adrian > adrian's Quotes

“The first truth is that at least half of our ideas are just not going to work. There are many reasons for an idea to not work out. The most common is that customers just aren't as excited about this idea as we are. So, they choose not to use it. Sometimes they want to use it and they try it out, but the product is so complicated that it's simply more trouble than it's worth, so users again choose not to use it. Sometimes the issue is that customers would love it, but it turns out to be much more involved to build than we thought, and we decide we simply can't afford the time and money required to deliver it. So, I promise you that at least half the ideas on your roadmap are not going to deliver what you hope. (By the way, the really good teams assume that at least three quarters of the ideas won't perform like they hope.)”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“An even bigger issue is what comes next, which is when companies get really excited about their product roadmaps. I've seen countless roadmaps over the years, and the vast majority of them are essentially prioritized lists of features and projects. Marketing needs this feature for a campaign. Sales needs this feature for a new customer. Someone wants a PayPal integration. You get the idea.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Risks are tackled up front, rather than at the end. In modern teams, we tackle these risks prior to deciding to build anything. These risks include value risk (whether customers will buy it), usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it), feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have), and business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business—sales, marketing, finance, legal, etc.).”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Finally, it's all about solving problems, not implementing features. Conventional product roadmaps are all about output. Strong teams know it's not only about implementing a solution. They must ensure that solution solves the underlying problem. It's about business results.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“The purpose of product discovery is to quickly separate the good ideas from the bad. The output of product discovery is a validated product backlog. Specifically, this means getting answers to four critical questions: Will the user buy this (or choose to use it)? Can the user figure out how to use this? Can our engineers build this? Can our stakeholders support this?”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Good product designers think about the customer's journey over time as they interact with the product and with the company as a whole. Depending on the product, the list of touch points could be very long, considering questions as: How will customers first learn about the product? How will we onboard a first‐time user and (perhaps gradually) reveal new functionality? How might users interact at different times during their day? What other things are competing for the user's attention? How might things be different for a one‐month‐old customer versus a one‐year‐old customer? How will we motivate a user to a higher level of commitment to the product? How will we create moments of gratification? How will a user share his experience with others? How will customers receive an offline service? What is the perceived responsiveness of the product?”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“We must validate our ideas on real users and customers. One of the most common traps in product is to believe that we can anticipate our customer's actual response to our products. We might be basing that on actual customer research or on our own experiences, but in any case, we know today that we must validate our actual ideas on real users and customers. We need to do this before we spend the time and expense to build an actual product, and not after.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“The purpose of product discovery is to address these critical risks: Will the customer buy this, or choose to use it? (Value risk) Can the user figure out how to use it? (Usability risk) Can we build it? (Feasibility risk) Does this solution work for our business? (Business viability risk)”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“I believe the major risk facing most efforts is value risk. On a startup canvas, this shows up under solution risk—discovering a compelling solution to customers. A solution that your customers will choose to buy and use.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“We think of four types of questions we're trying to answer during discovery: Will the user or customer choose to use or buy this? (Value) Can the user figure out how to use this? (Usability) Can we build this? (Feasibility) Is this solution viable for our business? (Business viability)”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Before you jump in, we want to take the opportunity to learn how they think about this problem today. If you remember the key questions from the Customer Interview Technique, we want to learn whether the user or customer really has the problems we think they have, and how they solve those problems today, and what it would take for them to switch.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Testing Demand Sometimes it's unclear if there's demand for what we want to build. In other words, if we could come up with an amazing solution to this problem, do customers even care about this problem? Enough to buy a new product and switch to it? This concept of demand testing applies to entire products, down to a specific feature on an existing product. We can't just assume there's demand, although often the demand is well established because most of the time our products are entering an existing market with demonstrated and measurable demand. The real challenge in that situation is whether we can come up with a demonstrably better solution in terms of value than the alternatives.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“The problem I just described can happen at the product level, such as an all‐new product from a startup, or at the feature level. The feature example is depressingly common. Every day, new features get deployed that don't get used. And, this case is even easier to prevent.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“One of the biggest possible wastes of time and effort, and the reason for countless failed startups, is when a team designs and builds a product, yet, when they finally release the product, they find that people won't buy it.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“When we talk about validating feasibility, the engineers are really trying to answer several related questions: Do we know how to build this? Do we have the skills on the team to build this? Do we have enough time to build this? Do we need any architectural changes to build this? Do we have on hand all the components we need to build this? Do we understand the dependencies involved in building this? Will the performance be acceptable? Will it scale to the levels we need? Do we have the infrastructure necessary to test and run this? Can we afford the cost to provision this?”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“The goal is that over time, the organization moves its focus from specific features launching on specific dates to business results.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“It is also important culturally that the product organization be transparent and generous in what they learn and how they work. It helps the broader organization to understand that the product organization is not there “to serve the business” but, rather, to solve problems for our customers in ways that work for our business.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“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. Bad teams gather requirements from sales and customers.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“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.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“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 from across the company. Bad teams get offended when someone outside their team dares to suggest they do something. 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. Bad teams sit in their respective silos, and ask that others make requests for their services in the form of documents and scheduling meetings. Good teams are constantly trying out new ideas to innovate, but doing so in ways that protect the revenue and protect the brand. Bad teams are still waiting for permission to run a test. Good teams insist they have the skill sets on their team, such as strong product design, necessary to create winning products. Bad teams don't even know what product designers are. Good teams ensure that their engineers have time to try out the prototypes in discovery every day so that they can contribute their thoughts on how to make the product”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“Good teams engage directly with end users and customers every week, to better understand their customers, and to see the customer's response to their latest ideas. Bad teams think they are the customer. Good teams know that many of their favorite ideas won't end up working for customers, and even the ones that could will need several iterations to get to the point where they provide the desired outcome. Bad teams just build what's on the roadmap, and are satisfied with meeting dates and ensuring quality. Good teams understand the need for speed and how rapid iteration is the key to innovation, and they understand this speed comes from the right techniques and not forced labor. Bad teams complain they are slow because their colleagues are not working hard enough. Good teams make high‐integrity commitments after they've evaluated the request and ensured they have a viable solution that will work for the customer and the business. Bad teams complain about being a sales‐driven company. Good teams instrument their work so they can immediately understand how their product is being used and make adjustments based on the data. Bad teams consider analytics and reporting a nice to have.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

“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.”
― Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love