Review

This book is about adapting your product strategy in a time of crisis. The author admits it was rushed out in two weeks to help Product Managers during COVID-19. But does it have any lasting value? Well, yes, if things are changing rapidly at your company for whatever reason, this is probably worth the hour it takes to read and digest.

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The Product Momentum Gap

Within this book, there is some valuable insight. While I wouldn't adopt the methodology completely, there is value in it. The Product Value Creation Plan in particular has merit beyond addressing the 'Product Momentum Gap', and I find it odd that the authors chose to combine the two.

andrewclark.co.uk

Holistic Product Discovery

This is a great product discovery reference book. It brings together product discovery and delivery, and provides a great overview of the theory to date. It’s a book without ego, introducing just a couple of frameworks whilst signposting other important work. It doesn’t quite achieve a single theory that ties everything together, which is a shame. I do love though that it assumes a little product knowledge, which is refreshing as it allows for brevity. Well worthy of a read.

andrewclark.co.uk

The Right It

Marty Cagan acknowledges in "Inspired" that most of our products and features won't meet expectations, and the ones that do require a lot of iteration to reach that point. I believe this is THE most important observation about product development. This book does a great job of articulating that phenomenon and proposes a robust way to navigate it. This is the best book on validating product ideas that I’ve read. I will forever be sharing this book.

andrewclark.co.uk

Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• In biology ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ is a term used to describe a pattern that occurs in fossil records. Long periods of stability, are interrupted by vast change over short periods. A shift in the environment, caused by external stimulus, can result in species dying out, and the emergent dominance of those better suited to the new conditions. It’s a good analogy to how Covid-19 affected things.
• In times of radical change, you have to make sure you’re positioned to survive and thrive in the new conditions.
• A strategy is a statement of intent about an opportunity that your company has observed, and what you plan to do to realise the value from it.
• Your strategy and roadmap are made up of bets. If we do [this] we should have [this impact].
• Lining up a series of bitesize bets in a coherent way is how we create good, actionable strategies.
• A strategy has to be filtered through the constraints of capability ( people, skills, technology, funding)
• The next step is to validate the bets as quickly as possible, and iterating to get the best possible result under the constraints.
• Bets are made up of facts and assumptions. Facts can turn out not to be true. Assumptions can be misinterpreted as facts. Assumptions + emotions = opinions (which are harder to shift). Facts and assumptions can rapidly change in times of crisis.

• Habits that made your customer’s predictable can be broken in times of change. It’s worth revisiting your personas if that’s the case.
• Questions to ask:
• Who are we trying to help and what are their goals and obstacles?
• How does their perception of the goals and obstacles differ to ours?
• What is their current situation? How is it different to before?
• Have priorities changed?
• Has how they use the product changed?
• Do they have the same purchasing power?
• What relevant habits have changed?
• Think about how you can lean into discovery efforts

• Competitive landscape mapping: Dominant players, where and how they operate, pricing, branding, positioning, where significant opportunities lie. It should be updated:
• at a cadence that makes sense for the pace of your industry
• or if anything major happens!
• Create a shared view of the space, and have conversations about it with peers and management
• Techniques to help:
• Scenario Planning: Create a set of plausible events and under each of those cases…
• What’s different about the market? Your customers? Cash flow?
• What would you have to do to thrive?
• What are the key early indicators that your plans are working or failing?
• Value-Chain Mapping (Simon Wardley)
• Can help you understand and visualise the various components and activities that contribute to creating and delivering value to your customers.
• Helping you identify opportunities for differentiation, cost reduction, and innovation, as well as assess your competitive positioning.

• If some of the conclusions from previous discovery activities are no longer valid, the foundation of your planning is no longer solid. You should examine if the problems we aimed to solve and the market opportunity are still correct.
• The key question: Is what we’re currently working on still the best thing to do? You should be able to have hard conversations and to run quick experiments to find out if shifting your priorities is worthwhile.

• Have strong opinions weakly held.
• Use all the tools to work through the relevant facts and assumptions.
1. Assumption Mapping
2. Impact mapping
3. Theory of change
4. Dragon mapping
• At each step, ask your team and stakeholders, for this to happen, what needs to be true? Document the assumptions, and rate them based on how risky it would be if they were wrong. That forms a prioritised list to run experiments on.
• Ask what could go wrong? How are the decisions we’re making potentially harm our customers, the wider public or our reputation?
• If your product/service/feature was going to be the subject of a black mirror episode what would the plot be? (Rosie Proven’s black mirror test)

• Estimating complexity isn’t straight forward.
• Worth knowing which one of these is true (from Liz Keogh - estimating complexity)
1. Just about everyone in the world has done this
2. Lots of people have done this, including some of our team
3. Someone in our company has done this, or we have access to expertise
4. Someone in the world did this, but not in our organisation (in a competitor)
5. Nobody in the world has ever done this before
• Get clear on your underlying assumptions:
• Who is available? And how available are they?
• What constraints is your team working under?
• What tools do you normally use? Which are not currently available? Or are not suited to remote usage?
• What’s your release cycle?
• Do you know how to set up and run experiments and how to analyse them?
• What can you do better, and not do as well - now?
• What can you accomplish under the new conditions?

