Tag Archives: product development

October 11

What you could learn ‘Escaping the Build Trap’ by Melissa Perri (2018, 168 pages)

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Nobody ever won a race by running the fastest in the wrong direction. This is one of my favourite mantras that I return to often. When I take on a new role or position, or build a new product – taking some time to observe and orientate before I acted has always enabled me to […]

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January 25

What you can learn from ‘Decode and Conquer’ by Lewis C. Lin (2013, 202 pages)

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In his book ‘Decode and Conquer’, Lewis breaks down the separate roles of the Product Owner. His advice includes: Have a clear set of criteria for design (he likes Dieter Rams), these should be three of four criteria that you use to evaluate other/your designs The CIRCLES method of analysing design Comprehend situation (what, who, why, when, where and […]

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January 25

What you could learn from ‘Lean vs. Agile vs. Design thinking’ by Gothelf & Seiden (2017, 39 pages)

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Modern product development is rife with frameworks and philosophies. Many books and articles attempt to provide their own interpretation, mainly to sell books. In their book ‘Lean vs. Agile vs. Design, the authors do a great job in explaining the basics of each, and providing a good list of recommendations. The diagram below from Gartner […]

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January 15

What you could learn from Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh (2018, 299 pages)

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In their book, Reid and Chris argue that blitzscaling is a general framework and specific techniques that allow companies to achieve massive scale at incredible speed. The authors use examples of Airbnb, Google, Uber, Zappos and Tencent (among others) to bring their frameworks to life and rienforce thier asertions. The main tenant of blitzscaling is […]

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November 16

How to scale (2 of 5) – Product team structure

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Welcome to the second part of my ‘How to scale’ series (you can find part 1 here). One of the first objectives when thinking about structuring your product teams is to ensure that Product is separated from Core engineering.  The core engineering team can then focus on creating architecture that can scale, and services that can […]

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November 01

What does a product leader do?

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Product leaders delight customers in hard-to-copy, margin-enhancing ways.  Gibson Biddle, VP Product Netflix   In my experience product leaders (PL, may also be called product owner or managers) lead the teams that build amazing experiences for customers.  PL’s understand existing and target customers, the companies strategic context and then translate this into a prioritised list of […]

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June 29

What you could learn from ‘Code Complete’ by Steve McConnell (2004, 853 pages)

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In an age where Netflix and Spotify are held up as paragons of software development, what can a fourteen-year-old Microsoft book tell you about building software?  Actually, quite a lot. The Agile framework (manifesto and principles) and Agile practices (Scrum, XP) are useful precisely because they are lightweight and easy to remember.  Where should you […]

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December 15

How to grow your start-up, product or company – what you could learn from ‘Hacking Growth’ by Sean Ellis (2017, 276 pages)

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How did companies like DropBox, Airbnb and Facebook attract many more customers than their competitors?

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November 17

What you could learn from ‘How Google Tests Software’ by James Whittaker (2012, 235 pages)

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Google is one of the companies that are building and maintaining software at scale.  While many of Google’s applications are not life-critical, the world certainly notices any disruption.  These disruptions are surprisingly rare, given the number of products, the quantity of code and the sheer number of developers.

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October 05

What could you learn from ‘The mom test’ by Rob Fitzpatrick (2013, 133 pages)

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How do you get detailed, insightful and unbiased feedback?  In his book ‘The mom test’, Rob sets out three rules that will you get user testing right. The Mom Test Talk about their life instead of your idea Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future Talk less and listen more   The […]

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September 15

What you could learn from ‘Product Leadership’ (2017, 209 pages)

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How do companies produce products and services customer want?  The book ‘Product Leadership’ suggests that the key is to build empowered and autonomous teams, lead by product leaders.

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