Product management Applied - Building the right thing
What is building the right thing?
Be a focus facilitator
The product manager is not the only one who should come up with all the ideas, but actually your main role as a product manager should be to facilitate problem solving through ideation.... on the right problem areas.... so let’s take a deeper look at how we can identify the right problem areas.
Building the right thing is not building what your stakeholders want.
Building the right thing is the ultimate goal of the product manager.... however in practice it is not easy and there are plenty of philosophies and ways of managing your thoughts which can help you to build the right thing. In this video I will go over some of the most successful frameworks in use today and talk about some of the practices I use myself.
So what is building the right thing? Well in a company where you own the product it is not building what your stakeholders say they want.
From the perspective of a disempowered product team building the right thing would be building exactly what your stakeholders want you to build and in a way where the end result does not have defects. This in itself is not how you build the right product however. This may build a product which solves the problems your stakeholders have but taking the phrase literally and skipping proper market fit, impact and discovery processes can lead you down a narrow sighted path, causing bloated products with features that do not create impact.
So in short, yes, build things against the specifications that you and your team decided on... but don’t skip out on making sure your covering your audience in an impactful and meaningful way... so how do you make sure your really building the right thing?
What product discovery really means
So what does product discovery really mean.
in simple terms it is understanding your customers needs to make sure you are building the must haves not the should haves.
If you imagine discovery on a double diamond, you can see discovery methods you can use all the way until delivery to reduce risks in value, feasibility, usability and business and technical viability.
You can read all about these 5 risk types we are reducing in Marty cagans book inspired.
I could dive in to what discovery methods you could choose such as user surveys, quantitive deep diving, user interviewing, smoke tests, guerilla testing, coffee Shop testing, AB testing.... but I’ll save that for other videos.
Instead lets talk about mistakes made with product discovery
Mistake number 1: don’t stop discovery once you release a new feature.
Mistake number 2: don’t delay product delivery if you have strong enough evidence that you can deliver value.
Mistake number 3: not assessing or sourcing research with or from your stakeholders enough.
Mistake number 4: output explicit time based roadmaps lock you in to solutions which are usually suboptimal because it skips crucial validation and discovery cycles. Use theme based roadmaps which focus on outcome to avoid locking yourself in to long term promises of output.
Embrace uncertainty so that you can properly execute discovery and validation cycles.
Conclusion
So that concludes my learning on how to build the right thing:
1) don’t skip prioritization and discovery when deciding what to build And try not to let stakeholders skip the queue. If you let stakeholders skip the queue too often you are going to lose trust in your ability to build the right thing and it will happen even more.
2) make sure your stakeholders are involved in your discovery process
3) be the one to facilitate focus for all product discovery all the way from initial quantitive or qualitative indicators right up until delivery.
4) discovery is possible anywhere until delivery. Keep it happening and don’t treat product discovery like a waterfall process.
5) different lenses means different discoveries ... assess and source research with and from your stakeholders.
6) Don't delay product delivery if you are already certain enough that you can ship value.
7) If you have to create roadmaps for your stakeholders, don’t let it be the cause of blocking you from proper discovery؛ create theme based outcome focused roadmaps not time based output focused roadmaps.
I hope my tips help you and your team in your day to day adventures of building the right things and let me know in the comments your own experiences!