It’s not your customers job to know what they want
— Steve Job
Summary
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Keeper of the Vision
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Strong product intuition that adds value to user research & design
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Holistic understanding of user-centered design, e.g. user pain points, prototyping, validation
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Instruments and iterates product based on quantitative and qualitative measures of success
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Executes plans toward desired product outcomes (not simply outputs)
Attributes
1. Keeper of the vision
Articulates why a product needs to exist, e.g. compelling product-market-fit
On vision setting - ability to set a vision that clearly states the who, what, and how of a product. Joel’s approach:
- For (target customer)
- Who (statement of the need or opportunity)
- The (product name) is a (product category)
- That (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)
- Unlike (primary competitive alternative)
- Our product (statement of primary differentiation)
2. Strong product intuition that adds value to user research & design
“Intuition is compressed experience” — Thomas Davenport (Working Knowledge)
Understanding users
- What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack
- The Intuitive and the Unlearnable | by Christina Wodtke | Medium
- https://www.easyagile.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-user-story-maps/
- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics: poster
- Visual Vocabulary for Product Building, Dan Schmidt
- Book Summary: When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement
3. Holistic understanding of user-centered design, e.g. user pain points, prototyping, validation
- Design
- Framework for Innovation: Design Council’s evolved Double Diamond
- The 4-hour design sprint. How we did it, what we learned, and… | by Laura Moldovan | Shopify UX
- Design Thinking: Divergence and Convergence Cycles | by Shubhangi Choudhary
- Design is not a formula, it’s an odyssey: replacing the Double Diamond | by Ryan Ford | UX Collective
4. Instruments and iterates product based on quantitative and qualitative measures of success
- EE204 Business Management for Engineers and Computer Scientists - PMF
- Rahul Vohra Shares Superhuman’s Product Market Fit Framework _ First Round Review.pdf
- How to Pick Winning Product Features _ by Ameet Ranadive _ PM Insights _ Medium.pdf
5. Executes plans toward desired product outcomes (not simply outputs)
Execution
- The Art of the OKR
- Cascading OKRs at scale - Christina Wodtke
- Working Backwards Press Release Template and Example | by Ian McAllister
Frameworks
- Working Backwards | How write-ups help launch successful products like AWS, the Kindle & Prime Video
- Mission command - Wikipedia
- Prioritization - RICE Model, MoAR method and other scoring systems
- Michael Skok’s 4 Steps To Building A Compelling Value Proposition (Blatant, Latent, Aspirational, Critical)
- MoSCoW method - avoid
- Kano model
- GIST: Why you should stop using product roadmaps and try the GIST Framework
Prioritizing the work - check out https://sean.horgan.net/d/_d3H4GIs7zuo/suE4ZLL_lu4YtUbU
Overlap with https://sean.horgan.net/d/_d3H4GIs7zuo/_suxJ5PTi#_luHvwRSS
References
Frameworks
- Mission command - Wikipedia
- Prioritization - RICE Model, MoAR method and other scoring systems
- Michael Skok’s 4 Steps To Building A Compelling Value Proposition (Blatant, Latent, Aspirational, Critical)
- MoSCoW method
- Kano model
- GIST: Why you should stop using product roadmaps and try the GIST Framework