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. ☀️ 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...
about 1 month ago • 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 company’s 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...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Product Practice #325 I asked 5 CPOs what a Product is. Here‘s 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 week’s 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:...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Product Practice #324 I asked 5 CPOs what a Product is. Here‘s 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 “product.” 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...
about 2 months ago • 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, It’s 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 - Let’s move on. But that’s a pattern of Alibi Progress: prioritizing technical correctness over everyday value. Whenever these ways of...
2 months ago • 4 min read
Product Practice #322 Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 17, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 32 sec 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...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Product Practice #321 MVPs ≠ Experiments READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 10, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 42 sec Dear Reader, Don’t make the mistake of “Let’s test this assumption with an MVP.” I called out MVPs for being too expensive for shortening the lead time towards reducing uncertainty during Product Discovery back in 2017: As Casey Winters defined it, “An MVP is all about delivering value to users by building the smallest product you can to test a hypothesis. You ship to learn, which...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Product Practice #320 Assumptions vs. Experiments vs. Hypotheses READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED May 3, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 48 sec Dear Reader, “Make sure you treat this as an experiment.” “Our working hypothesis is that people want this.” Are any of these familiar? Your team (or the entire organization) might regularly mix up the terms assumptions, experiments, and hypotheses, which can create confusion at best. Let’s clarify what each of these means. An Assumption is a statement about...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Product Practice #319 A Product Coach Walks into a Bar Full of UX Researchers... READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Apr 26, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 01 sec … and says, "I'm looking for actionable insights." The bartender replies, "Well, you're in luck! We serve them straight up, no bias added." (thanks for helping me complete this pun, ChatGPT). Dear Reader, Lately, there has been a lot of (necessary and unnecessary) talk about the collaboration between Product and UX practitioners. Independent but...
3 months ago • 4 min read