Software Product Management

Contents

1. Business Model
2. User Research and Ideation
3. User Experience & Requirements
4. Minimum Viable Product
1. 4.1. Introduction to Minimum Viable Product
2. 4.2. Prioritization Methods
5. User Testing, Risk Management, and Roadmap
6. Metrics

Last updated on 26.05.2022.

Business Model

Introduction to Business Models

What does a business model describe for a company?
- all the parts of the company necessary to create, deliver and capture the value
What are the nine building blocks of the business model canvas?
- Customer Segments
- Value Propositions
- Channels
- Customer Relationships
- Revenue Streams
- Key Resources
- Key Activities
- Key Partnerships
- Cost Structure

Customer Segments

What is a customer job?
- describe the things that customers are trying to get done in work or life
What is a functional job? Describe the functional jobs of Amazon’s customers.
- perform or complete a specific task or solve a specific problem
- buy things online
What is a social job? Describe the social jobs for Apple’s customers.
- customer wants to look good or gain power or status. how do customers want to be perceived by others
What is an emotional job? Describe the emotional jobs of Netflix’s customers.
- seek a specific emotional state, such as feeling good or secure
What supporting jobs do you know?
- Buyer: performs jobs related to buying, such as comparing offers, deciding which products to buy, performing a purchase, or taking delivery of a product or service.
- Co-Creator: performs jobs related to co-creating value with the organization, such as co-designing a product or solution or even creating part of the value proposition.
What are customer pains? Name at least three types of customer pains.
- Anything that annoys your customers before, during, and after trying to get a job done or simply prevents them from getting a job done.
- Obstacles: things prevent customers from even getting started with a job or that slow them down.
- Risks: what could go wrong and have important negative consequences
Customer gains
- Required gains: gains without which a solution wouldn’t work.
- Expected gains: relatively basic gains that we expect from a solution
- Desired gains: gains that go beyond what we expect from a solution but would love to have if we could
- Unexpected gains: gains that go beyond customer expectations and desires
What does the Kano Model show?
- an approach to prioritizing features on a product roadmap based on the degree to which they are likely to satisfy customers
Name at least three markets.
- Mass Market
- Niche Market
- Segmented Market
- Diversified Market
What are the differences between niche and mass markets?
- mass market doesn’t distinguish between different types of customers, while the niche market caters to specific, specialized types of customers

Value Proposition

What is the value proposition?
- is the reason why customers turn to your company over another
What are products and services? What products and services does Facebook offer?
- a list of what you offer
  - physical/tangible
  - intangible
  - digital
  - financial
What are pain relievers? What are Netflix’s pain relievers?
- how exactly do your products and services alleviate specific customer pains
What are gain creators? What are Amazon’s gain creators?
- how your products and services create customer gains
Name at least five ways how value can be produced.
- newness
- performance
- customization
- getting the job done
- design
- brand/status
- price
- cost reduction
- accessibility
- convenience/usability
- risk reduction
What is the product-market fit?
- the value map (products & services, gain creators, pain relievers) -> customer profile (gains, pains, customer jobs)
What are existing markets? What are re-segmented markets?
- the market is known, the customer wants faster/better/cheaper products/services, often technology-driven, red ocean
- finding a new segment within the existing market, niche, low-cost provider, blue ocean
What are the differences between new and clone markets?
- New: customer & products do not exist yet, the value proposition is brand new, blue ocean
- Clone: copy and paste a business model of another market to a local market
What is “The Chasm” in the technology adoption lifecycle?
- gap: people need time to figure out the product’s benefits

Channels

What are the five channels phases?
- Awareness
- Evaluation
- Purchase
- Delivery
- After-Sales
What is the customer conversion funnel for a digital product? How is it different from the one for a physical product?
- only two steps to get customers
- no un-blunding sell
- has next-sell
What are the differences between direct and indirect channels?
- direct: channels owned or operated by the organization
- indirect
  - digital: platform, 2-step distribution, aggregator, social commerce, flash sales
  - physical: OEM, system integrator, value-added reseller, distributor, dealer, retailer
Name at least three indirect channels for digital products.
- as above

Customer Relationships

What kinds of customer relationships exist?
- transactional
- self-service
- communities
- personal assistance
- dedicated personal assistance
- long-term
What kind of customer relationships does Amazon use? What about Swedbank?
- Amazon: self-service & personal assistance
- Swedbank: transactional & self-service & personal assistance & dedicated personal assistance

