20/20 Vision – Innovation Game in Action

Posted on:

Having an outside-in bias as a product manager is important – you need to understand how your customers (or your customer’s customers) would value capabilities you might build into your product. When running a workshop to collect that information, playing some “serious games” is a great way to get more […]

A Prototype is Worth a Thousand Lines of Code

Posted on:

A picture is worth a thousand words. A prototype is worth a thousand lines of code. Two key elements of product management – and of agile development are elicitation and feedback. Low fidelity artifacts can significantly improve both. Polished, codified prototypes can create problems that prevent you from getting the […]

Cadence Versus Risk

Posted on:

I’ve been thinking about the software development process. Big, upfront, design and requirements. User research and analysis. Market insights, gained on exploration or over time. Release cadence – how quickly you get, and incorporate, feedback from your customers about your product. How quickly you react to your competitors’ reactions to […]

Use Cases for Iterative Development

Posted on:

Almost everything I’ve read about use cases focuses on describing what needs to be added to your product. Agile development says “get it working first, make it better second.” That means changing the way the software enables a user to do something they can already do. How do you manage […]

Measuring Great Design – Mad Libs Input Form

Posted on:

I came across a really interesting article LukeW.com, showing how making changes to the way an input form on a website increased interaction by 25 to 40%. The changes reflect the value of thinking outside-in, investing in user experience, and performance measurement. Bonus: the idea is cool.

Design-Free Requirements

Posted on:

Design-Free requirements are important for two reasons, and hard for two other reasons. Design-free requirements are hard because you “know what you want” when you should be documenting “why you want it.” Writing design-free requirements can be hard when you don’t trust your development team to “do the right thing” […]

User Goals and Corporate Goals

Posted on:

When defining requirements, you always start in the context of a goal – either a user goal or a corporate goal. You need to be aware of both. Having a positive user experience is important, and requires a user-centered understanding. Achieving your corporate goals might be in conflict with some […]