Product

Goals must be measurable or have quantifiable targets. Maybe it’s shipping a certain number of products or hitting a release schedule... we have to be able to track and measure the goals.

1. Definitions

1. Product-market fit is how much product satisfies strong market demand, i.e., target customers truly need and want the product.
2. First Round Capital calls product-market fit "a state of widespread demand for a product that satisfies a critical need and crucially can be delivered repeatably and efficiently to each customer".
3. A North Star Metric is a single, primary metric that best captures the core value that a product delivers to customers.
4. A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product development strategy used to quickly get a basic version of a product into the market for initial testing and validation from real users.
5. XY Problem - often in customer service - is where someone seeks help for a solution (X) they have chosen as a way to solve a different problem (Y). Helping with X won't help solve actual problem if it's not a good approach in the first place.
6. Project management is plan-driven (timelines, people tasked, execution plans), product management is user-driven (user adoption, customer satisfaction, business impact).

2. Goals

1. Make products that solve real problems for users
2. If users keep asking why do I need this product and how do I use this, you've got a problem.
3. A product is something that's useful to users, customers. Project management is a constituent, not its whole.
4. Customer/user feedback makes its way back to change the product.
5. Have a go-to market plan - public sector products should not get a free pass.
6. If a product solves a real problem, people will want to join in, no matter how "bad" it seems to be (see: Twitch).

3. Questions

1. Who is the target customer?
2. What problem does your product solve?
3. How does your product solve this problem?
4. What are the key features and benefits of your product?
5. What is the product vision?
6. What is a minimum viable product?
7. Do you see product-market fit for your product?
8. What is the market size for your product?
9. Who are your competitors, and how is your product different?
10. What is your go-to market plan?
11. What is the development/iteration timeline for your product?
12. How will you measure the success of your product?
13. Are you replacing/refactoring for the sake of it? (common when trying to rewrite existing/legacy services in latest framework)
14. What were the surprises you had while coming up with this plan/prototype/product?

4. Dealbreakers

1. Product is a suboptimal solution (read: XY problem)
2. Product solves only a small part of the problem or doesn't solve any real problem at all.
3. Product is managed as a project, with paper requirements and delivery timelines overriding questions on product value.
4. Product has no viable market, no users, no product-market fit.
5. Users don't like the product, don't use the product, but are forced to use it because of mandates or management pressure.
6. Market has (new) alternatives, we either don't know or we hid our heads in the sand (insisting that ours is better).
7. Existing products that have no traction, users keeps getting life support with no end in sight.
8. X product has Y% of weekly active users, never mind that these are captive users who are forced to use the platform.
9. If user anecdotes are contradicting your data (that everything's alright), you might be measuring the wrong thing.
10. Are the gains marginal? We spend 10mil to cut one process by 2 days but overall process still takes 5 months because of other manual processes.
11. Everything's a native app, no matter if all you do is provide info (i.e. a static url or webapp is more fitting).

5. Suggestions

1. Do user research, market research, talk to users.
2. Slash and revamp business processes in support of product, not the other way round.
3. Use OKRs in your product planning and tracking.
4. A product is not a project, don't manage it like one.