Key Activities

What are key activities?
- the most important tasks/activities a company must do to make its business model work
What are production activities? Give an example of a company that does that.
- designing, manufacturing, and delivering a product in substantial quantities and of superior quality
- manufacturing firms
What are problem-solving activities? Give an example of a company that does that.
- new solutions to individual customer problems
- consultancies, hospitals
What are platform/network activities? Give an example of a company that does that.
- Business models designed with a platform as a Key Resource are dominated by platform or network related Key Activities
- eBay, visa

Key Partners

What are key partners?
- the network of suppliers and partners that make the business model work
What are the motivations to partner up?
- reduction of risk or uncertainty
- acquisition of resources and activities
- more value to customers <-> attracting new customers
Give an example of strategic alliances.
- non-competitors
- Spotify and uber
Give an example of joint business ventures.
- automation drive

Key Resources

What are key resources?
- the most important assets
What are physical resources? Which companies use those and how?
- manufacturing facilities, buildings, vehicles, machines, systems, point-of-sales systems, distribution networks
- large retailers, manufacturing firms
What are intellectual property resources? Which companies use those and how?
- brands, proprietary knowledge, patents and copyrights, partnerships, customer databases
- Nike, Google buying Motorola’s patent portfolio
What are human resources? Which companies use those and how?
- people
- Google, Apple, development
- Pfizer, pharmaceuticals, research, and salesforce
What are financial resources? Which companies use those and how?
- cash, lines of credit, stock option pool

Cost Structure

What does cost structure describe?
- the costs for operating the business model
What is a cost-driven cost structure? Which companies use it?
- focus on minimizing costs wherever possible
- Ryanair, dollarama
What is a value-driven cost structure? Which companies use it?
- are less concerned with the cost implications of a particular business model design, and instead focus on value creation
- Hyatt, Patek Philippe
What are economies of scope, and how different are they from the economies of scale?
- Economies of scope: causes the average cost of producing something to decrease as the volumes increase
  - the higher the volume, the lower the overall cost per unit
- Economies of scale: factors that affect the cost of producing different but compatible products together as opposed to producing them separately
  - the reduction of costs when a business invests in multiple markets or a larger scope of operations
What are fixed costs?
- rent, salaries, facilities
What are variable costs?
- product materials, commissions

Revenue Streams

What do revenue streams describe?
- the cash that the company generates from its business model
What is asset sales and what are the examples of them?
- selling ownership rights of a physical product
- online shopping
What is the usage fee and how different is it from the subscription fee?
- generated by the use of a particular service
- by usage vs. by time
What is lending and what are the examples of it?
- temporarily granting someone the exclusive right to use a particular asset for a fixed period in return for a fee
- car lending
What is the brokerage fee?
- derives from intermediation services performed on behalf of two or more parties
Which companies use advertising as their revenue streams?
- Facebook

Business Model Canvas

Name at least three business model patterns.
- The Long Tail
  - Democratization of production tools: online publishing
  - Democratization of distribution: new platforms
  - Drastic lower costs of search (connect demand to supply): search and recommendation engines, user ratings
- Two-sided Market
  - Challenges
    - chicken-egg problem
    - double-company problem
- Freemium
What is an open business model? Give an example of a company that uses it.
- In open business models, collaboration with partners in the ecosystem becomes a central source of value creation. Companies pursuing an open business model actively search for novel ways of working together with suppliers, customers, or complementors to open and extend their business.
- fashion industry
What is a freemium business model? Give an example of a company that uses it.
- The basic version of an offering is given away for free in the hope of eventually persuading the customers to pay for the premium version
- Spotify

User Research and Ideation

Human-Centered Design

What is human-centered design?
- the needs of people + the possibilities of technology + the requirements for success
Where does the human-centered design start?
- Product desirability
What is design thinking and which pattern does it follow?
- thinking as customer (jobs, pains, gains)
- how getting your hands dirty during the research phase can lead to better, more inclusive products
- inspiration -> ideation -> implementation
- five phases: empathise -> define -> ideate -> prototype -> test -> empathise
What is the double-diamond technique?
- Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver

