Inspired #

Cagan, Marty. INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

Notes #

Contributions of PM

• Know customer. Qualitative and quantitative
• Know data: spend time in metrics each day
• Know business: how product fits in business. Stakeholders. Constraints.
• Deep knowledge of market and industry
  • Why switch from competitor
  • How fits into ecosystem
  • Where is industry going

Takes 2-3 months of dedicated work to get a PM up to speed. With access to the right people.

Persistent

• Pushing companies outside their comfort zone
• Compelling evidence
• Constant communication
• Building bridges across functions

Prep for role (pg 47)

• Become expert in users. Share very openly good and bad
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders. 1) understand constraints & 2) you will bring solutions within those constraints
• Become expert in industry, share widely
• Build relationship with product team

Roadmaps lead to failure because so many product ideas aren’t wanted by customers. But roadmaps have 2 values:

1. Working on highest priority first
2. Planning around dates for sales/marketing

Alternative to roadmap must have these things. To do so: (pg 116)

1. Product vision or strategy
2. Business objectives

Vision is not a spec, it is a purpsuasive piece. Product strategy is steps to get there. (pg 123)

Product principles. What do you believe, across multiple products. (pg 135)

MBO == OKR (pg 137)

• Don’t tell people how to do, tell them what to do
• Measure results, not features

Tips for selling the dream (pg 151)

1. Prototype
2. Show the pain. Bring eng to cust visit
3. Share the vision
4. Share learnings generously
5. Share credit
6. Learn to give great demo
7. Do your homework
8. Be genuinely excited
9. Learn to show enthusiasm
10. Spend time with your team

Purpose of product discovery (pg 165)

• Will the customers but this? Value risk
• Can users figure it out? Usability risk
• Can we build it? Feasibility risk
• Does this work for the business? Business viability risk

An iteration in discovery should be an order of magnitude faster than delivery. High performance teams to 10-20 per week. (pg 169)

Customer letter, instead of press release (pg 184)

Startup canvas as way to get new PM up to speed. (pg 188)

Minimum 2-3 hours of customer interviews per week. Bring PM, designer, eng (pg 211)

30 min with each stakeholder per week to keep them updated and answer any questions. Stakeholders are people who can veto, not just people with opinions. (pg 300)

Quotes #

• “Even with the best of intentions, product roadmaps typically lead to very poor business results. … The first inconvenient truth is that at least half of our product ideas are just not going to work.”
• “Note also that the vision is not in any sense a spec. It’s mainly a persuasive piece that might be in the form of a storyboard, a narrative such as a white paper, or a special type of prototype referred to as a visiontype. Its primary purpose is to communicate this vision and inspire the teams (and stakeholders, investors, partners—and, in many cases, prospective customers) to want to help make this vision a reality.”
• “The HP Way, I was introduced to a business objective–based system known as MBO—management by objectives. Dave Packard claimed: “No [tool] has contributed more to Hewlett‐Packard’s success. [MBO] is the antithesis of management by control.” The MBO system was refined and improved at several companies over the years, most notably by the legendary Andy Grove at Intel. Today, the primary business objective management system we use is known as the OKR system—objectives and key results.”
• “Moreover, as an organization scales, OKRs become an increasingly necessary tool for ensuring that each product team understands how they are contributing to the greater whole, coordinating work across teams, and avoiding duplicate work.”
• “My favorite is to bring three people to these interviews: the product manager, the product designer, and one of the engineers from the team”

Page numbers above as shown in Kindle Oasis