Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices​Dear Reader,​ Your Product Strategy is not just a fill-in-the-blanks statement you put on a slide or the canvas you fill out. It’s a powerful tool, the coherent connection of individual patterns and components, that guides your every move, no matter the format in which you display these. BUT, once you have articulated your choices, you can use concise statements to check if you provide an apparent reason to say no to things: Our We distribute Watch for these two things to test the quality and effectiveness of these proving statements:
Don’t start your strategic thinking with these statements to avoid falling for Alibi Strategy. Treat your Strategy like a Product and focus your formats and activities on the value it has to provide. You can keep them in the back of your mind when working on individual parts of your strategy (”Does this align with this statement?” or “Can this be opposed?”). Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Do reply. It's motivating. I'm not a robot; I read and respond to every subscriber email I get (just ask around). If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ How to Dive Deeper into Product StrategyLearn how I helped companies like Chrono24 hone their Product Strategy practices. I closely work with product organizations through workshops and coaching to introduce and adapt Product Strategy.
What did you think of this week's newsletter? As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I identify and share the patterns among better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
Product Practice #354 Stop Looking at Flat Dashboards READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Mar 29, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 06 sec Dear Reader, Jeff Patton explained why flat backlogs don’t work for prioritizing user stories more than 16 years ago: Arranging user stories in the order you’ll build them doesn’t help me explain to others what the system does. Try handing your user story backlog to your stakeholders or users when they ask you the question “what does the system you’re building do?” I...
Product Practice #353 How Duolingo Approaches Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Mar 7, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 24 sec Dear Reader, Many Product Managers were in awe of the ways of working shared in The Duolingo Handbook a few weeks ago. While it’s an inspiring read, I used this as a reason to revisit some of my all-time favorite reads about how this company operates (or at least used to operate) and extract my takeaways with you. Duolingo focuses on “Movable” Metrics...
Product Practice #352 My Digitale Leute Summit 2024 Keynote Recording and Slides READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Feb 28, 2025 READING TIME 1 min & 40 sec Dear Reader, I'm excited to share the full recording of my talk on How Product Teams Can Connect the Dots of Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery from last year's Digitale Leute Summit. You can think of it as the naturally progressing chapter (hint hint) that would follow my talk from Product at Heart 2024. As always, I won't require you, as an...