The “why” behind a team’s operating decisions is one of the most important factors when deciding what to build. Without that information, the team is not set up for agility — or success. — “What should we build next?” is a question that most product teams ask themselves every two weeks. Usually, the answer is focused on outputs: some variation on “the next item at the top of the backlog.” But the product is not merely shipped code. Our outputs are governed by product…

Ideas are cheap. AI is posed to make outputs just as cheap. But without the higher-level feedback loops, your organization’s decision-making will remain a bottleneck to creating value. — A long time ago, the biggest obstacle to success was having the right groundbreaking idea. Today, ideas are cheap — the biggest obstacle is putting in the work to bring one idea to life. But not for much longer. Companies have been trying to drive the costs of delivery down…

Task-oriented user stories lead to bad product decisions because they mix up value with cost. But they are easy to turn into inverted user stories — a tool for thinking bigger. — Since their invention in 1997, user stories have become ubiquitous. The simple format of “as X, I want Y so that I can Z” has helped countless software teams stay focused on the value they are providing for their customers.

When teams take on a stakeholder request to “build my idea” they stop solving problems together and become a workgroup of individuals producing outputs. — There’s a “design thinking” trick. In design thinking, you identify a user, find top problems, and then develop solutions. But what if you have a cool solution idea already? Just define the user as “people who have this problem,” and the problem as “users can’t get my solution.”

Without understanding specifically how a product is hard to use, teams will always fail to provide real value to the customer. — It’s impossible to make every decision top-down and ahead of time. Newly discovered details or changing circumstances require team contributors to make their own decisions — and those decisions need to be coherent in the context of the work as a whole. For that to happen, every team member needs…

“Creating good user experience is not a design problem. It is a power struggle.” –Alan Cooper Despite decades of articles, books, and courses on the topic, the most common design process still looks something like this: a stakeholder tells their designer their idea, and the designer redraws it until the…

“There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” — Camus Why do many high performers report that they are unsatisfied, demotivated, burnt out? The reason is simple: their measurements are not aligned with their goals. Burnout isn’t a result of just working too hard. It’s a result…

A lot of us are used to thinking of job interviews like exams: go in, sit down, answer the questions, and then get graded on the answers. But job interviews are also the only opportunity for you to find out whether the role will be fulfilling, if your contributions will…

If you’re like me and have had to quickly get up to speed on new domains, PACT is a great framework for learning everything a designer needs to know, finding opportunities for research & helping your team identify contradictions in their own mental models. In my design career, new roles…