Tyner Blain

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Quantifying the impact of your problems puts them in perspective. It also exposes the assumptions you’re making, creating a virtuous cycle helping you to improve your framing of the problems, and making it possible to prioritize among them. When you first start to describe a problem, you may skip the notion of quantifying entirely, and instead describe an abstract scenario like “repeat customers abandon the new product registration process.” This is the not nearly enough, and m

Weak Development Team 52

Weak Development Team Customer Experience User Testing Product Research 52

Tyner Blain

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Good product management is understanding the problems your customers want to solve, how your customers get value from solving those problems, and figuring out how best to help them. We need a little help to actually understand those problems from the customer’s point of view. Even good product managers will start with the wrong thinking, and organizations are commonly solving the wrong problems because of this.

Weak Development Team 52

Weak Development Team User Testing Research Software Product Research 52

Tyner Blain

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

There is more to identifying who’s problem you’re trying to solve – you need to also have a sense for the context in which they experience the problem. Problem statements solve for someone, and good problem statements also solve for some when. The Situation The situation your customer finds themselves in changes your customer’s goals and their definition of success at achieving those goals.

Customer Experience 59

Customer Experience Product Research Events Positioning 59

Tyner Blain

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

There’s a difference between who is exposed to a situation (many people) and who experiences that situation as a meaningful problem they would like to solve (a select few). It is important to not describe a situation as self-evidently bad , but rather to reshape your framing to discuss the problem which attends. Once you start reshaping into a description of a problem, a good problem statement template nudges you towards more in-depth discussion of who is affected.

Customer Experience 52

Customer Experience User Testing Research Software Weak Development Team 52

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 28, 2023

In my previous article, I shared an improved template for writing problem statements. Knowing a good structure is necessary, but you also need to avoid filling the good template with bad content. Don’t Describe a Situation When faced with an empty problem statement template , universally, the first question is “what is the problem we want to solve?

Research Software 52

Research Software Weak Development Team User Testing Systems Review 52

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 17, 2023

To improve how you build products, you need to write problem statements defining which problems you intend to solve. This helps your thinking, shapes your strategy, and creates purpose for your people. Writing your problem statements with a good template makes this easier. There are several different formats which have been developed for problem statements, and you could use free-form narrative as well.

Weak Development Team 52

Weak Development Team Systems Review Workshop Definition 52

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 10, 2023

Every company competes in a dynamic market. Staying the course is drifting off course. When you don’t use problem statements to express your intent, there are no signals to help your organization stay on course. Your people lack clarity, and therefore make mistakes. The Jobs of the Problem Statement This article continues a series on the three critical flaws in most product development processes a problem statement exists to address.

Systems Review 52

Systems Review Customer Experience Software Review Weak Development Team 52

Tyner Blain

JULY 31, 2023

The overwhelming emphasis I see in product organizations is on sequencing the execution of the product strategy over the upcoming quarters. Optimizing the product operations work to deliver a subpar product. There is little to no effort applied to shaping the product strategy. Problem statements should be used to shape the choices about what needs to be done, before trying to decide which bits to do when.

Analytic Tools 52

Analytic Tools Customer Experience Product Strategy Strategy 52

Tyner Blain

JULY 21, 2023

Most of the teams I’ve helped either didn’t use problem statements, or didn’t use them well. Without improving, they spend more time and money than needed to build things, and much of what they build is worthless or wasted. The problem statement exists to address three critical flaws in most product development processes. To deepen shallow product thinking to identify meaningful outcomes.

Product Research 52

Product Research Customer Feedback User Testing Product Strategy 52

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 31, 2022

Helping teams to shift from a task-focus to writing user stories requires a different approach than simply introducing user stories as a new tool. You have to adapt the existing practices, by changing how teams think about and discuss the work they do. “Change from…” is different for people than “Start with…” Here’s how I help them shift.

Customer Experience 72

Customer Experience Reporting Tools Development Information 72

Tyner Blain

JUNE 23, 2022

When evaluating a product, a customer may see the product as special, adequate, inadequate, or awful. What is uncomfortable for product teams is they have no control over how the customer sees the product. They only have influence. What teams need to learn is how to approach creating the product a customer will see as special. You Need Something to Position.

User Testing 91

User Testing Customer Feedback Customer Experience Feedback Software 91

Tyner Blain

MARCH 9, 2022

A common suggestion from product development teams when asked how to improve their working environment, is to “spend less time in meetings.” I’ve felt this way personally when I was writing code – I just wanted to get back to it. I don’t believe I’ve worked with an organization where I didn’t hear this sentiment from the people with hands-on-keyboards.

