/Product

When Users Never Use The Features They Asked For

- Austin Henley tl;dr: Austin concludes his story with what he learnt as a product minded engineer, including: (1) Always keep your users in the loop. Do not go build in isolation. (2) Don't underestimate engineering challenges that you have an external view of. (3) Voice your concerns to your team regularly and often. They might be to solve them far more quickly or identify a future roadblock. And more.

featured in #256

What is an A/B Test?

tl;dr: How A/B test are run at Netlfix: the importance is on "building intuition." The posts covers the basics of an A/B test, "why it’s important to run an A/B test versus rolling out a feature and looking at metrics pre- and post- making a change, and how we turn an idea into a testable hypothesis."

featured in #254

Google’s Heart Framework For Product Metrics

- Rohit Verma tl;dr: This framework uses 5 metrics to help make product decisions: "Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success." In this post, Rohit presents the goals, signals and metrics for each.

featured in #243

A Conversation With Shreyas Doshi & John Cutler

- John Cutler Shreyas Doshi tl;dr: "We cover topics like leadership, becoming a better listener, the role of middle management, career and self identity, stubbornness, calendar theater, and treating your dashboards as products."

featured in #240

How to Build a Rockstar Product Management Team

tl;dr: Olivia Ryan, PM at Slingshot, runs through three hiring tips, and ways she keeps her team engaged, connected, and on task in an increasingly remote work environment. Promoted by Stream

featured in #239

Product Management In Infrastructure Eng

- Will Larson tl;dr: Infrastructure teams have 2 modes of operation: (1) A foundation mode where tasks are mandatory e.g. compliance, security, scaling a popular product. (2) Innovation mode where teams have the flexibility in prioritizing and solving problems - teams have less experience here so Will guides us through the process of problem discovery, prioritization and validation.

featured in #237

Mandate Levels

- John Cutler tl;dr: John came up with nine "levels" of work, "ranging from very specific, to very general." calling them Mandate Levels, "to capture the idea of a sphere of authority and autonomy." He discusses how they operate here.

featured in #236

The Siren Song Of the ‘User’ Model

- Chelsea Troy tl;dr: The concept of a user "pigeonholes us into ideas that mislead our product direction and corrupt our technical choices." Chelsea notes three fundamental issues with the term "user:" (1) It doesn't describe how someone uses the product - reading, listening, playing, etc... (2) It implies addiction or manipulation (3) Inevitably screws the data model. Chelsea highlight this with examples.

featured in #235

Product Management in the Age of Hybrid Teams

tl;dr: "Working on a fully distributed team isn’t the asynchronous collab disaster I once thought it might be... It's actually a blessing in disguise." New to managing a distributed team? We have a new way of thinking for you.

featured in #234

Choosing Your North Star Metric

- Lenny Rachitsky tl;dr: Lenny surveyed current and past employees at over 40 of today’s most successful growth-stage companies to compile a table of the metrics commonly used. He also has a a framework for choosing a north star metric based on company type.

featured in #234