“I don’t get to set the direction. Leadership tells us the big projects they’ve decided to do, it’s up to us to elaborate and execute.” This is a common situation for a lot of product managers. They’ve been told that some big initiative is happening, and it’s up to them […]
Product Management / Product Strategy
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The Wrong Measure Will Misdirect You
When deciding what to measure, we often choose metrics which sound good or metrics which are easy. These mistakes can make a product strategy incoherent, excessively expensive, and ineffective. How we talk about what we choose to do sets our teams up for success. Or failure.
Product Management / Product Ops / Product Strategy
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Uselessly Wide Estimation Ranges
Estimating with ranges requires a level of transparency which may be uncomfortable because you are acknowledging what you don’t know. Doing this, however, cascades into multiple positive consequences. This is also a necessary component of outcome orientation.
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Probabilistic Thinking in Problem Statements
Product management is fundamentally a discipline of decision-making. Which investments to make, which problems to solve, which customers to serve, etc. The approach we take to decisions is fraught with peril, and we benefit from removing unconscious biases – improving our ability to elegantly make decisions to improve and advance […]
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Problem Statement Impact and Assumptions
Quantifying the impact of your problems puts them in perspective. It also exposes the assumptions you’re making, creating a virtuous cycle helping you to improve your framing of the problems, and making it possible to prioritize among them.
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Problem Statements Solve for Someone
There’s a difference between who is exposed to a situation (many people) and who experiences that situation as a meaningful problem they would like to solve (a select few). It is important to not describe a situation as self-evidently bad, but rather to reshape your framing to discuss the problem […]
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Problem Statements Shape Better Products
The overwhelming emphasis I see in product organizations is on sequencing the execution of the product strategy over the upcoming quarters. Optimizing the product operations work to deliver a subpar product. There is little to no effort applied to shaping the product strategy. Problem statements should be used to shape […]
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Writing Problem Statements Improves Product Thinking
Most of the teams I’ve helped either didn’t use problem statements, or didn’t use them well. Without improving, they spend more time and money than needed to build things, and much of what they build is worthless or wasted.
Agile / Organizations / Product Management / Product Strategy
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Epic Problem Statement
When solving complex problems at scale, we use epics, features, and stories to align, focus, and coordinate the work of multiple teams to achieve the objectives of our organizations. An epic represents the investment decision to solve a tangible problem; a collection of epics together represent a broader investment decision […]