Articles of Note
“If you think you’ll see a benefit in 6 months, check back in 6 months, but don’t keep extending the deadline if that customer still isn’t landed. It’s important for you to understand how long it can take to get the benefits you’re predicting. Hold the meeting, record the truth, and then feel free to set up a future date for an optional later retrospective if you think there’s still a chance you’ll get some benefit.”
“In the summer we introduced you to the Eight Pillars of User Research. These eight pillars are the broad areas of User Research. Underneath these pillars sit groups of things that User Researchers or ‘people who do research’ (PWDR) are concerned with. Many of these things are challenges to operationalising research. By understanding these pillars, we can start to think about how to operationalise research in our organisations. We can start to think about where a Research Ops layer might come in.”
by Budi Harto Tanrim (@buditanrim)
“A good design is almost never created by a designer working in a vacuum. We have to work together with the other functions to not only get their buy-in, but their feedback and opinions as well. This helps shake us out of our bias and forces us to look at something from a different perspective. Pumping out designs from the “design” organization alone won’t work. Once we have conversations with other functions and align on what are the important criteria and why, we feel the distribution of design ownership starting to spread.”
by Nikki Anderson
“As companies grow to rely more heavily on user research, we have to keep up with the growing demands. The best way I’ve found to do this is to train the most relevant people on my team to conduct research sessions independently. I’ll host training sessions for designers, product managers and, if they’re interested, developers or data scientists … I have a tried-and-true workshop approach when teaching others how to conduct more tactical research sessions. In general, I always try to have the following agenda and goals in mind.”
“Just because one item in your roadmap has a date, doesn’t mean you should give everything a due date. A timeline on your product roadmap does just this, and that’s why you need to ditch them. Your roadmap is meant to be a human-readable document that communicates your product strategy. If a key date is part of that strategy, write it down. However, the fewer key dates you commit to, the faster and more flexible you can be. That means you have a better chance to outperform your competition and build a better product.”
Worth Another Read
“I rather see the iterative and incremental development as an opportunity to gather, at frequent intervals, feedback… real feedback… rich feedback. Receiving feedback from the team, the customer or of course the users is, according to me the most important element on IT projects. Time to market, value and simplicity are now crucial for most organizations evolving in a highly competitive environment … I am really convinced that we need to adapt our approach, our tools and deliverables for more effective collaboration with other actors involved in IT projects.”
Something for You To Watch
(Sonja Mewes, 29 mins)
“My goal is to promote an individual approach of implementing OKRs over following a one-size-fits-all blueprint. How well OKR works for your organisation doesn’t depend on how rigidly you implement routines or whether you’re able to achieve Google-like success rates for your key results. Instead, the key for using OKRs to encourage outcome thinking in your organisation depends on your willingness to learn and adapt as you move from cycle to cycle.”
(Teresa Torres, 32 mins)
“Teresa advises that product managers should align with stakeholders around the mutually desired outcomes by co-creating ideas together. Stop yourself fixating on the “right” answer, show work early on, and leverage valuable stakeholder expertise.”
ACE! Conference Redux
There were some great sessions at the ACE! Conference this year in Krakow. We think you will find the following of especial interest:
You might like to check out the other sessions too.
Upcoming Events
Mind the Product Engage, 7 February, Manchester
Product Con, 11 February, London
Agile-Lean Ireland, 20-21 April, Dublin
Agile Manchester, 13-15 May, Manchester
ACE! 20-22 May, Kraków
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