Ideation Techniques

What is ideation?
- is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract
What are the starting points for new product innovation?
- starting with the problem, understand the problem
- how is the problem solved today
- user hacks
What are the starting points for innovating existing products?
- product feedback: review, usability feedback
Name at least four ideation techniques.
- brainstrom, braindump, brainwrite, brainwalk
- worst possible idea
- challenge assumptions
- mind map
- creative pause
What are the basic principles of brainstorming?
- defer judgment: don’t point fingers when bad ideas are presented

User Research Methods

Why do we do user research?
- we don’t want to produce something nobody wants
- we need to understand better what people need
What are focus groups and how to work with them?
- is a group of deliberately selected people who participate in a facilitated discussion to obtain consumer perceptions about a particular topic or area of interest
- define the purpose of the group -> held in an environment that is non-threatening and receptive, allowing members to interact and influence each other -> predetermined questioning route/interview guide/protocol
What are interviews and how to work with them?
- can be defined as a qualitative research technique which involves “conducting intensive individual interviews with a small number of respondents to explore their perspectives on a particular disa, program or situation”
- in person, by phone, by web or email
- types of interviews: structured, semi-structured, unstructured
What are surveys and how to work with them?
- is defined as a research method used for collecting data from a pre-defined group of respondents to gain information and insights on various topics of interest
- online, mail, telephone, in-person
- types of questions: dichotomous, multiple choice, checkbox, rating scale, Likert scale, matrix, demographic
What is social media listening and how to work with it?
- is the monitoring of your brands social media channels for any customer feedback and direct mentions of your brand or discussions regarding specific keywords, topics, competitors, or industries, followed by an analysis to gain insights and act on those opportunities
- FAQ, common issues, what customer loves, key SM customers, positive/negative mentioning

User Research - The Mom Test

What is The Mom Test?
- How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business is a Good Idea when Everyone is Lying to You
- People lie. Actions don’t
What are the golden rules of The Mom Test?
- Talk about their life instead of your idea
- Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
- Talk less and listen more
Give examples of at least three good questions, according to The Mom Test.
- What else have you tried?
- How are you dealing with it now?
- Why do you bother?
- What are the implications of that?
- Talk me through the last time that happened
- Talk me through your workflow
- Who else should I talk to?
- Is there anything else I should have asked?
Examples of bad questions, according to The Mom Test.
- Would you use…?
- Do you think this product will be popular?
- Would you buy a product which did X?
- How much would you pay for X?
- Do you think it’s a good idea?

User Experience & Requirements

User Stories

What is a requirement?
- requirement as a representation of the customer’s need based on understanding what real value the need can bring to the customer
What is Zackman’s framework used for?
- is an enterprise ontology and is a fundamental structure for Enterprise Architecture which provides a way of viewing an enterprise and its information systems from different perspectives, and showing how the components of the enterprise are related
What is the form of a user story?
- As a, I wantso that
Why do we write user stories?
- Make you think (converse) about what you’re building from the end-user’s perspective
- Lend themselves to prioritization
- Can be added to, modified, or deleted throughout the development process
- Capture discrete actions/functionality
- Can help with planning people’s work
- Reduce upfront planning time: you only get stuck into details when you start working on the story
What are the rules for writing user stories?
- Definition of “Done”
- Outline subtasks or tasks
- User personas
- Ordered Steps
- Listen to feedback
- Time

Writing User Stories

What is INVEST?
- a simple guide to writing meaningful User Stories
What are the components of INVEST?
- Independent
- Negotiable
- Valuable
- Estimable
- Small
- Testable
What is the GRIMM framework?
- used to give a comprehensive overview of the 13 most common quality issues present in user stories
Name at least five rules for user stories of the GRIMM framework and explain them.
- Well-formed
- Atomic
- Minimal
- Conceptually sound
- Problem-oriented
- Unambiguous
- Conflict-free
- Full-sentence
- Estimatable
- Unique
- Uniform

Acceptance Criteria

What are the acceptance criteria?
- are a formalized list of requirements that ensure that all user stories are completed, and all scenarios are taken into account
- specify conditions under which a user story is fulfilled
Why do we write acceptance criteria?
- To define boundaries
- To reach a consensus
- To serve as a basis for tests
- To allow for accurate planning and estimation
What are the types of acceptance criteria?
- Rule-oriented: in the form of a list
- Scenario-oriented: in the form of scenarios that illustrate each criterion
For a user story, “As a conscious buyer, I want to see the product’s ingredients so that I can make more informed decisions about my purchases”, write:
- Rule-oriented acceptance criteria
  - Provide details button under product pic
  - Details show as a expanded section once the user clicks the button
  - Details section provide an ingredients table of the product
- Scenario-based acceptance criteria
  - Given: The user has navigated to the product page
  - When: The user click the details button
  - Then: The page shows a details section, containing the product’s ingredients table

