Some notes from Mind the Product 2012

Mind the Product 2012

28 September 2012

1 Marty Cagan - Driving Disruption

How to change the industry…

1.1 Vision & Passion

What are you really trying to do?
2 or 3 years is “vision” It’s not (just) about the money (, money, money…)
Don’t give up - try lots of different ways (but do quit the job if it’s rubbish)
Be sincere and honest

1.2 Know what you can’t know

Business Cases always have guesses about revenue, cost, time, if it is any good - live with it
2 step decision process:
  1. Customer Discovery: Is there demand: Is it worth working on? Is there a market?
  2. Product Discovery: Can we build a solution that will work?
Before it goes on the Roadmap

1.3 Know what your customers can’t know

  • They don’t know what’s possible
  • They don’t know what they want until after they see it
Talk to your customers (a lot). Test your ideas on them

1.4 Product Discovery

This is a KEY COMPETENCY
Find the MVP
At least 2/3 of ideas will never work - not exciting to the customer, too much trouble to implement or build,etc. TRACK KILL RATE? Don’t build and launch to see if it works.
It’ll take 3 or 4 iterations before it works - do this as fast as possible.
Building and launching is the slowest and most expensive way to do this.
Check out: Nordstrom innovation lab video on YouTube - a week of Product Discovery in 15m.
An iteration per day (!)
  • User prototypes (lo-fi and hi-fi)
  • Live data prototype (no scale, performance, internationalisation, etc.)
  • User Tests
    • Could they use it?
    • Would they use it? Why not?

1.5 Dedicated Teams

Not Project Management
  • Cross Functional
  • Co-located: sit next to each other
  • Durable team
Own it!
Results: Not targeted on features to be delivered but on KPIs - MBO

1.6 The Role of Design

Design:
  • Not just look and feel
  • Not just usability
  • Not an afterthought
  • “How it all works” (S. Jobs)

1.7 True Collaboration

Product Management:
  • Deep knowledge of:
    • Customer
    • Trends
    • data
  • Not god - handing down the answer
    • Don’t hand the designer wireframes
  • Lead engineer is often the true innovator - don’t just use them to code
Include a senior developer in Product Discovery

1.8 Product Culture

It’s not (all) about process.
What if there are disagreements?
  • Not endless meetings
  • Not about precedence
  • TEST: data beats opinion

1.9 Embrace Pivots

Bezos: “Stubborn on vision; flexible on detail”
www.svpg.com

2 Tom Chi - Rapid Prototyping X

First Google Glasses prototype in ONE DAY.
Minority Report thing in 1h 45m.
Only a truly working prototype gives you usable information (users are lazy; holding your arms above heart is really tiring; etc.).
“Move at the speed of thought” - think of a thing; make a thing. Maximise the rate of learning.
If each thing has a 5% chance of success. By the time you’ve done x things you increased the chance by…
Don’t guess: learn.
Don’t fail: learn.
Development: narrow and deep (cost effective; accurate).
Research: broad and shallow (fast).
What’s it not going to be is just as important. Pi shaped people (left and right brain disciplines in one person).

3 Tom Hulme - Is Purpose the New Pivot

OpenIDEO
Mistakes that Start Ups Make:
  1. A very boring business plan
  2. Splash page
  3. Pivoting is not progress
Are you moving towards a solution or running away from a problem?

3.1 Four Learnings

3.1.1 Have a purpose

3.1.2 You are What you Measure

  • Avoid vanity metrics like total number of users
  • Which metrics to ignore?
  • Can revenue be ignored!? The right revenues…?
  • Must relate to purpose

3.1.3 Your Product is your vehicle for your purpose

  • No is sometimes a good design decision
    • Amazon: 100ms page delay = 1% loss of sales
  • Design Defaults
    • Desire Paths: can’t force people to do things they don’t want to do
      • Heat map of cursor position
      • What are people searching for?
  • Don’t get Distracted
  • Design A/B
    • Jump straight to result via purpose (research)

3.1.4 Are you building a Movement towards your purpose?

  • Individual’s don’t scale
  • Motivation != Incentive

4 John Earner - What the games industry can teach us about PDM

Founder and CEO of Space Ape

5 Charles Adler - Challenge the Inclination to build Process

5.1 Anatomy of Kickstarter

5.1.1 Trust

  • Build the relationship first
  • Do we have faith in their ability

5.1.2 Process doesn’t unravel massive hair balls

  • Ideas via disorder

5.1.3 What we hold dear

  • Stay small
  • Be Efficient and Effective
  • Curiosity and Insight
  • Our roots as Makers
  • Play and Exploration

