Product Practice #331 What does it taketo talk to customers? READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Aug 30, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 29 sec Dear Reader, Together with my friends at Orbital (a company I advise), I recently ran a LinkedIn poll about user interview behaviors. My goal was to get a rough overview of how product teams approach preparing customer interactions. Hereās what I learned from the 320 total votes: Who schedules your customer interviews? Most (55%) of participants schedule interviews...
11 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Product Practice #330 The Problem with 0-1 Metrics READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Aug 23, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 51 sec Dear Reader, Scaling Product Discovery requires more than just having teams talk to more users. In fact, just having teams interview more users without structure and some baseline education might do more harm than good. Hereās what I took away from training over 30 product trios at The StepStone Group: #1 Educate Cross-functional, wherever possible It doesnāt make sense to...
18 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Product Practice #329 The Problem with 0-1 Metrics READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Aug 16, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 18 sec Dear Reader, Welcome back! I hope you had (or still have) a relaxed or eventful (whatever your preference is) summer. I enjoyed the time off and being in places that filled me up. Among others, the baltic see. Which is where I captured one of my favorite summer shots: Before we jump into today's issue, I want to share three things from friends that I believe you should be...
25 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Product Practice #328 My 2024 Mid-Year Review READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 28, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 20 sec This is the last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will return on August 16th after next week's issue. In the meantime, follow me on LinkedIn for more hands-on content. āļø Dear Reader, I first encountered the concept of a mid-year review via Tiago Forte a few years back. After I published 7 Things I Learned from Writing a Weekly Product Management Newsletter for...
2 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Product Practice #327 How Product Leaders CanGuide Their Team's OKRs READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 21, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 51 sec This is the second-to-last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will return on August 16th after next week's issue. āļø For the scope of this essay, I will define Product Leaders as members of a Product Management function with people management responsibilities (e.g., Director of Product, Head of Product, VP of Product, etc.). Product leaders...
3 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Product Practice #326 4 Learnings fromWorking on 40 NSMs READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 14, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 0 sec Dear Reader, During an ongoing long-term Discovery and Metrics Coaching engagement, I had the opportunity to meet many different external and internal-facing teams. One of this companyās focus points is the establishment of more metrics-informed decision-making, and they landed on North Star Metrics (NSMs) as a critical vehicle for that. Here are my four key takeaways...
3 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Product Practice #325 I asked 5 CPOs what a Product is. Hereās what they said. (Part 2) READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 7, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 45 sec Dear Reader, This is the sequel to last weekās newsletter. You can catch-up by re-reading it here. What is a Product? Arne Kittler, Product Org Consultant & Fractional Leader, ex-CPO at Facelift It can make sense to differentiate the external from the internal perspective even though they ideally lead to the same result. Let me explain:...
3 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Product Practice #324 I asked 5 CPOs what a Product is. Hereās what they said. (Part 1) READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 31, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 1 sec Dear Reader, Owning and improving product practices and effective team topologies requires a shared understanding of what you actually mean when you say the word āproduct.ā These domains are not called Product xyz because they are done solely by Product Managers. They are called this way because they are in service of bringing products to...
3 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Product Practice #323 What Should Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery Allow You To Do? READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 24, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 54 sec Dear Reader, Itās tempting to focus the process of practicing Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery on technical correctness. Does the Objective not have a number? Cool! Do you interview one customer per week? Great - Letās move on. But thatās a pattern of Alibi Progress: prioritizing technical correctness over everyday value. Whenever these ways of...
4 months agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read