I Manage Products blog
& PRODUCTHEAD newsletter

» Take a systematic approach to evaluating multiple solutions to the same opportunity » ‘Assumption’ is just another word for ‘things we believe’ » When there are many opportunities in contention, assess whether it’s worth solving the problem » We tend to come up with solutions before defining the problem they solve

AI is: » accelerating the design of novel proteins, enabling a new wave of vaccines and drugs » predicting extreme weather events, helping to protect residents » listening to the rainforest and sends real-time alerts for chainsaws, trucks, cars and signs of incursion » monitoring the world’s oceans for illegal fishing activity

» To reduce coordination cost, partition the work by time or space » Behavioural design considers customers’ levels of mental energy, cognitive biases, and their existing patterns » Successful organisations reinforce psychological safety in different ways » Adding more people to a team makes communication a more significant overhead

» To reduce coordination cost, partition the work by time or space » Behavioural design considers customers’ levels of mental energy, cognitive biases, and their existing patterns » Successful organisations reinforce psychological safety in different ways » Adding more people to a team makes communication a more significant overhead

» Decisions should be the result of rational and deliberate reasoning, but not all are perfectly rational » Almost every decision has associated downsides or compromises » Avoid trying to please people or to allow individuals to dominate the decision-making process » It’s easy to conflate transparency on the decision-making process, with transparency on the actual decisions

The most successful games and products share a common attribute: they help the user become more skilled throughout their journey. Customer onboarding is a continual process.

» The best moment to teach a user to use a new feature is when it is valuable for them » Uncompleted tasks stick in a person’s memory, completed tasks are more easily forgotten » Provide a safe, controlled environment to help users experiment and learn a new skill

» Developers and managers often have conflicting views of what constitutes value in software » Software engineers should ideally understand both what they are building and why » Unforeseen edge cases can cause headaches at roll-out, but provide valuable lessons

» When delivering difficult news at work, you are not there to seek sympathy » Tie business impact to deprioritised work to highlight the problem to your CEO without sounding whiny » An organisation’s emotional culture governs which emotions people express and suppress at work » Many organisation equate “fixing” to basically “patching holes in the slowly sinking boat”

» Desire paths spring up as users’ needs and goals change » The effort paradox: the effort of forming a new path versus the desire to take the path of least resistance » In digital products we use analytical tools to help us observe desire paths » When a new desire path emerges, question your old assumptions — user behaviour is changing

“Hi Jock, I’m currently applying for loads of product manager jobs. I’ve received an offer from a sales-led company where the Product team reports in to Sales. Should I take the job?”

» Thematic analysis identifies the main themes emerging from qualitative data, such as interview transcripts » It can be a great activity to do with your team for establishing empathy with the users and their context » Good research means being intentional, conscientious, and ethical at every step