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
🛠️ How Product Teams Use Decision Trees to Make Better Choices
Four Decision Tree Frameworks Product Managers Need to Know​Dear Reader,​ As a highly visual thinker, decision trees are one of my favorite ways to support product teams in making real progress and bringing structure to my thinking. Today, I want to share four of my favorite tree structures and use an outside-in view on Eventbrite to illustrate their usage. MECE TreesThe MECE tree structure, invented by legendary McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto, helps product teams break down problems into non-overlapping (Mutually Exclusive) and comprehensive categories (Collectively Exhausting). For example, when Eventbrite’s event creator success tanks, they might separate barriers into platform usage, business success, and support—ensuring no overlap and gaps in their analysis. Metrics Trees​Metrics Trees evolve MECE thinking into trackable metrics, progressing from lagging to leading indicators as you move down the tree. If you have the data, metrics trees can be set up in an algorithmic way. But even if you lack quantitative insights, creating a narrative-driven metrics tree will help you uncover measurement gaps. And while MECE is an excellent ambition for your metrics trees, don’t stress about it. Sometimes, a lower-level metric will link to more than one metric–and that’s ok. At Eventbrite, the tree might start with a lagging metric like quarterly creator revenue, break down into ticket sales performance, and further branch into leading indicators like event creation completion rates that predict future success. Opportunity Solution Trees​Opportunity Solution Trees bridge metrics and solutions. While Metrics Trees tell you what to measure, OSTs guide you on what to build. At Eventbrite, this means connecting creator success metrics to concrete opportunities (like simplifying event creation) and potential solutions (such as intelligent templates). Impact MapsSimilar to OSTs, Impact Maps help teams navigate the connection of problem and solution spaces by connecting high-level business goals to specific solutions and experiments–Highlighting where teams lack evidence to make decisions. Starting with a clear goal (increase creator success by 25%), Eventbrite’s product team might identify key actors (first-time vs. recurring creators), identify needed behavior changes through research, and outline solutions to test. If you have ever benefited from my content, I'd appreciate it if you would share​ this newsletter on LinkedIn. It truly helps. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ Join my In-Person Workshops in BerlinI'm excited to bring my beloved in-person workshops back to Berlin in January 2025. You can choose between 1-day workshops on Product Strategy, Product OKRs, or Product Discovery OR get the full 3-day experience for you or your team.
(reach out for custom team quotes) 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 #424 Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices PUBLISHED Sep 4, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, “Let’s prioritize by value.” Value for whom? That was the question I explored in last week's essay Business Value, Customer Value, and Team Value Are Different Arguments. Today, let's demystify the term value even further. Nothing is inherently valuable. The same opportunity can have different value under different strategies. For that narrative to check out, we need...
Product Practice #423 Business Value, Customer Value, and Team Value Are Different Arguments PUBLISHED Aug 27, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, As long as everyone focused on Value you can't do the wrong work, right? RIGHT? Well, as lovely as that sounds, I believe there's a tremendous amount of misdirected focus on value going on in teams. Let's dive into it. Three questions hide behind "value" in most conversations: Did this move a number the business gets paid on. Did customers change...
Product Practice #422 How to Go from an AI Product Strategy to Quarterly OKRs PUBLISHED Aug 21, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Before we begin: Fixing Your Product Strategy in Real Time Webinar Announcement A live clinic on real product strategies, now that AI makes every value proposition and differentiation sound the same. Come with your real-life questions; leave with answers you can implement immediately. Join for Free Dear Reader, Useful OKR sets stand on the shoulders of high-quality inputs...