Introduction to User Experience

What is UX?
- person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system, or service
- how you feel about every interaction you have with what’s in front of you in the moment you’re using it
What are the seven characteristics of good UX?
- Useful: your content should be original and fulfill a need
- Usable: must be easy to use
- Findable: if you have to think too much about how to find what you need, the UX is lacking
- Credible: ability of the user to trust in the product that you’ve provided
- Desirable: image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
- Accessible: content needs to be accessible to people with, for instance disabilities
- Valuable: deliver value to the business which creates it and to the user who buys or uses it

User Flow

What is the user flow?
- is a series of steps taken by a specific user to achieve their goals
- User Flows are the deliverables visualizing the complete path that users follow across the whole solution
Why can creating user flow be useful?
- Quick overview - see the big picture
- Brief new employers
- Understanding the connection of the modules

UX Heuristics

What are UX heuristics?
- a heuristic is a fast and practical way to solve problems or make decisions
Name at least five UX heuristics and give examples of them.
- Meet the user’s needs
- Have a clear hierarchy
- Less is more - Apple website - learn more button
- Use simple language - Are you sure? -> Yes
- Typography is powerful - Medium
- Confirm before you commit - permanently erase the hint
- Visibility of system status - status bar, loading, empty state
- Match between system and real-world - recycle bin icon, calculator
- Use control and freedom - Undo button, end navigation, recover deleted files
- Recognition rather than recall - search recommendation

UX Mapping

What is a user experience map?
- is a mirror (often visualization) to the user interactions within your products/services
Why can the customer journey map be useful?
- Create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company
- Refocus your company (from inbound to outbound perspective)
- Create a new target customer base
What is empathy mapping?
- A tool used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user
- It externalizes user knowledge in order to
  - create a shared understanding
  - aid in decision making
What is service blueprinting?
- A visualization of the relationships between different service components - people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes - that are directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey

Dark Patterns

What are dark patterns?
- tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to
Name at least five dark patterns and give examples of them.
- Bait and switch: the user thinks that her/his action will have one outcome, but instead, a completely different, some undesirable outcomes occur
  - Windows 7 -> Windows 10 update
- Confirmshaming: making the user into opt into something by shaming them if they don’t
  - Sign up + save! Nah, I like paying full price
- Disguised ads: tactics when advertising banners are displayed as the rest of the content or navigation - buttons, sliders, registration. Their main role is to confuse users and get them to click on the ad.
  - The download now button
- Forced continuity: this pattern occurs when your free trial with a service ends, and you quietly get charged without warning
  - Click to Try … Free ($9.99 per month after 30 days)
- Friend spam: when social services get access to your contact list, and use this information for their own benefit.
  - Linkedin
- Intentional Misdirection: when product creators try to guide users to an option that will result in more business value for the company
  - 10% donation of ZSL to support wildlife
- Privacy Zuckering: making the user share more personal information than they really intended to
  - Facebook - adding a phone number
- Sneak into the basket: pattern consists of an extra item being snuck into a user cart during online shopping
  - sports direct dot com
- Roach Motel: when a website or app makes it hard to opt out, such as deleting an account or unsubscribing from a mailing list
  - stamps dot com
- Tricky questions: based on using confusing language (such as a double negative) in questions
  - …, but if you do not wish to receive these updates, please tick this box.
- https://darkpatterns.org

Modern Users

What is meant by saying that modern users are lazy?
- “Nobody” reads - we want easy fast, simple UX, enabling users to be productively lazy in new and useful ways
What is meant by saying that modern users want to know benefits before investing?
- Know the benefit through a direct demo/intro
What is meant by saying that modern users don’t want to make wrong/bad choices?
- Choices - not too few, not too many