Product Research 72

Product Research Customer Experience Reporting Tools Feedback Loop 72

Tyner Blain

MARCH 8, 2022

The shift from inside-out to outside-in is necessary to become more effective as a product development organization. We cannot build it and (expect) they will come. Here’s how to think about shifting from simply creating outputs to actually solving problems. Intuition is the Key. I love this quote from Gary Klein. Intuition has to be used throughout the analysis: in recognizing the problem, in decomposing it, in setting up the rating scales, in assigning the numerical values, in estimating prob

Document 59

Document Customer Experience Development Strategy 59

Tyner Blain

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

The shift from inside-out to outside-in is necessary to become more effective as a product development organization. We cannot build it and (expect) they will come. Here’s how to think about shifting from simply creating outputs to actually solving problems. Intuition is the Key. I love this quote from Gary Klein. Intuition has to be used throughout the analysis: in recognizing the problem, in decomposing it, in setting up the rating scales, in assigning the numerical values, in estimating

Document 59

Document Customer Experience Development Strategy 59

Tyner Blain

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

A common suggestion from product development teams when asked how to improve their working environment, is to “spend less time in meetings.” I’ve felt this way personally when I was writing code – I just wanted to get back to it. I don’t believe I’ve worked with an organization where I didn’t hear this sentiment from the people with hands-on-keyboards.

Product Research 88

Product Research Customer Experience Reporting Tools Feedback Loop 88

Tyner Blain

JANUARY 23, 2021

Orienting to value – every team, every person does it differently. How you orient to value limits how much value you can create. People with a naive orientation can only scratch the surface, cogs in someone else’s machine; those with a refined orientation to value, well, there is no limit to what they can do. How Teams Orient to Value.

Research Software 126

Research Software Feedback Software User Testing Customer Experience 126

Tyner Blain

JULY 3, 2020

When solving complex problems at scale, we use epics, features, and stories to align, focus, and coordinate the work of multiple teams to achieve the objectives of our organizations. An epic represents the investment decision to solve a tangible problem; a collection of epics together represent a broader investment decision to advance the organization’s strategy.

Construction 126

Construction Customer Experience Vision Customer Feedback 126

Tyner Blain

APRIL 8, 2019

In our continuing series on managing the risk in your backlog, we look at the risk of kidding ourselves. Specifically, we use cause and effect and hypotheses to identify the assumptions in our plans, but if we don’t do it the right way, we will lie to ourselves by validating our assumptions instead of responding to the truth when we see it. Steps in a Journey to Managing Risk.

User Testing 80

User Testing Feedback Software Product Research Research Software 80

Tyner Blain

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

When deciding how to invest in your product, you need to take into account the risks that your investments will not return the outcomes you desire. One class of risks is business risk, and in product management we can influence the business risk of invalid intentionality – what I could call “building the wrong thing.” Cause and Effect is Foundational.

Product Research 96

Product Research Customer Experience User Testing Reference 96

Tyner Blain

NOVEMBER 26, 2018

As Steven Haines first told me, “strategy first, roadmap second.” There is a step between the two – deciding which problems you will focus on solving with your product. Strategy defines the context for product strategy, and your product roadmap is a planning (and communication) tool for executing your product strategy. Understanding how problems are framed in your market is critical to developing a successful product strategy.

Marketing 83

Marketing Research Software Feedback Software Differentiation 83

Tyner Blain

SEPTEMBER 10, 2017

Understanding your users is critical to developing good products. A “complete” understanding is sometimes required, and always comes at a cost. A contextualized understanding is valuable but less so, and costly but less so. Even a shallow understanding of your users provides value by preventing some dysfunctional behaviors. You do not always need to develop personas before developing products.

User Testing 94

User Testing Customer Feedback Customer Experience Research Software 94

Tyner Blain

JULY 10, 2017

You know you’re a product manager when this image causes more than a chuckle. A few random thoughts inspired by this Rorschach test of product management concepts from sunk cost fallacy to intentionality. Hanlon’s Razor. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” ( wikipedia ). This was my immediate reaction when my colleague Dennis Stevens sent me this, with the comment ‘This has to be useful in a product management presentation.&#

Product Management 92

Product Management Product Manager Weak Development Team User Testing 92

Tyner Blain

JUNE 11, 2017

The pop-culture concept of a silver bullet – a simple solution to a hard problem – is a dangerous idea. It can be used to over-promise, and doom a team to under-delivery. When an executive, too far removed from what makes creating products hard thinks of “agile” as a silver bullet it becomes difficult to manage expectations.

Feedback Software 108

Feedback Software Agile User Testing Customer Feedback 108

Tyner Blain

MAY 24, 2017

Taking agile, a process otherwise optimized for small, cross-functional, collaborative teams and making it work at scale is fascinating. You have to change some elements, and retain others, as you redefine the context. Being outcome driven, is one element you must retain – or even elevate in importance, or you fundamentally break the system of delivery.

Agile 150

Agile Feedback Software Weak Development Team User Testing 150

Tyner Blain

JANUARY 8, 2017

Assumptions are interesting things – we all make them all the time, and we rarely acknowledge that we’re doing it. When it comes to developing a product strategy – or even making decisions about how best to create a product, one of these assumptions is likely to be what causes us to fail. We can, however, reduce the chance of that happening.

