Archive of the PRODUCTHEAD newsletter, a regular newsletter of product management goodness, curated by Jock Busuttil (@jockbu).
» A common language about research is vital for building a team’s capability
» Customers are only reliable sources about their own experiences
» The way we think about product is determined by the language we use
» Focus helps to reduce cognitive load without losing sight of the underlying complexity — it is different to simplifying
» The challenge of simplifying a complex legal process was to find simpler language that didn’t sacrifice essential points of law
» Work continues after the project ends — plan for the ongoing support of your product
» A support team deals with user queries, incidents and ongoing improvement of the product
» Great user support is an expectation, not a nice-to-have
» Feedback from user support can identify areas of product improvement
» Treating symptoms may provide short-term relief but does not alter the status quo
» Root cause analysis helps us to systematically prevent future issues or to repeat successes
» Impact maps help to connect what we choose to build and why we choose to build it
» In case you missed it: recap of the communication toolkit
» To earn trust you need people to know what you’ve achieved
» Weeknotes are a way to work in the open, reflect and attain a sense of achievement
» Being trusted makes it easier for you to carve out the space your team needs to succeed
» Celsys are going to start charging for software updates to their popular Clip Studio Paint product
» The way Celsys communicated this to their users caused outrage — some of which was justified
» Fog Creek found themselves trying to monetise their viral product Trello, which it had promised would be free forever
» Fog Creek had first mover advantage on an easily copied product, which it exploited by a timely sale to Atlassian
» In solving their own internal scaling problem, Amazon inadvertently created the building blocks for the AWS platform
» Stripe’s founders didn’t shy away from tackling an unattractively difficult problem
» Platforms connect different sides of a market, even if they have dramatically different needs and capabilities
» Twilio’s founder prioritised the developers who’d implement his API, not the managers who’d pay for it
» Every other team is allowed to be uncertain about the future — so should product
» There are different types of question for strategy, opportunities and interventions
» Avoid investments that are neither defense nor offense
» What people say and how they really feel can often vary
» Your users must value your product more than it would cost them to switch
» An end-of-life policy sets out the process you will use to retire products for customers
» Think about your users and customers’ technical and economic issues first
» Retiring a product gracefully means making a plan