Minimum Viable Product

Introduction to Minimum Viable Product

What is an MVP?
- Version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
- A product with juest enough features
  - to satisfy early adopters in the market
  - achieve a product-marktet fit and
  - provide feedback for future product development
Why is it useful to do an MVP?
- Release a product to the market as quickly as possible.
- Test an idea with real users before committing a large budget to the product’s full development.
- Reduce implementation costs.
- Gain valuable insight on what works and what doesn’t work.
- Work directly with your clients and analyze thier behaviours and preferences.
What is the Piecemeal MVP? Give an example.
- to use existing tools and solutions to deliver your product or service.
- literally consists of components from multiple sources which are put together to create the foundation for your product.
- GROUPON
What is the Concierge MVP? Give an example.
- An effective solution by first providing services manually: find people willing to test your service and start analyzing data and selecting samples by hand. Oonce you’ve validated your idea, you can then build an application that collects people’s responses, analyzes the data, and selects matching products automatically.
- Food on the table
What is the Wizard of Oz MVP? Give an example.
- Focuses on creating the impression that your product is the real deal when in reality it’s actually still under development.
- zappos
What is the Single-feature MVP? Give an example.
- An MVP can be the real software with the bare minimum of features, just the core ones needed for verification. with its help, you will be able to narrow down a target group, receive, and analyze feedback and concentrate on testing.
- foursquare

Prioritization Methods

Why do we need to prioritize the features for the MVP?
- It’s easy to produce ideas for features and functionalities, but much harder to decide which to begin with and include.
What are the components of the MoSCoW Model?
- Must-haves
- Should-haves
- Could-haves
- Won’t-and Would-haves
How is RICE score calculated, and what does it show?
- Reach rates how many people each feature will affect within a certain period of time and how many of them will notice the changes.
  - Number of people who will be affected.
- Impact demonstrates how the feature will contribute to the product and how will the project impact your customers.
  - Assess impact as scale such as huge, medium, low or any other scale.
- Confidence shows how I’m sure about all my estimation
  - % - do you have an evidence or just gut feeling?
- Effort is estimated as a number of “person-months”, weeks or hours, depending on needs.
  - person-months/days/weeks to launch the feature
- R * I * C / E
What can a failure of an MVP teach us?
- It’s a learning opportunity
- Customer job
- Communication
- Design

User Testing, Risk Management, and Roadmap

Introduction to User Testing

What is user testing?
- User testing, sometimes also called usability testing, is a process to evaluate a product, feature or a prototype of a product with real users.
Why can user testing be useful?
- Identify problems sooner
- Learn if participants can complete specified tasks successfully
- Identify how long it takes to complete specified tasks
- Identify changes required to improve user performance and satisfaction
- Analyze the performance to see if it meets your usability objectives
Who are superusers?
- who are already familiar with the product
Why do some companies skip user testing?
- No added value, we are the experts
- Random selection of users are not our future users
- We lack the time, funds, or expertise

Types of User Testing

What is moderated user testing? What sub-types of it exist?
- The classic user test set-up. The moderator sits next to the test participant and asks questions.
- lab usability testing, guerilla testing
What is remote moderated user testing? What sub-types of it exist?
- The moderator and test participant are situated in different locations but use a shared screen.
- Phone interviews
What is remote unmoderated user testing? What sub-types of it exist?
- Relying mostly on computer programs, these passive testing methods provide insight into how users interact with a website in their natural environment.
- Session recordings
- 5-sencond test
What other types of testing exist but are not user testing?
- A/B testing
- Focus groups
- surveys
- heat maps
- user acceptance testing
- in-house user testing

How to Conduct User Testing

What parts does the testing process consist of?
- prepare
- plan
- create script
- recruit participants
- conduct
- evaluate
What are the steps for evaluating the results of user testing?
- define what you’re looking for
- organize the data
- draw conclusions
- prioritize the issues
- compile a report of your results

General Tips

What can you test in UX?
- flow
- to test if users can reach the result
- to see where they get stuck the most, to simplify
- to see if something else (least important) takes their attention
What can you test in UI?
- to see if CTA (call to action) is visible
- to see waht colors/schemes work better (if you test different colors)
Give three examples of questions you can ask during user testing.
- What do you think is possible to do with this product?
- What do you expect to see once you click on the button?
- What is the first thing you notice on the screen?

