This part of the Lean User Tests series focuses on acquiring the right candidates for the interviews, answering questions like:
There are differences in approaching candidates in the B2B versus the B2C space. However, the following general principles apply to all user interviews.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 8th, 2016 covers Scrum’s Achilles heel — technical debt —, why whole organizations need to become agile and just isles within, the KPIs of culture, and that Scrum mums are overprotective and don’t scale.
We also explore the dark art of software estimation, the 10 success factors of great product teams and their metrics, and how to engage engineers in the design process.
Last, but least, we learn about the best practices of creating products at The Guardian, the biology of leadership, and the last decade’s most memorable IT disasters and what we can learn from them.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 1st, 2016 covers tips & tricks for writing awesome user stories, why 90% of feedback is usually crap, dives into the old discussion — estimations in story points or hours? —, and how to manage developers if you have no clue about coding.
We also explore why effective people think simply, and how to find product-market fit or decide when to pivot. We dive deep into Google design sprints and product storyboards.
Last, but least, we cover data-driven product design at the BBC, why so many smart people are unhappy, and we share a list with 25 geniuses that will or might change our world. (Or probably, they will just fail in the process like you and me, too.)
In a world where data-driven decision making is often prevalent, some people feel uncomfortable with agile methodologies as those provide only a few useful metrics. One of those few, however, is the cycle time from idea to shipping a valuable product increment to your customers.
If you want to optimize this metric for your organization, speeding up your product discovery process is essential. And this requires two things: a) rapid prototyping and b) people to test your prototypes with. That’s the main reason why running user tests continuously is so important.
Learn how to best organize and run user tests in this series of six blog posts. Today, we start with answering the “why” question and what huge benefits user tests will provide to your product discovery and delivery process.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of April 24th, 2016 covers how to get an agile product roadmap right, the attention “agile” is enjoying in HBR, eleven habits of high-performing agile teams, and why human psychology is usually an impediment to agile adoption.
We explore ways to talk management out of business plans when innovating, how to create a culture for innovation IDEO style, why product should talk more to sales, and what makes people love your products.
Last, but least, we cover continuous user testing, how to retire products with style, that you’re absolutely not to blame for procrastination—it’s in your genes—, and how Amazon turned a dud into a mega-seller: Echo.
When dealing with product roadmap failure, stop debating whether you are doing product roadmaps “right”, or whether roadmaps are evil. Look instead at the job you are hiring your roadmap to achieve. And then ask if the roadmap is the best tool for the job.
New to Product Management? What is a product roadmap? For a standard definition see here.
