Teresa Torres

You Already Know To Begin With The End In Mind. But Do You?

“It sounds like you need to define what success looks like.” This was such a simple statement. And yet, it had a profound impact on me. I was in my early days at Affinity Circles, leading our product team, and struggling with too many competing priorities. I was wasting time

Practice Defining Your MVP

Suppose you are building eVite. Or Facebook Events. Or whatever your favorite event site is. And you need to define your MVP. How would you think about it? Some of you might already be jumping right in. You are thinking you’ll need: * a basic event listing * the ability to

How You Build Matters. Finding Your MVP.

The MVP. The minimum viable product. The most misunderstood concept in the world of Lean startups. And one of the most critical to get right. Why Time To Build Doesn’t Matter In this post about prioritizing, I argue that time to build shouldn’t be taken into consideration when

The Simplest (and Most Important) Question You Face as a Product Leader

What should you build next? This is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a product manager. If you work in an Agile environment, you’ll make it sprint after sprint. Much of your success will depend on these decisions. Don’t Do What Most People Do

Why Testing Everything Doesn't Work

Please stop throwing spaghetti at the wall. It doesn’t work. I know you can launch a landing page in five minutes. I know it’s easy to toss up a quick A/B test. And I know how easy it is to chat with the 3 people sitting next

How We Used Kindling at AfterCollege to Engage Everyone in Idea Generation

It’s easy to talk about idea management. It’s much harder to do it in practice. Including everyone in idea generation in a way that is productive takes effort. Collecting feedback on each idea can be tedious. But we know involving everyone in idea evaluation leads to better outcomes.

How To Turn Bad Ideas Into Good Ideas

What’s a good idea look like? Do you think you’ll recognize it when you see it? Are you sure? Most good ideas start out as bad ideas. They are infeasible. They look like they should be on your “never do” list. The engineers will tell you they are

That's Not Brainstorming

Thursday’s post, Stop Brainstorming and Generate Better Ideas, got quite the reaction, particularly on Twitter. I’m not surprised. I also reacted strongly when I first learned about the research against brainstorming. Rather than moving on to idea evaluation, I want to first respond to the most common objections.

Stop Brainstorming and Generate Better Ideas

On many teams, either a founder decides what to build or the product team does. This makes sense. In early stage companies, founders are often the product leader. The product leader should decide what should be built. Or should they? We often use the metaphor, the product leader as CEO

Are You Getting Your Growth Goals Right?

In Monday’s post, we outlined our success funnel, identified our points of leverage, and explored a few ways you can set and hit aggressive goals. Some of you, the lucky ones, might be asking yourself, what do you do when your success funnel is converting well? What types of

How to Set Goals That Drive Product Success

Goal setting is hard. And yet, so important. It’s one of the 8 critical decisions involved in building great products. If you get it right, you and your team can charge hard at the goal, ignoring everything else, to good result. If you get it wrong and you do

Improve These 8 Decisions and Build Great Products Faster

What color should this button be? We can only do x and y, but not z, before the deadline. Can we live with that? Sales requested a, b, and c. Which should we do? The CEO had a new idea and asked if it’s worth pursuing. As product builders,

The Habit of Feeling Super Human

It’s 3 weeks into the new year, how are your resolutions looking? Have you already fallen off the wagon? Are you starting to slip? Or are you still going strong? Do you have confidence you’ll keep it up all year? Most people don’t keep their New Year’

Why Most Product Teams Don't Define a Clear Vision

It wouldn’t surprise me if you read the last two posts (here and here) and thought this seems obvious. Of course, you should define a strong vision. Every company should have a clearly defined vision, mission, core values, and so on. Every company should know who they are and

What a Clear Product Vision Looks Like

On Thursday, we outlined the 9 components of a clear vision. Let’s put it into action and look at an example. A couple of years ago, I worked on a side project called GratiGrams. I had, and still have, a strong vision for it. Because it’s a personal

What You Should Clarify and Communicate as a Product Leader

On Monday, I outlined what I think are the three pillars of building great products: a clear vision, sound decision making, and developing the right team. Today, I want to take a closer look at what I mean by a clear vision. It’s easy for us to go about

The Three Pillars of Building Great Products

Do you know what it takes to build great products? Are you so confident in your approach that you know that your product will be a success? I’m not. I’m often filled with doubt. Even when things are going well, I wake up at night worried that it’

My Favorite Tools of the Trade

I used to be a productivity nerd. Until I realized that I was spending more time playing around with systems than I did actually doing work. This is pretty common. I’ve outgrown that stage. But I still love to hear about how other people work. And i’m always

A Hat Tip to Some Great Bloggers

Last year, Daniel Pink shared his favorite books, blogs, and resources in a New Year’s Day webinar. It was so good, I still remember most of the things he shared. I’m stealing the idea. Today, I’ll share some of my favorite blogs. And on Thursday, I’ll

My Top Reads from 2013

I try to read a book a week and I was right on target reading 50 books in 2013. These were the best of the crop. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others If you have an aversion to sales, don’t think of a used-car salesman.

The Best of Product Talk in 2013

2013 was a great year for Product Talk. I published 52 posts (including this one), I met a number of readers at meet ups, the Startup Product Summit, and at ProductCampSF, and I met so many more of you virtually through office hours and email. I started this blog to

How To Develop Your Active Listening Skills

Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with someone about what was said? Perhaps you and one of your coworkers watched a user interview and you walked away with two different interpretations. Why does this happen? We’ve already been introduced to the ladder of inference when we discussed finding common

Wow, When Something Resonates ...

"Startups don’t die when they run out of money, they die when their founders let go. I ultimately stepped away from Sonar when I came to the conclusion that, despite all that we had invested, everyone stood a better chance starting anew. It’s difficult to accept, but

Do You Have What It Takes To Work On A Remote Team?

This post was written for Startup Edition in response to the question: How do you effectively work with remote teams? If you aren't already, it's only a matter of time before you'll be asked to consider working with a remote team. For most startups,

A Small Favor: Please Take The 2014 Product Talk Survey

Product Talk just passed it's second anniversary. As we prepare for 2014, I want to make sure that Product Talk continues to serve its audience. I'd love your help. Please take 5 minutes to fill out a quick survey. I truly appreciate it. Thanks, Teresa