I love that A/B testing has become so popular. It’s an important tool in our toolbox. But it frustrates me that we use it so poorly. Most teams make one of the following two mistakes: They either gate releases with an A/B test trying to understand whether or not the feature had the intended impact […]
Product Managers, Level Up Your Problem-Solving Skills
I’ve never met a product manager who doesn’t want to get better at what they do. The challenge is not in the desire, but in putting that desire into action. Product management isn’t a well-defined function. It’s changed rapidly over the past two decades. Most of us have had to learn on the fly, doing […]
The Dos and Don’ts of Hypothesis Testing
I see many product managers struggling with how to design and run good product experiments. It’s hard to know what to test and for how long. Few of us are trained to think like scientists. The tools are hard to use. We often overgeneralize our conclusions. It’s great that experimentation is becoming more common practice, […]
Let’s Talk Innovation: A Conversation with Tim Meaney and Teresa Torres
In April I visited Tim Meaney and the rest of the Kindling team. For long-time Product Talk readers, you already know that I’m a big fan of idea management software and of Kindling specifically. (See related posts below.) While I have met Tim several times on his recent visits to San Francisco, I had not […]
Product Managers Don’t Own the Problem (And Designers Don’t Own the Solution)
Imagine a product team discussing new commenting functionality on their company blog. “We should let people comment anonymously.” “That will only attract trolls. We should require real names.” “We should require unique names, but allow pseudonyms.” You won’t find a shortage of debate on this topic across the Internet. But there is no right answer. […]
Why You Can (And Should) Experiment When Building Enterprise Products
Every time I speak about hypothesis testing, I get a series of questions about how to run experiments from people working on enterprise products. The assumption behind these questions is that hypothesis testing only works with consumer Internet products. And the assumption behind that belief is that the only way to experiment is to run […]
Run Experiments Before You Write Code
The Lean Startup has a flaw. It’s a simple one. It advocates the feedback loop: Build -> Measure -> Learn. I agree wholeheartedly with this loop. The flaw is in where you should start. I prefer: Learn -> Build -> Measure – Tweet This It’s a subtle difference, but it’s an important one. The Hidden […]
Don’t Rely On Confidence Alone
You find yourself in a conference room with your product team. The white board is covered with sketches. You have an idea that everyone is excited about. You mapped it out. You have a plan. Your engineering team is anxious to get started. This is what makes building products fun – the appeal of the […]
