Product Management Archives

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023

Running customer discovery calls

Success without customer meetings is veeery unlikely. I am going to be blunt here, if you are not running customer discovery calls on a weekly basis, you are doing it wrong. I know it, because I have done that mistake in the past.

Paradoxically, I have tons of experience running discovery calls and usability tests. The thing is, when it is about your product (slash side project, slash next big idea), not someone else’s, a customer discovery call triggers some subconscious fears. “The product isn’t ready”, “I’ll do it after shipping X feature…”

Last time a good friend had to push me towards running some calls. He was 100% right. The amount of usefull insights you can get from a few calls is insane. It is the difference between building something people want and wasting your time and energy. They provide…

1. Insights about what the user really want

2. Feedback on the root of issues not easily visible

3. Remove uncertainty

4. Motivation for you and your team

Users want their problem solved. If they are not being able to do it or get it, the “blame” is only on you…

In that aspect, they can also be brutal. Suspects you might have been avoiding, become blatantly obvious. (team or internal) product discussions you might have had, are suddenly very, very clear. Think in this terms…

it is better to face the problems with your ideas/products now, than build for months to discover after launching. My advice goes like this, go and get conversations with prospects from day 1. Before you start typing or designing anything…

Make a habit out of it, learn how to run them proficiently, become good at it. It will be more useful than any amount of coding or marketing you might do. It is something most people avoid, so you will acquire a unique, very valuable skill in the way. #buildinpublic

November 30, 2022November 28, 2022

Taking technical decisions for your side projects

How to take technical decisions for your side projects?

Some people allocate a sizable amount of time to this. My approach is much more simple.

First, categorise this decision. Is it a one-way door decision or a two-way door decision? Most of the time it is the latter. Being that the case, I dedicate 30-45 minutes to research what are my options. What analysis of the options already exist out there, medium, .dev, Reddit… If I think it might be relevant, ask in one of my core chat groups for an opinion. Most of the time it falls on one of two buckets, a) no opinion / educated guesses or b) extremely polarised opinions (pro or against particular options). People might reveal big hurdles or advantages for a particular choice.

By then I should be able to narrow it down to 2-3 options. Then I prioritise based on a series of factors that can be interpreted as gut feelings, but they are not. Does it look great and polished? Indicator of care and commitment behind it. Abundant documentation? lots of posts about it? great examples? good indicators of an existing community, up-to-date docs, easiness to find help when finding any blocker down the road,…

The next step is to pick the most appealing one and build a (VERY) rough version of whatever I need. Sometimes that means writing a basic script to test being able to solve a sample of the problem or a limited aspect of it. Sometimes means quickly integrating it with an existing project in a branch and seeing how it goes. The goal is to get a rough idea of how difficult will be to actually implement it at a production level, a proof of concept. As a rule of thumb, if I am not able to get a positive outcome in a short time, I discard it. The time can go from two hours to a morning, but no more than that.

The moment I hit a visible wall, I park that one and move to the next possible option. If I find a solution that is “good enough”, I just go for it, without exploring the next ones. My goal is to identify as fast as possible a viable solution for a particular problem I am looking to solve, minimising potential friction down the road. My process for not easily reversible decisions looks different (MECE, etc, but the reality is that those are indeed pretty scarce.

Avoid analysis paralysis with an approach that works for you.

To summarise this little piece of advice:

1. Simplify it and identify what type of decision you are taking

2. time-box your process

3. have a clear understanding of what success looks like before starting your analysis

How do you make your choices out there?

July 21, 2022September 16, 2022

Sense of Agency

Some concepts are pretty powerful. In the sense, that just being aware of them provide higher odds of succeed in life. Some are non obvious or even counter-intuitive. One of those is the sense of agency.

So, what is sense of agency and why is it important to have a strong sense of agency? it refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences. It is the feeling of being an agent, of a connection between our actions and the outcomes, when not explicitly thinking about it. Experiencing control over the outcomes. There are different theories that explain how it works and how we measure it. My take away for you is that its impact is transformational.

Your sense of agency is intrinsically connected with your context. In my case, moving from working in a big tech company to operating independently. As consultant and founder, provided a higher and deeper sense of agency. I had it before, I am not saying you can not have leverage in a company. My point that the output of your leverage; The extent of impact. As well as your perception of control are influenced by your environment.

It is literally one of the secrets of life according to Steve Jobs, “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world-try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. But life-that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it-you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”

It is important for you. It is paramount when you work in a product development team. Instilling it in your team mates. Nurturing the feeling ownership in the different stakeholders. The impact they make, it is the way to succeed creating great products. It took me some time to learn this. How crucial is to create space. To encourage providing inputs for less vocal members of the teams. Cultivating that sense of agency and autonomy. For all the participants in the production process.

There are relatively extensive research around it from a psychological point of view. The mechanisms in play as well as the different evolutive motivations for it. One of my favourite concepts!