Notes from Mind The Product London 2012

Here’s a few insights from the first Mind The product conference in London. Most of my notes are from software development veteran Marty Cagan – (svpg) who opened with some thoughts on How to deliver disruptive products.

1.Vision and passion

It can take 2-3 yrs effort to realise a vision

Making money is the consequence, but not the purpose

“Be very stubborn on vision, but flexible on details” – as Jeff Bezos once said

2. Know what you can’t know

If you have to do a Business Case before you get an idea funded that’s the wrong way to go

This includes resource estimates. How do you know how much something is going to cost to deliver when you don’t even know what it is yet that you’ll build. Only until you start working it out by doing it do you have any idea.

You can’t know if it’s any good until you’ve developed you way towards a solution

A Better approach is to ask:

Is this something worth working on?

Is there anybody out there who wants this? (That’s Customer Discovery)

Do we think we have the capabilities to build it?

Can we deliver it? (That’s Product Discovery)

3. Know what your customers can’t know

None of us really know what we want until after we’ve seen it. Not even Steve Jobs.
This is not to say you shouldn’t talk to customers. We talk to A LOT of customers, but unlike a marketing mindset, we’re not asking on them, we’re testing things on them.This means doing all manner of prototypes, be it lo-fi or hi tech.

4. Product Discovery

There are two rules of thumb in the product discovery phase:

i) At least two thirds of our ideas are never going to work – most likely because the customer doesn’t care about it, or because it is too expensive.

ii) For the other third it takes 3-4 iterations until it does what it needs to. Think ‘Time to money, not time to market’.

If you’re not killing at least 50% of your ideas you’re wasting time and money. Think of it as a race.
One of the big tenets of lean is to ask ‘What’s the fastest, cheapest way to find out if this is any good?”

Watch this Nordstrom Innovation Lab product discovery iPad app video.
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Use Live data prototypes composed of 20-30% real code

A/B test on just a few use cases

User-test products to find out why people don’t like it. Could they/would they use it. Why not?

Read Lean Startup

5. Dedicated teams

It’s not a PROJECT

Be cross-functional

Be co-located. Right next to each other

Don’t scope around the project. Try to think and behave like a startup, even if you’re not one

6. Manage by objectives

What is your conversion rate?

What are your KPIs?

7. The role of design

Most companies do not get design. It’s not just look and feel. ‘It’s how it all works’ so said Steve Jobs.

8. True collaboration

Single biggest source of innovation is from the engineer. It’s not the Product Manager, nor the Designer. If engineers aren’t doing the upfront thinking, then you’re only using 50% of their capabilities.

So what is the Product Manager all about?
They should be bringing a deep knowledge of data; strong industry/competitor awareness, and above all a strong body of understanding about user needs. They also of course need business and budget awareness.

9. Product Culture

Don’t get hung up on process.

Validated learning. Smart working. Fast working.

10. Embrace pivots

Have vision not delusion and know when it’s time to change track. This Dilbert sums it up.

For example, with the niche idea Perplexity, Michael Action Smith made the decision to shelve it and start Moshi Monsters instead, which now has 60m users worldwide. Another example was Groupon, which started as group selling, not group buying.

Marty Cagan’s book – Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

Look for desire paths in your search and navigation data

There were some other great speakers, like Tom Chi, who gave an inspiring talk about the importance of learning through prototyping Google Glasses. Meanwhile Tom Hulme from IDEO focused on the notion that Products must have Purpose: