Recently, a long-term client of mine sent me an email with the question below (scrubbed for anonymity) after we’d spent close to a year together building a set of objectives and key results (OKRs) for the entire organization along with, what I believed to be, a clear sense of how to at least start working … Continue reading There’s no guarantee your product strategy will work. Here’s how to de-risk it.
If we're managing to outcomes, how do we know we're doing a good job?
Part of the reason organisations struggle to switch to managing to outcomes is that its difficult to measure employee performance. Once that becomes difficult, how do we know someone did a good job? How do we know if that person should receive a raise? A promotion?
Metrics Mountain: A realistic visualisation of any customer lifecycle metrics
For as long as I've been working professionally the visual metaphor for moving customers through an experience has been The Funnel. The idea being that we have the most amount of people engaged at the beginning of an experience and as the experience goes on, fewer and fewer people are still participating in it. You've … Continue reading Metrics Mountain: A realistic visualisation of any customer lifecycle metrics
The Hypothesis Prioritization Canvas
How to prioritize your hypothesis so you know what to test first.
Do HR, Finance and Legal make products?
Teams that don't make customer facing work still work on "products" and have "customers." This article explains how to think about this kind of work - from HR, Legal, Finance et al - in a new light.
Why does every project have to be Agile these days?
Truly agile teams enjoy the ability, desire and safety to respond to change over following a plan.
The Lean UX Canvas
(Lean UX Canvas V2 is now live) In most of my work these days I don't often use an official canvas. I prefer to pick and choose the assumptions that can be found on the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas and others as appropriate for the client, project or initiative I'm working on and weave them together … Continue reading The Lean UX Canvas
Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking
There’s an unforgettable scene in my favorite movie, Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta pay a late night visit to Pesci’s mom. Despite their best efforts to leave quickly she invites them to eat something. During the late-night meal, they discuss a painting in her kitchen. The painting is of a man … Continue reading Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking
Moving To A Continuous World. This Changes Everything.
Hey folks - I, for one, choose not to give up on summer just yet. Technically we’ve got until the 21st of September and I’m soaking up every day of sun until such time as I have to break out the fall sweaters and jackets (which given the forecast here in metro NYC, … Continue reading Moving To A Continuous World. This Changes Everything.
Maintaining the winds of change
I’m often asked how to get executives on board with cultural and process change. It seems that product teams buy into the ideas of lean and agile relatively quickly but convincing management is an order of magnitude more difficult. We’ve discussed several reasons for this in previous newsletters. But let’s just assume that you’ve … Continue reading Maintaining the winds of change