The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  Let’s face it, we all have naysayers in our organizations. Naysayers are strong influencers who object no matter what, think they have a better idea, or believe an alternative option is the right path. And sometimes that alternative path won’t be one of the primary options already being considered and analyzed. It happens. And some of these influential naysayers can derail the decision process. These folks have to be addressed to get broad commitment. But there’s hope. We ..read more

This is for any product person that has felt the frustration of overturned or unnecessarily delayed product decisions. We’ve all been there. Check it out. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin. Buy it now from Amazon. Your job as a product person is to be a thought leader and to execute effectively. It’s a unique challenge that only a few functional roles within a company experience. As product leaders, we must influence and gain commitment across multiple functions and leaders; and usually, none of them report dire ..read more

In this excerpt we focus on how our practice of Scrappy Research dramatically changes the time-to-value for research and therefore the efficiency of the overall product creation process; making confident decisions quickly and often. For more on how to establish a practice in Scrappy Research, pick up the book! The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin. Buy it now from Amazon. Scrappy research is a practice that turns product managers into great leaders. Let’s talk about some reasons why. Scrappy Research Prevents a Sign ..read more

This excerpt provides a little glimpse into how we’ve gotten our extended teams working in unison by expanding the access and participation in customer research. There’s lots more where this comes from! Take a look. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  Your job as a product leader is to infuse customer insights into the broader team’s work, not just present the personas. As a reminder, a persona is a user archetype created based on your research that represents how someone might use your service, product, si ..read more

As a follow on to our last blog post, we wanted to provide an excerpt that revealed how to identify the areas of the business for which you need to formulate hypotheses in order to test and build confidence in your product direction or pivot where you need to earlier rather than later. Check this out. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  As product leaders, we spend a lot of time in meetings sharing opinions when we review customer research. We make a lot of assumptions, and we tend to hear what we want to h ..read more

In this excerpt we change the way you think about the formulation of hypotheses to expedite your product creation process. Where we used to think of hypotheses as scientific fodder, our book transforms the definition and formulation of hypotheses into something we can use in our day-to-day product efforts; proving and disproving our assumptions so we can make quick product decisions and continue our forward momentum. Check it out. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  We are constantly inspired with new produ ..read more

This excerpt is for any leader looking for ways to infuse customer learning into everything they’re doing.  We shed a little light on how companies lose focus and go on autopilot with research; where process overshadows actual customer insights and action. Take a look. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  Everything we espouse as professionals is based on understanding the customer. It’s hard to find a company that will tell you that they don’t want to hear from customers. And that makes it hard to deve ..read more

As product leaders, the number one issue we see is with the concept of uncovering needs. We all have a tendency to proceed straight to features or solutions because as product leaders, we are problem solvers. But we’re here to ask you to please refrain from this tendency. Instead, pause and take time to articulate a need before jumping to solutions. The following excerpt is from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  Earlier in our work, we worked on developing a fitness app and created the persona (a persona is a user archetype created ba ..read more

Okay product leaders, this excerpt sheds some light on how to create a problem statement that works to focus the team and allow for you to say ‘no’ confidently. Take a look. The following has been excerpted from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin.  Let’s examine what goes into a Convergent Problem Statement. As a reminder, a convergent problem statement clearly describes the most relevant difficulty the customer is dealing with and is stated with no attempt to address possible solutions. We want to clearly define the problem in detail so ..read more

This excerpt is great for any product leader or product manager trying to make more customer-driven decisions that won’t be overturned at the next meeting. One artifact that helps in this plight is the persona. Don’t roll your eyes! There are ways to develop effective personas that drive action for your teams and not just collect dust on a shelf. This excerpt from our book introduces some pitfalls that teams fall into in the development and use of personas. The full book expands on this and more! The following has been excerpted from Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products by Vidya Di ..read more