Introduction to Risk Management

What is a risk?
- the possibility of suffering loss
What is the difference between a risk and a problem?
- risk - possibility
- problem - real

Project Risks

What is project risk?
- Project risks are situations that may or may not happen in the course of developing the product.
What types of project risks exist?
- Schedule risk
- budget risk
- operational risk
- external risk

Product Risks

What is product risk?
- The possibility that the product fails to satisfy end user/customer expectations is known as product risk.
What should you do to minimize the risk of the product not meeting users’ needs and wants?
- what problem does my product solve?
- who has this problem?
- how is your product going to solve this problem?
- how big is this problem?
- how are the people trying to solve this problem now?
What should you do to minimize the risk of poorly defined requirements?
- develop clear, complete, detailed, cohesive, attainable, and testable requirements that are agreed to by all players.
- use prototypes to help nail down requirements.
- in “agile” - type environments (fluid, changing continually), frequent coordination with customers/end users is necessary.
What should you do to minimize the risk of inadequate design?
- insist on approved requirements prior to initiating design.
- provide specifications on design standards.
- allow sufficient time for design activities.
- conduct design reviews.
What should you do to minimize the risk of poor software quality?
- insist on validating requirements and design specifications
- initiate review and testing early on; retest after fixes or changes
- plan for adequate time for testing and bug fixing.
- analyze the causes of errors with the objective of implementing
- process improvements.
What should you do to minimize the risk of base technology not being ready for deployment?
- explore alternate implementation approaches.
- incorporate cost and schedule contingencies into the project baseline

Risk Identification & Measuring

What is risk identification?
- concern + consequence = risk
What is a concern?
- statement of fact - phrase or sentence that concisely describes key pieces of the condition causing concern.
What is a risk statement?
- A risk statement provides the clarity and descriptive information required for a reasoned and defensible assessment of the risks occurrence probability and areas of impact.
How to measure the risk impact?
- minimum, medium, maxiumum
- from 1 to 5/10
- in percentage
How to write a risk statement?
- “Users fail to discover the core features of the app, therefore do not find value in it and churn.”

Risk Mitigation & Tracking

What is risk acceptance?
- this strategy is a common option when the cost of other risk management options such as avoidance or limitation may outweigh the cost of the risk itself.
What is risk avoidance?
- it is the action that avoids any exposure to the risk whatsoever. It’s important to note that risk avoidance is usually the most expensive of all risk mitigation options.
What is risk transference?
- risk transference is the involvement of handing risk off a willing third party.
What is risk reduction?
- this strategy limits a company’s exposure by taking some action. It is a strategy employing a bit of risk acceptance along with a big of risk avoidance or an average of both.
What are the steps for tracking risks?
- assign risks to team members
- nor more that 2 risks/person
- person become responsible for tracking “their” risks

Software Development Lifecycle Methodologies

What is the software development lifecycle?
- is a process used by the software industry to design, develop, and test high-quality software.
What are the principles of the Waterfall methodology?
- systems are developed in a sequential process
- all requirements are determined up front, with the dual assumptions that they can all be known up front, and that they are and will remain unchanging
- analysis is done once and precedes design
- design is done once and precedes coding
- all coding is done once and precedes testing and integration
- all testing is done once and precedes operational use
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Waterfall methodology?
- advantages
  - easy to understand and functional
  - simple enough to handle as model is rigid
  - saves a significant amount of time
  - allow for easy testing and analysis
- disadvantages
  - only matches precise needs
  - not applicable for maintenance projects
  - no option to know the possible outcome of a project
  - not excellent for long and ongoing projects
What are the principles of the Agile methodology?
- individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- working software over comprehensive documentation
- customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- responding to change over following a plan
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Agile methodology?
- advantages
  - an adaptive approach that responds to changes favorably
  - allows for direct communication to maintain transparency
  - improved quality by finding and fixing defects quickly and identifying expectation mismatches early
- disadvantages
  - focuses on working with software and lacks documentation efficiency
  - chances of getting off-track as the outcome are not clear

Roadmap

What is a product roadmap?
- A roadmap is high-level visual summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product, often over time. A roadmap communicates the “why” behind what you’re building. It’s plan for your strategy.
What components does a product roadmap have?
- strategic vision
- product goals
What formats of product roadmaps exist?
- timeline-based roadmap
- roadmap without dates
- kanban-style roadmap

Metrics

Introduction to Product Metrics

Why do we use metrics?
- What gets measured gets managed (improved).
What are vanity metrics?
- Vanity metrics are numbers/statistics that look nice but have no real meaning.
What are actionable metrics?
- Actionable metrics are numbers/statistics connected to specific and repeatable tasks you can improve.