• Reduce meetings to a minimum. Meet when you need to. Use asynchronous communication as much as you can.
• Does this meeting spark joy or provide value? If not ditch it
• Use common tools. Use common repositories and conventions.
• Effective communication is about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
• Team communications and documents have a single agreed pattern.
• Have a separate pathway for urgent messages
• Don’t micro manage. Prioritise outcomes over outputs. Set clear objectives and give the team autonomy to get it done.

• Could you explain how your changes affect both the work you’re doing today and the longer term strategy? How about to a six year old?
• You need to be able to work tactically and strategically, the small details, the big picture and how they fit together. Get the context clear.
• PM’s need to see how the smallest bet scales into the biggest bet.
• For many teams, work in the near term is clear. Work in the long-term is clear. But there’s a messy middle (1-3 months, 1-3 quarters) where PM’s need to tie things together.
• Make sure everyone’s on the same page.
• Briefing and back-briefing can help align different levels of the organisation.The original brief comes from the top, but the teams share how they have understood and interpreted it, and how they plan to achieve it.
• Agile teams can react to new evidence, quickly change their goal, their plans and their ways of working to do what’s needed.
• Don’t stop learning, and take time to reflect. PM’s should set aside time everyday to do deeper work. Not doing the busy work, but revisiting your assumptions.

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

• In biology ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ is a term used to describe a pattern that occurs in fossil records. Long periods of stability, are interrupted by vast change over short periods. A shift in the environment, caused by external stimulus, can result in species dying out, and the emergent dominance of those better suited to the new conditions. It’s a good analogy to how Covid-19 affected things.
• In times of radical change, you have to make sure you’re positioned to survive and thrive in the new conditions.
• A strategy is a statement of intent about an opportunity that your company has observed, and what you plan to do to realise the value from it.
• often communicated with a roadmap
• Your strategy and roadmap are made up of bets. If we do [this] we should have [this impact].
• Lining up a series of bitesize bets in a coherent way is how we create good, actionable strategies.
• The list has to be filtered through the constraints of capability ( people, skills, technology, funding)
• The next step is to validate the bets as quickly as possible, and iterating to get the best possible result under the constraints.
• Bets are made up of facts and assumptions.
• Facts can turn out not to be true.
• Assumptions can be misinterpreted as facts
• Assumptions + emotions = opinions (which are harder to shift)
• Facts and assumptions are often based on ‘the market landscape’ and ‘customer personas’ which can rapidly change in times of crisis

Part 1: Context

Chapter 1: Examine Your Personas:

• Habits that made your customer’s predictable can be broken in times of change. It’s worth revisiting your personas if that’s the case.
• Personas help us map the problems people have, the situation they’re in, and how they’re likely to act.
• Questions to ask:
• Who are we trying to help and what are their goals and obstacles?
• How does their perception of the goals and obstacles differ to ours?
• What is their current situation? How is it different to before?
• Have priorities changed?
• Has how they use the product changed?
• Do they have the same purchasing power?
• What relevant habits have changed?
• Think about how you can lean into discovery efforts
• Enlist sales and marketing people to help.
• Spend more time listening to support requires
• Where can you get real actionable information from current and potential clients?
• How can you best review and synthesise it? To build a shared understanding inside and outside of your product teams

Chapter 2: Revalidate the market landscape

• Competitive landscape mapping: Dominant players, where and how they operate, pricing, branding, positioning, where significant opportunities lie.
• Should be updated:
• at a cadence that makes sense for the pace of your industry
• or if anything major happens!
• Create a shared view of the space, and have conversations about it with peers and management
• Techniques to help:
• Scenario Planning: Create a set of plausible events and under each of those cases…
• What’s different about the market? Your customers? Cash flow?
• What would you have to do to thrive?
• What are the key early indicators that your plans are working or failing?
• Value-Chain Mapping (Simon Wardley)
• Can help you understand and visualise the various components and activities that contribute to creating and delivering value to your customers.
• Helping you identify opportunities for differentiation, cost reduction, and innovation, as well as assess your competitive positioning.

