Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group)

by Marty Cagan

Sentiment (NPS, customer satisfaction, surveys)

However, as powerful as the role of data is for us, the most important thing to keep in mind about analytics is that the data will shine a light on what is happening, but it won't explain why.

Customer Success Some tech companies have what's referred to as a high‐touch model of helping their customers, and some have a low‐touch model. You need to understand what your company's customer success strategy is, and you need to ensure that your products are aligned with that strategy.

Necessity being the mother of invention, this is where Netflix's queue, ratings system, and recommendation engine all came from. Those were the technology‐powered innovations that enabled the new, much more desirable business model.

A discovery sprint is a one‐week time box of product discovery work, designed to tackle a substantial problem or risk your product team is facing.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz.

Book

The authors lay out a five‐day week that starts with framing the problem by mapping the problem space, picking the problem to be solved and the target customer, and then progresses into pursuing several different approaches to the solution.

The team next narrows down and fleshes out the different potential solutions, then creates a high‐fidelity user prototype—finally, putting that prototype in front of act...

Pilot teams allow the roll out of change to a limited part of the organization before implementing it more broadly.

Some people in your organization love change, some want to see someone else use it successfully first, some need more time to digest changes, and a few hate change and will only change if they're forced to do it.

The goal is that over time, the organization moves its focus from specific features launching on specific dates to business results.

Managing Stakeholders For many product managers, managing stakeholders is probably the least favorite part of their job.

One practical test of whether a person is considered a stakeholder is whether or not they have veto power, or can otherwise prevent your work from launching.

Success in terms of stakeholder management means that your stakeholders respect you and your contribution.

the key technique is to spend one‐on‐one time with the key stakeholders. Sit down with them and listen. Explain that the better you understand their constraints, the better your solutions will be. Ask lots of questions. Be open and transparent.

There is little question that most organizations become worse in their ability to rapidly deliver consistent innovation as they grow, yet most people attribute this to staff quality, process, and communication issues of scale.

have a very strong and very intentional product culture, and to have that culture very well established so that new hires know they're joining a different type of company that takes pride in how they work and in using best practices.

make this explicit in the interview and onboarding process.

A technique I love for helping with this is for the head of product, at a company all‐hands or similar meeting every week or two, to take 15 to 30 minutes to highlight what has been learned in product discovery across the various product teams.

It is also important culturally that the product organization be transparent and generous in what they learn and how they work.

Good teams have a compelling product vision that they pursue with a missionary‐like passion. Bad teams are mercenaries.

Good teams get their inspiration and product ideas from their vision and objectives, from observing customers' struggle, from analyzing the data customers generate from using their product, and from constantly seeking to apply new technology to solve real problems.

Good teams understand who each of their key stakeholders are, they understand the constraints that these stakeholders operate in, and they are committed to inventing solutions that work not just for users and customers, but also work within the constraints of the business. Bad teams gather requirements from stakeholders. Good teams are skilled in the many techniques to rapidly try out product ideas to determine which ones are truly worth building. Bad teams hold meetings to generate prioritized roadmaps.

Good teams love to have brainstorming discussions with smart thought leaders ...

Good teams have product, design, and engineering sit side by side, and they embrace the give and take between the functionality, the user experience, and the enabling technology.

Good teams are constantly trying out new ideas to innovate, but doing so in ways that protect the revenue and protect the brand.

Good teams obsess over their reference customers. Bad teams obsess over their competitors.

Customer‐centric culture. As Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon says, “Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.”

Compelling product vision. By the time many companies reach scale, their original product vision is now largely realized, and the team is struggling to understand what's next.

Focused product strategy. One of the surest paths to product failure is to try to please everyone at once.

the best technology‐product companies know that the riskiest strategy of all is to stop taking risks.

empowerment means the teams are able to tackle and solve the business problems they've been assigned in the best way they see fit.

in a product‐mind set organization, the product teams exist to serve the company's customers in ways that meet the needs of the business.

Time to innovate. At scale, it's very possible that your product teams are entirely consumed just doing what we call keep the lights on activities.

Technical debt. Often, the architecture does not facilitate or enable the rapid evolution of the product.

Changing priorities. Realize that rapidly shifting priorities cause significant churn and substantially reduces the total throughput and morale.

A consensus culture. Many organizations strive for consensus. While this typically comes from good intentions, what this means in practice is decisions are very hard to make and everything slows to a crawl.

I think of product culture along two dimensions. The first dimension is whether the company can consistently innovate to come up with valuable solutions for their customers. This is what product discovery is all about. The second dimension is execution. It doesn't matter how great the ideas are if you can't get a productized, shippable version delivered to your customers.

strong innovation culture? Culture of experimentation—teams know they can run tests; some will succeed and many will fail, and this is acceptable and understood. Culture of open minds—teams know that good ideas can come from anywhere and aren't always obvious at the outset. Culture of empowerment—individuals and teams feel empowered to be able to try out an idea. Culture of technology—teams realize that true innovation can be inspired by new technology and analysis of data, as well as by customers. Culture of business‐ and customer‐savvy teams—teams, including developers, have a deep understanding of the business needs and constraints, and understanding of (and access to) the users and customers. Culture of skill‐set and staff diversity—teams appreciate that different skills and backgrounds contribute to innovative solutions—especially engineering, design, and product. Culture of discovery techniques—the mechanisms are in place for ideas to be tested out quickly and safely (protecting brand, revenue, customers, and colleagues). What