The Pirate Funnel

What is The Pirate Funnel?
- It is a framework to understand the the complete funnel of a company and to fund opportunities for growth hacking.
What is Awareness in The Pirate Funnel?
- Getting people to visit your website.
- Triggering visitors to come visit your website.
How can you measure Awareness?
- Impressions: number of times your ad or content has been displayed on a screen.
- Click-through rate (CTR): (clicks / impressions) * 100% = CTR%.
- Average cost-per-click (CPC): the average charge per click.
- Attention-minutes: tracking the time a user is actively consuming your content.
- Site visits (traffic)
- First site visits: how many find your website (traffic source) and how engaged they are.
- Brand-awareness surveys
What is Acquisition in The Pirate Funnel?
- Getting them to sign up.
- Showing your core value and persuading them to sign up.
How can you measure Acquisition?
- Conversion rate: people that complete an action / people that start an action
- New leads
- Email subscribers
- Resource downloads
- Support/sales chats
What is Activation in The Pirate Funnel?
- Users get a great first user experience.
- Giving users a great first user experience. Make sure they hit the WOW moment fast and smoothly.
How can you measure Activation?
- Activation rate: Activated / Acquired
Give an example of Activation for Netflix’s users.
- Netflix found that users who selected their favorite TV shows/movies were more likely to use Netflix again, so they suggested you build your taste profile at the beginning.
What is Retention in The Pirate Funnel?
- Making sure users come back.
- Making sure users come back through hooks, features, and customer happiness.
What are the differences between Customer Retention Rate and Customer Churn Rate?
- CRR: customer regularly coming back for your product.
- CCR: customers stop using the product (discontinue usage).
How is the Customer Retention Rate calculated?
- CRR: (Number of customers at the end of the period - Number of new customers during the period) / Number of customers at the start of the period * 100%.
How is the Customer Churn Rate calculated?
- CCR: (customers at the end of the period - new customers during the period) / customers at the start of the period * 100%.
Why is the Customer Retention/Churn important?
- Churn rate is a good indicator of good product/market fit.
- We want the churn rate to be lower than customer acquisition rate
  - Customer Acquisition > Customer Churn = Growth
  - Customer Churn > Customer Acquisition = Burning money
- It is 5-25 times more expensive to get new customers than retaining (keep) existing ones.
What is Referral in The Pirate Funnel?
- Getting users to invite others.
- Leveraging natural or artificial virality. Incentivizing people to share.
What is the Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
- On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommendto a friend or colleague?
What should be considered when calculating NPS?
- Target persona: power user or new user?
- Context: restaurant for fast food or romantic dinner?
- Culture: Brazil or Estonia?
- Sample Size: margin of error
- Mood: happy or frustrated?
What is the Viral Coefficient?
- They number of new users an existing user generates.
- Viral Coefficient: invitation sent per user * average conversion rate of those invitations.

Customer Acquisition Cost

What is Customer Acquisition Cost?
- CAC is the cost of you getting a potential customer to buy your product.
What data is needed for calculating the CAC?
- Define the time period
- How much spent on marketing and sales
- How many new customers
What is the formula for calculating the CAC?
- CAC: Total amount spent on marking and sales to get the new customers / Total number of new customers

Customer Lifetime Value

What is Customer Lifetime Value?
- CLV is the revenue you earn from a customer during their lifetime as a customer.
What data is needed for calculating CLV?
- Annual profit contribution per customer
- Average number of years they remain customers
- Customer acquisition cost
What is the formula for calculating the CLV?
- Profit * Years - CAC
What should be the ratio of CAC and CLV?
- CLV:CAC = 3:1

North Star Metric

What is North Star Metric?
- The North Start Metric is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to the customers.
What would be a good NSM for:
- Amazon: Orders created.
- Netflix: Video watched.
- Wikipedia: Page visited.

OKRs & KPIs

What are OKRs?
- Objectives and key results: a simple tool to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals.
What are KPIs?
- Key performance indicator.
What are the differences between OKRs and KPIs?
- OKR: ambitious goals, KPI: attainable goals
- OKR: qualitative nature, KPI: quantitative nature
- OKR: motivation tool, KPI: a performance evaluation tool
- OKR: growth-oriented, KPI: output-oriented