User Testing 40

User Testing Weak Development Team Product Research Workshop 40

Tyner Blain

OCTOBER 6, 2016

Being “outside-in”, “outcome-based”, and “market-driven” is particularly important for creating successful products. The problem is that just saying the words is not enough to help someone shift their thinking. For those of us who are already thinking this way, the phrases become touchstones or short-hand. For folks who are not there yet, these may sound like platitudes or empty words.

Customer Feedback 98

Customer Feedback Naming Data Visualization Messaging 98

Tyner Blain

JULY 22, 2016

Defining and building a good minimum viable product is much harder than it sounds. Finding that “one thing” you can do, which people want, is really about a lot more than picking one thing. It is a combination of solving the minimum valuable problem and all of the other things that go with it. Solving for both the outside-in needs and the inside-out goals is critical.

Customer Experience 75

Customer Experience User Testing Reference Product Research 75

Tyner Blain

JUNE 3, 2016

How do you work with professional services, consulting, field engineers, etc. to make your product better? Do you just treat their inputs as yet another channel for feature requests , or do you engage them as an incredibly potent market-sensing capability? Conversation Starter. I received an excellent and insightful question from one of my former students in DIT’s product management degree program (enrollment for the next cohort closes in a month).

Data Visualization 53

Data Visualization Customer Feedback Workshop Feedback Software 53

Tyner Blain

APRIL 12, 2016

Product owners and product managers. Two roles, often done by one person. Together, the product people need to take an organization’s strategy, figure out the appropriate product strategy, and convert that into actionable work for the delivery teams to create the right product. What does the product manager own, and for what is the product owner responsible?

Customer Experience 68

Customer Experience Customer Feedback Management Management 68

Tyner Blain

APRIL 6, 2016

If you ask someone if they require encryption on their device, first of all, you will likely get one of two answers – yes or no – useful for segmenting your market or developing persona. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a better answer – “ you’re asking the wrong question! ” Be Outside-In, Not Inside-Out. Inside-out thinking is taking your current view of your product (or product-to-be), and mapping it to the problems you discover in the market.

Customer Experience 56

Customer Experience Presentation Product Management Product Manager 56

Tyner Blain

JULY 9, 2013

There are several ways to answer the question “is agile cheaper than waterfall?” Here are two of my favorites: “It depends. Agile done well is cheaper, as long as you measure correctly.” “You’re asking the wrong question. The right question is: is agile better?” How Agile Is NOT Cheaper. The fun thing about relative terms is that you have to do a comparison.

Agile 73

Agile Weak Development Team Feedback Software Customer Feedback 73

Tyner Blain

JULY 17, 2013

There is a lot of advice out there for how to write requirements. There is not as much discussion about why to write requirements. Spend some time thinking about why you write requirements before you make decisions about how to write your requirements. Why Write Requirements? Whether you communicate requirements through conversation, user stories with acceptance criteria, or traditional structured requirements and use cases, or diagrams and commentary, you are sharing them as a means to an end &

Product Research 73

Product Research User Testing Customer Experience Feedback Software 73

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 1, 2013

How can Theodore Levitt’s classic Whole Product approach help with defining a product roadmap? I’ve been revisiting his concepts and their use recently, thinking about how to revise them for some exercises I’ve been doing with product teams. Whole Product Game Background. In 1980, Mr. Levitt published his article through the Harvard Business Review – also available for sale as an eDoc through Amazon.

Weak Development Team 53

Weak Development Team Differentiation Software Review Customer Experience 53

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 7, 2013

Paddy Barrett in Ireland is preparing his Master’s thesis on Product Management and would like to interview (USA) state-side product managers for his primary research. It would be awesome if you could help him, and help us all. My Connection. I am a visiting lecturer as part of the Dublin Institute of Technology’s Product Management degree program.

Research Software 66

Research Software Product Research User Testing Product Management 66

Tyner Blain

JUNE 12, 2014

Agile is not magical. Changing from a waterfall process to an agile process changes how your team works, and helps eliminate inefficiencies. Adopting an agile process does not let you magically have a more successful product. What makes agile powerful is also makes it dangerous. Triage and Urgency. One tenet of agile is to make decisions at the last responsible moment.

Agile 67

Agile Weak Development Team Presentation Strategy 67

Tyner Blain

AUGUST 1, 2014

Theodore Levitt may have developed the whole product model to help companies compete more effectively with their products. We wrote about the whole product game based on Mr. Levitt’s work. Recently, I’ve been using a variant of this model as a way to view a product and upcoming roadmap items. It is a powerful way to share a perspective on your product with the rest of the team, and frame conversations about where best to invest.

Marketing 64

Marketing Differentiation Roadmap Positioning 64

Tyner Blain

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

“Agile” is something most teams do wrong*, without realizing they’re doing it wrong. A good 2×2 matrix acts as a lens, helping to convert information into insight. Let’s apply this lens to agile as applied within a company, and see if it helps people decide to do things differently. When You Say Agile, What Do You Mean?

Agile 66

Agile User Testing Customer Feedback Feedback Software 66