1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
🛠️ The Context Matrix
The Context Matrix​Dear Reader,​ Every level of product management involves two areas: creating context and making sense of it. While creating the context partially depends on the environment you work in, making sense of the context mainly depends on the hard skills a product team has. For Product Strategy, the context consists of internal and external data points about the market, your capabilities, how you plan to differentiate, your mission, and long-term goals. Making sense of it means forming the right relationships between these areas, making choices, and communicating and executing these the right way. For setting Product OKRs, the context contains inputs such as the purpose/mission/vision, Product Strategy, Company OKRs, and Roadmaps. Making sense of these means identifying KRs that capture the product from as many angles as possible, describing changes in behavior (Outcomes), and allowing the team to adjust their actions (leading indicators). The context of Product Discovery results from defined goals and strategic priorities, as well as existing qualitative and quantitative insights about your customers. Making sense requires creating a narrative around the problem space, prioritizing the right research questions and interpreting insights, ideating solutions based on proven challenges, and validating before building. Thank you for practicing Product, ​Tim​ What did you think of this week's newsletter?
As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
Product Practice #412 Case Study: How to Develop Your Product Vision Collaboratively (Part 2) PUBLISHED Jun 11, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, You can find part 1 of this series from last week here. Where to Collaborate Broadly Inspiring everyone does not mean your vision needs to be decided by committee, and everyone needs to be pleased. For Victoria, walking this line meant inviting contributions from the full team during an in-person team retreat, but creating a smaller core group...
Product Practice #411 Case Study: How to Develop Your Product Vision Collaboratively (Part 1) PUBLISHED Jun 4, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, This is the first part of a multi-post series on the real-life journey of a product team on re-vitalizing their Product Vision collaboratively. Product vision isn't a technical deliverable — it's an emotional statement that focuses your team and clarifies your work. Which makes how you approach its creation almost as important as the artifact...
Product Practice #410 The Side of Evidence-Based Working Nobody Trains PUBLISHED May 29, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO From Strategy to Derisked Assumptions Workshop Make clear strategy choices, translate them into leading product goals, and understand needed Discovery actions before deciding what to build (with and without AI Assistance). Next 3x 4h Workshop Cohort: Jun 15/16/17 Claim your Free Spot Dear Reader, Whenever I have the privilege to work with a company, the shift to more evidence-based...