Two product conferences, One workshop — making sense of the many recommended tools.

Keri Farrow
Nov 4 · 4 min read

I’ve been fortunate to be able to attend some of the largest Product conferences in the last few weeks (amen to training budgets);

  1. A workshop on ‘Leading Effective Workshops’ run by Mind the Product (London)
  2. Mind the Product (London)
  3. Leading the Product (Sydney)

There have been some fantastic write-ups from both events and it’s motivated me to share some of my thoughts.

When summarising my key takeaways I found myself with an extensive list of frameworks, templates, tools, books, blogs, articles… and more. Some of these I’ve used, some I’m familiar with and some I want to find the opportunity to try! I also kept coming back to a question asked by one of the workshop attendees, ‘how do I know when is the right time to use these?’, this question resonated with me. So, in an attempt to save this list from being buried in my Evernote history, I’ve mapped out where I believe they would be best utilised in the product lifecycle. To caveat, this won’t be the same for everyone so I’ve included a summary of each below to help you identify where it might work for you!

Tool used — Whimsicle

Developing your product vision

Radical product thinking (LTP — Rhadika Dutt). It’s a way of thinking to create vision-driven change, or the definition I liked — it takes the speed Agile and Lean give us and give it direction by adding velocity.

Radical vision worksheet (LTP — Rhadika Dutt). A template to help you craft and clearly articulate your vision.

Product vision template (LTP — Bruce McCarthy). A template to help you establish a product vision from Product Roadmaps Relaunched.

Developing your product strategy;

  • RDCL Product Strategy (LTP — Rhadika Dutt). A template to help you craft and communicate your product strategy.

Understanding your user;

Empathy mapping (MTP — Euzinne Udezue and LTP — Ben Crother). A template to capture and communicate what we know about the user.

Exploring and framing your problem;

4 W’s (Who, Why, What, When) (LTP — Ben Crothers). A useful exercise to help you identify a problem by looking at the 4 ingredients to a problem.

First principle thinking (MTP Andy Ayim). A mental model for decision making. Frameworks such as first principles help us to focus on solutions that aren’t immediately obvious. Recommended books to understand more.

5 Who’s, Why’s, So What’s (LTP — Ben Crothers). An exercise used to diagnose problems.

Second-order thinking (MTP — Andy Ayim). It helps identify the unintended consequences. A useful tool for anyone working on product strategy, to facilitate the trade-off between short term and long term goals.

Problem statement template (LTP — Ben Crothers). A template which can be used to refine the problem into a succinct statement.

Design thinking (MTP — Jonny Schneider). A framework used to explore the user problem. See the book for more information on understanding Design Thinking, Lean and Agile.

Design sprint (LTP — John Zeratsky). A 5-day process used to reduce the time to gather learnings about a new idea. Used successfully for projects that have a high degree of uncertainty and difficulty. The Design Sprint website here.

Future mapping exercises;

Amazon press release. Amazon works backwards from the customer, for new product initiatives they release an internal press release targeted at the end-user announcing the finished product, the problem it’s solving, how the current systems are failing and how their product will address the problem.

Product delivery frameworks;

Lean. Build the right thing.

Agile. Build the thing right.

Agile methodology to focus on releasing the minimum amount;

Deliver in small steps to minimise the gap between maker and user (MTP — Henrik Kniberg).

MTP — minimal testable product

MUP — minimal usable product

MLP — minimal loveable product

Food truck test (LTP — Julian Connor). Build better products with the Food Truck test; are you considering what core value you’re providing to your customers, are you delivering it in a minimum way and are you getting direct user feedback.

Exercises to identify risks;

  • Futurespective
  • Pre-mortem
  • Inversion

Prioritisation techniques;

  • RICE. A prioritisation technique used to assess Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort.
  • Impact Effort Matrix. A framework to assess the level of impact something will have vs the effort to do the work.
  • MoSCoW. A prioritisation technique to categories work into must-haves, should-haves, could-haves and won’t-haves).

This is by no means a complete list of everything out there, but a demonstration of where each of the recommended tools/frameworks can be applied.

I wanted to summarise by revisiting the earlier question, ‘how do I know when is the right time to use these?’. Pick one for each scenario and see if it works for you. You might find yourself adapting it over time but it’s good to have a foundation to work from. Once you’re confident with the one you’ve picked you might then be better placed to trial new recommendations, there’s definitely plenty out there!

And a few new additions to my reading list that I wanted to share;

  • Never split the difference by Chris Voss
  • Product Roadmaps relaunched by C. Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors, Bruce McCarthy
  • Gamestorming by Dave Gray
  • Testing business ideas by David J. Bland, Alexander Osterwalder
  • Superthinking by Gabriel Weinberg

Thanks to Mind the Product and Leading the Product for a few days of insights and learnings!

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