Product Discovery
- Continuous Product Discovery: re: Marty Cagan: Assess the probability of success of a product before committing to it. Then they begin solution design to answer 4 key questions:
- Is it valuable to the customer? (evidence required)
- Is it viable for the business— can sales sell it, can the marketplace bear it, is it compliant with the law?
- Is it usable? (evidence required)
- Is it feasible— can engineering build it?
- Jobs to Be Done Framework: people don’t want a quarter inch drill they want a quarter inch hole. Starting at first principles helps clarify user needs and can uncover non-obvious solutions.
Planning & Prioritization
Planning and prioritization are different at every company. And even companies that employ the same methods like OKRs can be wildly different. At the highest level, this usually take shape as a table of problems and proposed solutions, some sizing in potential impact (return) vs level of efforts (investment), and usually some articulation of the strategic levers the solution targets.
Planning: Continuous Roadmapping Framework
https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-2152-continuous-roadmapping?s=r
- 8 Active Bets
- 1 or 2 in In Progress status.
- 1 in Up Next status
- Initially i discovery and research phase, finalizing in Spec and Experiment design.
- 5 or 6 in 'Ideas/Options'
- Roughly every six weeks we start a new cycle of product work. Each six week work cycle contains two types of projects:
- Big Batch: Big Batch projects are big features or stuff that’s going to take six weeks to complete. We typically take on one or two Big Batch projects in a six week cycle.
- Small Batch: Small Batch projects are smaller things: tweaks, minor adjustments, and easy adds that should take anywhere from a day to two weeks to complete. We typically take on between four and eight Small Batch projects in a six week cycle.
Prioritization: 3 Buckets Framework
- 3 Buckets: Metric Movers, Customer Requests, Delight.
- Rather than a standard 'long list of feature' roadmaps, can we work in a 6 week Continuous Discovery/Continuous Roadmapping model, pieces together Cagan, Basecamp and Cutler.