly possible?
• Will it succeed against future competition
• Do I know people who’ll really buy this?
• Is it truly different?
• Will it actually work?
• Is it a whole product, consistent with how we’ll sell it?
• Are the strengths lined up with what’s important? Are we working those strengths?
• Is it worth the money?
• Are my views inline with the rest of the team about what’s important?