Should we put Fun on the Roadmap?

Most of you LinkedIn business types probably think it's dumb. I get it. We want efficient, "tight" user experiences and our backlog is too long to even contemplate Fun.

But what if Fun is now an expectation?

Especially when you get 60% of the audience to fill it out...again and again. month after month. year after year.

How do I get that high of a response rate?

What's the purpose of your Customer Advisory Board?

As a product guy, I want my most reflective and thoughtful clients that are aligned to our product vision to participate in the Customer Advisory Board (CAB).

However, most CABs are picked out by the sales, marketing and customer success teams looking to provide visibility and kudos to clients that we need to renew.

During my time in ecommerce, my team made some key adjustments leading up to the Christmas season with the goal of boosting conversion rates. We ran a multivariate test, tweaking elements in 7 critical areas on our most visited page type. Each area experimented with multiple variations, allowing us to test a wide range of possibilities.

Teams are stuck in a "doom loop" of planning.

Every time there's an unpredictable event, leadership asks for more planning in order to avoid another unpredictable event.

Instead of continuing to predict the future (poorly), teams should repurpose longer term planning time for discovery time.

Data analysts provide the eyes and ears for Product Leaders. A few simple tips can maximize this relationship.

Over the years, I've managed and helped grow the career of many analysts and data scientists.

Many folks are familiar with the Build-Measure-Learn loop from the book Lean Startup.

The author, Eric Ries, advocates for creating shorter learning cycles.

You can speed up learning even more by starting with the Learn step. Most of my teams learn without ever writing a line of code.

Many Product teams only listen to users in the beginning of the product development process.

After this initial research, they build their solution but don’t test it as they create it.

This gap in interacting with users (sometimes lasting months) is the Product Discovery Valley of Death.

Is asking for an estimate the first time you talk to an engineer?

This is a sign that you’re engaging an engineer too late in the process.

Bringing an engineer into early conversations helps avoid rework and surprises, enable smarter trade offs, and encourage technology-based improvements and innovation.

Engineering leaders no longer include their engineers in developing the ideas they work on.

Leaders seem content to let the business folks work out the WHAT while engineering does the HOW. But this waterfall model of hand-offs has a dismal track record of innovation.

Instead, build morale and stimulate innovation by sending engineers early and often into the Product Discovery phase where we develop and shape ideas.

Having a product that wins in the market is extremely satisfying. Trying to repeat the success is equally frustrating for many Product Leaders.

Often, Product Leaders succumb to a “success bias.”

Sounds strange but it happens all the time.

Most Product Leaders may not even know this is happening or may have inadvertently created a process where this happens.

Agile Engineering wastes time when you send ideas to the engineers without having user tested them You have the best engineers that recruiter’s fees can find and you’re wasting their time. Untested ideas are the business equivalent of guessing…