Archive of the PRODUCTHEAD newsletter, a regular newsletter of product management goodness, curated by Jock Busuttil (@jockbu).
» Customers are seeking more value from digital technologies — “liquid experiences”
» Services by nature don’t always fit current organisational structures
» Service design and business analyst roles require a different type of focus and mindset
» Key to becoming a service designer is not finding a new job, but transforming your current job
» “Seamless services” means bringing together people from across professional boundaries
» Product managers must understand the impact of their products on society as a whole
» Now is the time to push for broader product management accountability
» No company, individual or set of activities, yet provides a clear-cut example of ethical best practice
» What we build must not be at the cost of another group’s needs
» Nothing in traditional product training prepares you for making ethical decisions
» Avoid waste by by first researching “shallow” user personas then progressively elaborating as needed
» Product managers can and should conduct user research when demand outstrips the researchers available
» Connect user personas to people’s actual goals for more emotional impact
» Good interviewers listen, not talk
» Keeping your users’ attention means minimising cognitive drain
» Customer onboarding is a continuous process
» Video games use contextual nudges to teach players how the game works
» A new customer success team builds trust by prioritising people, then process
» Use sensitivity analysis to identify the make-or-break metrics for your business
» Your analytics approach needs to change over time to keep up with your evolving product
» Blindly copying best practices results in an imperfect copy
» Analytics tools don’t do the thinking for you
» A milkshake is really just a way to pass the time and stave off hunger on a long drive
» Users struggling to use your product to complete their tasks have unmet needs
» Christensen emphasises the higher order goal, Ulwick the task at hand
» Jobs To Be Done is often misunderstood, making it difficult for some to begin applying it
» Amazon warehouses are gradually moving towards full robotic automation
» Greater automation creates new types of work, but not necessarily for people
» Smart contracts are already automating financial transactions, but can be susceptible to coding flaws
» Increased use of machine learning in insurance places greater burden on regulators to ensure fairness
» Emotional intelligence is more important than technical skills
» Hire people who will increase your rate of learning
» A head of product needs prior experience as a product manager
» Good candidates have initiative and passion to pursue their opinions
» “Requirements” is another way of saying “just shut up and build it”
» A user story is deliberately sparse on detail to provoke a team conversation about the user’s goal
» We often incorrectly assume everyone does something the same way
» The mental model to describe epics, user stories and tasks can be clarified with visual artefacts
» Don’t ignore technical debt
» Devote time for removing some debt in every sprint
» Debt can be a prudent choice in some situations
» It’s harder to read code than write it — so resist the temptation to start the code base again from scratch