Part 2: Intentions

Chapter 3: Question Your Priorities

• If some of the conclusions from previous discovery activities are no longer valid, the foundation of your planning is no longer solid. You should examine if the problems we aimed to solve and the market opportunity are still correct.
• Two essential questions:
• Is there something we can do that helps with the current situation?
• If so, pause your roadmap and do it (providing you can still keep the lights on)
• Is what we’re currently working on still the best thing to do?
• You should be able to have hard conversations
• To run quick experiments to find out if shifting your priorities is worthwhile

Chapter 4: Map your facts and assumptions

• You have the basics to proceed:
• An idea of what the situation is for our customers, what their problems are, and what they perceive their problems to be
• A set of plausible scenarios about how the market landscape could unfold
• An idea of what direction we want to move in
• But you’re working in a constantly changing situation. Facts and assumptions might not be as safe as we believe.
• Have strong opinions weakly held. Cut through ‘truthiness’ (the idea that something that feels right is more important than actually being right).

1. Assumption Mapping

An introduction to assumptions mapping | Mural

Any time a team begins a new project, there are risky assumptions involved. Precoil Founder David J Bland has learned this all too well through his years of experience helping corporations think more creatively.



mural.co


1. Marries feasibility, viability and desirability with a 2z2 matrix to generate an action plan.
2. Digs into all the assumptions that form your current approach and attitude
2. Impact mapping
• Starts from the impact that you want to see. Not what features you release or products you have in the market, but what difference they’ll have.

Impact Mapping: How to focus on outcomes in product management

Aligning work around outcomes instead of just chasing the next product feature idea.



miro.com


3. Theory of change
• Starts with the desired outcome, the current conditions and then helps fill in the messy middle

What is this thing called 'Theory of Change'? | USAID Learning Lab

This piece originally appeared on the author's blog on March 9, 2016. It has been cross-posted with permission.



usaidlearninglab.org

4. Dragon mapping
• At each step, ask your team and stakeholders, for this to happen, what needs to be true?
• Document the assumptions, and rate them based on how risky it would be if they were wrong
• That forms a prioritised list to run experiments on

• Ask what could go wrong? How are the decisions we’re making potentially harm our customers, the wider public or our reputation?
• If your product/service/feature was going to be the subject of a black mirror episode what would the plot be? (Rosie Proven’s black mirror test)

Part 3: Capabilities

Chapter 5: Review your capabilities

• It’s hard to understand how long something will take

I bought my boss two copies of The Mythical Man Month so he could read it twice as fast Randall Koutnik

• Estimating complexity isn’t straight forward.
• Worth knowing which one of these is true (from Liz Keogh - estimating complexity)
1. Just about everyone in the world has done this
2. Lots of people have done this, including some of our team
3. Someone in our company has done this, or we have access to expertise
4. Someone in the world did this, but not in our organisation (in a competitor)
5. Nobody in the world has ever done this before
• Quality doesn’t have a linear relationship with effort - but experience can help
• Get clear on your underlying assumptions:
• Who is available? And how available are they?
• What constraints is your team working under?
• What tools do you normally use? Which are not currently available? Or are not suited to remote usage?
• What’s your release cycle?
• Do you know how to set up and run experiments and how to analyse them?
• What can you do better, and not do as well - now?
• What can you accomplish under the new conditions?

Chapter 6: Review Your Ways of Working

• Reduce meetings to a minimum. Meet when you need to. Use asynchronous communication as much as you can.
• Does this meeting spark joy or provide value? If not ditch it
• Use common tools. Use common repositories and conventions.
• Effective communication is about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
• Team communications and documents have a single agreed pattern.
• Have a separate pathway for urgent messages
• Don’t micro manage. Prioritise outcomes over outputs. Set clear objectives and give the team autonomy to get it done.
• Hold retrospectives.
• Retire meetings, documentation and process that isn’t helping.
• Create opportunities for serendipity.
• Front load meetings with ice breakers to get everyone engaged.

Part 4: The Plan

Chapter 7: Focus and execute

• Success is a combination of preparation and luck.
• Could you explain how your changes affect both the work you’re doing today and the longer term strategy? How about to a six year old?
• You need to be able to work tactically and strategically, the small details, the big picture and how they fit together. Get the context clear.
• PM’s need to see how the smallest bet scales into the biggest bet.
• For many teams, work in the near term is clear. Work in the long-term is clear. But there’s a messy middle (1-3 months, 1-3 quarters) where PM’s need to tie things together.
• Make sure everyone’s on the same page.
• Briefing and back-briefing can help align different levels of the organisation.The original brief comes from the top, but the teams share how they have understood and interpreted it, and how they plan to achieve it.
• Agile teams can react to new evidence, quickly change their goal, their plans and their ways of working to do what’s needed.
• Separate your operational and strategic timelines. Make sure you’re keeping the operation going, that needs to come first.
• Don’t stop learning, and take time to reflect
• PM’s should set aside time everyday to do deeper work. Not doing the busy work, but revisiting your assumptions.