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The bookcase

One of the books Shaun rated five out of five.

Inspired

Marty Cagan

  • 5/5
  • Finished 2022
  • Product
  • Most companies do waterfall not agile;
    • IDEAS → BIZ CASE → ROAD MAP → DESIGN → BUILD → TEST → DEPLOY
  • Most look at;
    1. How much money will it make?
    2. How long will it take?
  • Assume 50-75% of ideas won’t work
  • Use engineers as product designers
  • Best teams:
    1. Risks upfront:
      • Customer value
      • Usability
      • Feasability
      • Business viability
    2. Product is designed collaboratively, instead of PM → Design → Engineer → Test
    3. Solving problems, not implementing features
  • All team work in person, best teams prototype 15-20 ideas/week
  • Hiring a VP product
    • If Founder is v strong a product/vision, don’t hire someone in the same mould → causes clashes. Needs to complement founder
    • If Founder is not strong at product/vision, don’t hire in the same mould.
  • Don’t have roadmaps, have outcome based vision that solves business problems
  • EVANGELISM;
    1. Use a prototype
    2. Share the pain
    3. Share the vision
    4. Share the learnings
    5. Share credit
    6. Give great demos
  • DISCOVERY FRAMING
    1. Small ideas = opportunity assessment
    2. Medium ideas = PR release Amazon style
    3. Big ideas = startup canvas
      1. objective; what objective is this to address
      2. key results; how will you know if you’ve succeeded?
      3. customer problem; what problem will this solve?
      4. target market; what type of customer?
  • DISCOVERY PLANNING
    1. Story Map
    2. Customer Discovery; get a “reference customer”, ideally Six
  • Fake door demand test - button that only heals to an ask for a user interview
  • In user interviews - 4 ways to tell if customer really wants your path