Creating Product Strategy with Multiple Strategic Tracks (MuST)
Product strategy is hard. In this article I explain how to use the MuST technique to create a multi-hit product strategy.
Product strategy is hard. In this article I explain how to use the MuST technique to create a multi-hit product strategy.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Well-thought-out strategies change seemingly every other quarter. 9-month projects that take two years to complete. Disgruntled managers talking about “low velocity”, “lack of ‘can do’ culture”. Skeptical employees talking about lack of vision, bad planning, politics. Spending lots of time on planning, replanning, scope-downs Disappointing launches that customers generally …
How to use the confidence meter tool and iterative testing to make sure you invest in the right product ideas.
Let PMs Be PMs Product management is at an interesting point. More and more companies embrace it as a way to supercharge the business, gratify customers and align the org, yet few product teams are able to deliver on these big expectations. I get asked by managers quite frequently how to get PMs to deliver more, …
5 Tips for Building Effective Product Management Teams Read More »
This is a talk I gave summarizing what I consider to be the best practices for driving growth (often called “Growth Hacking”) based on my own experience leading growth in Gmail and on examples from hyper-growth companies like Facebook, AirBnB, and Instagram. Some of the things I touch on: Finding a North Star and/or One …
Why I Quit Product Roadmaps Over the years I created my fair share of product strategies, product roadmaps and project gantts. I don’t do them anymore. I found a better alternative which I’ll explain below. First, here’s what I used to do: This form of planning is a ton of work — just getting all stakeholders to …
Why you should stop using product roadmaps and try the GIST Framework Read More »
Last April mobile event discovery startup, Fever, invited me to help with its growth initiative. Fever helps users discover and book events — from parties to fashion, food and fitness. The service gained traction in Madrid, New York, London and other cities, generating over 3 million bookings last year, and reaching a unique monthly audience of over …
Finding and building the next big idea is the holy grail of any tech company. Unfortunately the statistics are against us: when subjected to A/B testing most ideas turn out to produce no impact or even negative impact, and at least one analysis suggests that you need 3000 raw ideas to produce one commercial success. …
The Impact/Effort matrix is a classic product managment tool, helping to prioritize product ideas. See why often it doesn’t work correctly and how to fix.
In tech we have huge bias for execution – building things and launching them fast and with the right quality. A million underwhelming launches later, we now know we should focus on something else: Learning — systematically discovering the right product, market and business model. All execution and no learning exposes you to launching a great product …
Building your project for learning AND execution Read More »