1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
🛠️ The Context Matrix
The Context MatrixDear 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.
Product Practice #342 The OKR Trap:Reporting vs. Progress READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 12, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 04 sec Dear Reader, Similar to being focused on Discovery motions, but missing Discovery decisions, simply filling in OKR templates will lead to reporting, but not measuring progress. OKRs that report numbers try to get a template-based Objective right and define a Key Result as something with a number. OKRs that measure progress take care of the hard conversations through...
Product Practice #340 How to Navigate Product Discovery Like a Map READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 1, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 51 sec Dear Reader, “We need to complete all six Discovery phases in order." "Let's perfect that JTBD statement before we talk to users." "Our process requires detailed one-pagers before any customer interviews." Does this sound familiar? These are examples of dogmatic defaults: Teams cycling through the same tools in the same order, regardless of context. While...
Product Practice #339 How to predict the future of your OKRs (and why it matters) READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 25, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 32 sec Dear Reader, Ever sat in an OKR review meeting feeling like you're just going through the motions or reporting without meaning? You're not alone. As a Head of Product, I've been there too. But what if I told you there's a way to make your OKRs truly useful for decision-making? Let's dive in. The power of predicting the future One of my favorite...