Product Management Mental Models for Everyone

Authors

Brandon Chu

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Top Highlights

• The confidence you have in i) the importance of the problem your solving, and ii) the correctness of the solution you’re building, should determine how much you’re willing to trade off speed and quality in a product build

• Return on Investment

• Time value of shipping

• Product shipped earlier is worth more to customers than product shipped at a later time.

• Time Horizon

• Expected Value

• Instead, all decisions create probabilities of multiple future outcomes. The probability-weighted sum of these outcomes is the expected value of a decision.

• Instead of starting at a problem and then exploring towards a solution, start at a perfect solution and work backwards

• Confidence determines Speed vs. Quality

• Solve the Whole Customer Experience

• Experiment, Feature, Platform

• By recognizing the type of product development your project is, you will define more appropriate goals for each type, and you will right-size the speed and quality trade off that you make.

• Feedback Loops

• Cause and effect in products are the result of systems connected by positive and negative feedback loops.

• Feedback loops help us remember that some of the biggest drivers of growth or decline for a product may be from other parts of the system.

• Flywheel (recursive feedback loop)

• A state where a positive or negative feedback loop is feeding on itself and accelerating from it’s own momentum.

• Diminishing Returns

• When you focus on improving the same product area, the amount of customer value created over time will diminish for every unit of effort.

• Local Maxima

Toughts & Comments

Radi Baboe

Mental models across three phases of building: where to invest, designing & scoping, shipping & iterating.

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