In the latest episode of "20 Product" with Harry Stebbings, the focus centers on the art of conducting effective product reviews. Scott Belsky, CPO at Adobe, emphasizes the importance of prototyping and contextual understanding of customer experience, advocating for a prototype-driven approach to align teams. Tony Fidel, creator of the iPod, iPhone, and Nest, discusses targeting the right customer and optimizing the product experience. Alpana Chenna Pragada, CPO at Robin Hood, stresses the need for minimum viable process and stage-appropriate reviews, while Lenny Rujitsky highlights the importance of tying reviews back to the core problem being solved. Lastly, Kyvan Bakepool, former head of consumer product at Twitter, shares insights on structuring reviews and the dual role they play for both the team and leadership. Across the board, the experts advocate for clarity, conviction, and customer-centric prioritization in product reviews, particularly in the context of remote work and the abundance of feedback in the digital age.
This is 20 product with me, Harry Stebings. Now, over the last six months, the most common question we've had from thousands of product people listening to the show is on product reviews.
This quote introduces the show "20 Product" and highlights the interest in product reviews among the audience.
The first thing is I deeply, deeply believe in the fact that a prototype is worth 100 meetings.
Scott Belsky emphasizes the value of prototypes in facilitating productive discussions and alignment within teams.
Do they know how they got here? Do they know what to do? Do they know what to do next? If not discuss the object model and what needs to change?
Scott Belsky outlines the critical questions that should be addressed during product reviews to ensure customer clarity and ease of use.
I used to be a fan of being very thoughtful about who's in that meeting.
Scott Belsky describes the selective approach to inviting team members to product reviews, ensuring each phase is focused and productive.
Number one is aligning around the right prototype experience and iterating it until everyone sort of sees the same future.
Scott Belsky discusses the importance of alignment on a prototype for successful prioritization and development.
My trick that I ask myself all the times or not trick, but core question is always around how to optimize for the problems you want to have.
Scott Belsky shares his approach to prioritizing which features to include in a minimum viable product (MVP) and what to defer until later.
Intuition is what brings you to a mountain to climb. Data is what helps you climb it.
Scott Belsky provides an analogy to illustrate the respective roles of intuition and data in product development and decision-making.
"Tell us what you're struggling with. And they're like, oh, well, that's easy. I never get attribution for my work. My portfolio is always out of date."
This quote highlights the importance of directly asking customers about their struggles to uncover their true needs, which can inform the development of a more effective product.
"Who is the audience and what kind of experience are we trying to go for?"
This quote emphasizes the necessity of understanding the target audience and the experience the product is meant to offer as a starting point for product design.
"How are they going to think about thinking like they might think and put your role playing out of like, why did this come up on the screen? I don't understand."
This quote underscores the practice of adopting the customer's perspective to identify potential issues and improvements in the product's design.
"You want a small group and you want the problem solvers in the group, regardless of the organizational hierarchy."
This quote illustrates the need for a focused group of problem solvers in early-stage product reviews, highlighting that organizational hierarchy should not dictate participation.
"Your whisper is heard as a scream, right? You just say, hey, you guys should think about it. And the next thing you know, they've spun up like gigantic effort to say, and like it's a telephone game."
This quote conveys the weight of a senior leader's words and the need for clear communication to ensure that feedback is understood and acted upon appropriately.
"One of the best things I learned from Google, wide eyed, pushy rail, PM taking good meeting notes."
This quote points to the value of meticulous note-taking in managing the information gathered during product reviews and ensuring that important feedback is addressed.
"You had very clear action items. You had specific people, specific things that they had to follow. Discussion, summary, key decisions made. And then on top of it, the twist I put on top of it. Not all action items are made equal to your point."
This quote emphasizes the importance of clarity in meeting outcomes, assigning specific tasks to specific people, and recognizing that not all tasks have the same level of importance. The speaker also mentions adding their own twist by prioritizing the action items.
"One is certainly this stage appropriate review as I call it. Right. Like they do it both ways."
The speaker identifies the mistake of not aligning the review process with the appropriate stage of product development, either by rushing to scalability or lacking a clear agenda.
"We tried a couple of experiments here. One is have two classes of folks."
This quote discusses the adaptation of product review meetings to accommodate remote participation, creating opportunities for learning and observation despite the challenges of not being physically present.
"A lot of times you come to a product review, you're like, oh, check out these great new designs."
The speaker points out a common issue where teams get caught up in the aesthetics of a design rather than focusing on whether it solves the intended problem.
"Generally, the rule of thumb is it should be as small as possible."
The speaker suggests that smaller meetings are more effective and that the participants should be carefully chosen based on their involvement in the project.
"So I'll first give you the what and then I'll give you the why."
The speaker outlines the structure of product reviews, explaining their frequency, format, and the different types of reviews conducted, as well as the dual purpose they serve for both the team and leadership.
"Signs that it's not working well, slow velocity. If the team is just treading water and spinning their wheels."
This quote highlights the symptoms of a product review process that isn't functioning as intended, specifically pointing out slow progress as a key sign of ineffectiveness.
"Another sign is if the team doesn't convey strong conviction. Like oftentimes, teams make the mistake of assuming that they just need to share what they think leadership wants to hear."
This quote emphasizes the problem of teams not showing true conviction in their ideas, instead trying to please leadership, which can hinder progress.
"What I care about is the team has a very strong point of view and it's very easy to kind of smell test whether they do or they don't."
Scott Belsky expresses the importance of a team having and presenting a strong point of view, which is critical for effective product development.
"The way you really tease that out is really pushing the team. Why do you feel this way? Why is this the hypothesis?"
This quote highlights the method of challenging the team to ensure they have thought through their ideas thoroughly and are not just trying to appease leadership.
"I tend to be very passionate and say things with conviction. With 90% of the time I'm saying things with conviction, not because I'm telling the team to do it, I'm just teasing out an idea."
Scott Belsky talks about the personal challenge of ensuring his passionate delivery is not misconstrued as a directive when it's intended as feedback.
"Just repeating to the point of utter repetition and seemingly like, I feel like I'm a broken record here. But just to be clear, this is me not conveying a decision, this is me just asking the question."
This quote shows the lengths to which leadership must go to make sure teams understand the nature of their feedback.
"Your job as a team and as a product manager is to take all that input in and make organization and prioritization out of chaos."
Scott Belsky describes the critical role of product managers in managing feedback and prioritizing tasks effectively.
"We have a huge responsibility when we do product reviews to make sure we are giving clear and not distracting feedback."
This quote points out the responsibility of leadership to give feedback that is helpful and not confusing or contradictory.
"We work on a product that we could launch the most trivial feature and 50% of our customers will be outraged and 50% of our customers will be like, this is amazing."
Scott Belsky illustrates the challenge of dealing with diverse feedback on a widely used product like Twitter.
"After we have the live product review, we have a debrief as a leadership team, 15 minutes debrief where we try and amongst ourselves say, all right, we just talked about a lot of stuff. What's the most useful feedback we can clarify and write down?"
The quote describes a practical approach to distilling feedback into actionable items for the team post-product review.
"I've often read that the best way to learn about a subject is to speak to five or six world leading experts and really unpack how they think about it and find the commonalities in how they do it."
Harry Stebings suggests that learning from multiple experts can yield a comprehensive understanding of a subject.
"Designed specifically for mobile product teams, UX Cam helps build better apps by making user motivations and frustrations loud and clear."
Harry Stebings promotes UXCam as a valuable tool for mobile product teams to understand user needs and improve app functionality.