5.1.4 Process vs. Methodology

  • We don’t want an assembly line
  • Talking, interviews, beer, analytics
  • Design - Product - Engineering - Community
  • Don’t neglect Service Team (talking and listening)
  • Life is messy - Work should be too
  • Fall back on trust

5.1.5 What does it all mean?

  • Use the process for what it’s good for.
  • Challenge Process and remember it’s about Making

6 Mathew Ogle and Hannah Donovan - The Maltese Product

How do you reproduce online the experience of listening to music with your friends ?
Last.fm
This is my Jam

6.1 Capturing the Experience

Avoid modelling the offline experience too faithfully. Evoke not Duplicate.
Storytelling…
McGuffins:
  • Attract interest
  • Trigger action
  • Fun!
Product McGuffin = a trigger

6.2 This is my Jam - Records with Friends

Think about the real life experience:
  • Outcomes
  • Behaviours
  • Constraints
Analyse the constraints - remove the ones that matter less. Smallest intersection of experience and constraints
What’s left is the McGuffin (Probably - experiment)

7 Tom Loosemore - How to create freedom in existing organisations

7.1 What is GDS?

MLF said: Revolution not Evolution
  • Create Government Digital Service
    • Power
  • Fix Publishing
    • UX
    • Gov.uk
  • Fix Transactions
  • Go wholesale
    • Build APIs

7.2 Key Questions:

7.2.1 What was your Product Vision?

  • What is vision for?
    1. Get your team excited about the same thing
    2. What emotional response do you want from your users?
  • For the Alpha of gov.uk:
    • Get a Government minister to say “I want one of those”
  • Gov.uk now:
    • Simpler, clearer, faster for users
    • Savings and innovation for Government

7.2.2 How do you build the team?

  • Attitude
  • Noisy people (and noisy applications - I’m broken, fix me)
  • Evolve the team, what you need for startup is not the same as for delivery

7.2.3 Design Rules

  • Start with needs
  • Do less
  • Design with data
  • Do the hard work to make it simple
  • …

7.2.4 Methodology

  • Don’t let the process rule you

7.2.5 How do you know what is MVP?

  • Set a deadline and makes it fit????

7.2.6 Any problems developing in the open?

  • No.

7.2.7 Biggest Mistake!?

  • Hubris: You’re not designing for yourself

7.2.8 How do I get the chance to do all this?

  • Don’t JFDI
  • Spot a gap and build an umbrella (to hide under)
  • Show, don’t tell
  • Start small. Run fast. Gather momentum.
  • Introduce a new language.
  • “Feel the Fear. And then do the right thing anyway”.

8 Tom Coates - An Animating Spark

Data and Services.
Individual components coming together to be greater than sum of the parts.
Network of Things.
The Internet Fridge, not
Concept cars aren’t what we need.
Now access to the network is very cheap - cf. Raspberry PI
Tech Commoditisation opens up possibilities.
Anything at £100 could reasonably have network access cf. Kindle.

8.1 Mundanecomp

“Stop being so high-concept”
Deal with Impolite Devices
  • Beeping washing machine
  • Scooba getting stuck
Why not monitor them remotely (and get them to shut up)

8.2 Mujicomp

  • Beautiful and simple
  • And useful

8.3 Fight the Futurist

Why does my fucking fridge need Twitter?
  • Just because it’s attached to the network it doesn’t need a browser or even a screen
  • Fridges last 15 years - computers move a bit faster than that. Match the upgrade cycle of the thing to the tech
  • Shearing Layers…

8.4 Everything the Network touches

Matt Rolandson: “use the network to amplify the core purpose of the thing”.
Principles:
  • It’s very simple to get on to the network
  • It still works when offline (but is better when it is online)
  • The bulk of the intelligence is in the network, not the thing
  • The interface isn’t embedded in its surface - it’s on something that already has one
  • The best enhancements:
    • Ask simple questions - location, ownership, history
    • Give simple commands
    • Receive alerts for key events
    • For the consumer and the manufacturer
  • Make Polite Devices

8.5 Build MAYA - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable

  • Always push the frontier
  • Bring the public with you

9 Panel Discussion - What next for Product?

9.1 How has Product Management changed?

  • Product Management is not Project Management.
  • Product Management is not Product Marketing.

9.2 Can you invent the future in a big company?

  • The future might only be 6-12 months.
  • Could be like a start-up within the company? (But Marty didn’t like this).
  • The Leadership has to care about products.
  • Celebrate the successes of the Product Team - Communicate.

10 Gallery

The Audience Three Product Managers Going Home

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