There is often a wide gap between the priorities of projects within the development organization, the priority of the project in the view of the overall business, and the priority of the project in the eyes of the requester.
"I look at the Product Manager's job to run down the objective signals throughout the company, synthesize/distill them, and then use those signals to inform product decisions. Our big thing is that you can tell a lot more about how things are going from the information streams (or lack thereof) than from process management in itself," says Joe Stump, CEO, Sprint.ly
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9. Informing Product
Decisions: How To Move
Faster With Less Process
Joe Stump, CEO of Sprint.ly
Friday, February 1, 13
10. • Early employee at three startups ranging
from bootstrapped to venture funded.
• Angel investor in three startups.
• Advisor to seven venture funded startups.
• Cofounder of three venture funded
startups (SimpleGeo, attachments.me, &
Sprint.ly).
Friday, February 1, 13
11. About Joe Stump
• Early employee at three
startups ranging from
bootstrapped to venture
funded.
• Angel investor in three
startups.
• Advisor to seven venture
funded startups.
• Cofounder of three venture
funded startups (SimpleGeo,
attachments.me, & Sprint.ly).
• @joestump or joe@stu.mp
Friday, February 1, 13
17. Quickly
Correctly Cheaply
Friday, February 1, 13
18. YOU CAN’T HAVE
YOUR CAKE AND
EAT IT TOO.
Friday, February 1, 13
19. “Want to increase
innovation? Lower the cost
of failure.”
Joi Ito
Friday, February 1, 13
20. ALLOW ENGINEERS
TO INVEST IN
AUTOMATION &
TESTING.
Friday, February 1, 13
21. Why?
• Iterating on your product is all about
shortening feedback loops
• Continuous deployment allows you to ship
on code commit
• Automated testing allows for aggressive
refactoring with confidence
Friday, February 1, 13
22. “The best products in
the world start out as
features.”
Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram
Friday, February 1, 13
23. Implementing vision
takes time
Inception Your brain
Funding v1.0
Friday, February 1, 13
26. “You should get a CS
degree. It's the only degree
that automatically makes you
an expert on politics,
finance, religion, and
economics.”
@thejayfields
Friday, February 1, 13
27. MAKERS ARE NOT
EXPERTS IN SALES,
MARKETING, NOR
BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT.
Friday, February 1, 13
28. A Sampling of Non-
Technical Product TODOs
• Financial model creation for
pricing
• Messaging
• Documentation
• Customer development
• Copywriting
• Screencasts & Videos
• Marketing plan for launch • Marketing materials
• Public relations • Capturing requirements
• Support • Business development
• Community development • Funnel analysis
• Sales training • Market research
• Managing beta testers • Blog announcement
• Contract negotiation • Newsletter announcement
Friday, February 1, 13
29. SIMPLEGEO’S
PRODUCT LAUNCH
CHECKLIST HAD 41
NON-ENGINEERING
ITEMS ON IT.
Friday, February 1, 13
33. ENGINEERS ARE NOT
DESIGNERS.
(SERIOUSLY. THAT IS
UGLY.)
Friday, February 1, 13
34. DEVELOPERS ARE NOT
THE TARGET CUSTOMER.
(NO, REALLY, NOBODY
CARES ABOUT
KEYBOARD
SHORTCUTS.)
Friday, February 1, 13
35. “Focus on the problem. If
you’re only excited about the
solution, you’ll lose interest
when your solution doesn’t fix
the problem. ”
Adil Wali, CTO of ModCloth
Friday, February 1, 13
40. BE MILITANT IN
YOUR MINIMALLY
VIABLE PRODUCT
(MVP).
Friday, February 1, 13
41. Approaching Product
1. Focus on a single use case that addresses
the problem
2. Start with a minimal core set of features
3. Release and listen to your users
4. Question your initial assumptions based on
feedback
5. Rinse and repeat
Friday, February 1, 13
42. Iterating on Your
Product
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
3. Designer creates a static mockup
4. Static mockup is thrown “over the wall” to
engineering to implement
Friday, February 1, 13
44. Oh, whoops.
• Turns out static mockups are ... static
• Engineers implement it only to find out the
UX is terrible
• Engineering is unable to implement critical
features
Friday, February 1, 13
45. INVOLVE
ENGINEERING IN
THE PRODUCT
DESIGN PROCESS.
Friday, February 1, 13
46. Why would I do that?
• Nobody knows your data better than your
engineers
• You likely aren’t an expert at data
algorithms
• They are your company’s best technologists
Friday, February 1, 13
47. Iterating the Yardsale
Way™
1. Choose guiding rules based on the problem
2. Have a great idea
3. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
4. Engage engineering to build a vanilla prototype (e.g.
Default Bootstrap or iOS/Android UI components)
5. Play, tweak, rinse, repeat
6. Once UX is nailed have a designer polish to
perfection
Friday, February 1, 13
49. Why is this better?
• Designer’s time is not lost on features that
are not shippable
• Timelines will not be disrupted by
unforeseen technical hurdles
• Avoids angering the engineers
Friday, February 1, 13
51. PRODUCTS ARE
EITHER DATE-
DRIVEN OR
FEATURE-DRIVEN.
Friday, February 1, 13
52. Non-Blocking Development
(NBD)
1. No sprints, milestones, or dates are tracked by
engineering
2. Items are scored, velocity is tracked
3. Each developer works on an item to
completion in a feature branch
4. Pull request via GitHub for review
5. Feature deployed immediately upon approval
via continuous deployment
Friday, February 1, 13
53. Why is this better?
• Shares reactive qualities of Kanban
• Velocity metrics allow you to do reasonable
capacity planning
• Features ship in real-time as they’re
completed
Friday, February 1, 13
54. “You can’t ship process.”
VP of Product, Live Nation Labs
Friday, February 1, 13
56. About Joe Stump
• Early employee at three
startups ranging from
bootstrapped to venture
funded.
• Angel investor in three
startups.
• Advisor to seven venture
funded startups.
• Cofounder of three venture
funded startups (SimpleGeo,
attachments.me, & Sprint.ly).
• @joestump or joe@stu.mp
Friday, February 1, 13