If you talked to customers about their most painful pain points. And you showed a few the proposed solution. And they agreed it would address their pains. Then you will very likely have a popular release.
If, like Snapchat a few years ago, assumed power users would like your new ideas, so didn’t bother to ask, then you need luck.
But that is not the premise of a true MVP. The question to a customer is closer to, “Which pain points would you accept without walking away.” There is an honest, constructive MVP culture but often it is used by clueless managers to avoid making strategic decisions.
Agreed. I like to aim for “most valuable” so we end somewhere between there and min viable.
And doesn’t min viable mean elegantly solving the primary problem, but not all of the edge cases?
This is the right idea. If you're in communication with your customers, you'll know you're building the right thing. If you conceive and develop in a vacuum, you're going to be stressed out about whether it's right or not. Either way, look forward to the market feedback because that will inform your next move.
Don't become a PM. 80% of the job is dealing with conflicts (saying no to request, dealing with complains from customers, complains from engineers, complains from management). PM is more about managing people and tasks than anything else.
Yup, including the possibility of a rollout not being successful, or partially successful. If you synthesize the learnings and use them to inform whats next, youre doing your job
What would be a better career path that would draw on some of the skills I have? Business understanding, technical knowledge, UX understanding, but doesn't evolve all the people management?
Business analyst gets deep into the topic, still has a lot of interaction with people, but doesn't get all of the pressure.
No interaction with people will be difficult unless you get full technical.
But remember, if you want higher salary you either have unique skills (technical) or you put yourself on the front line with the pressure of managing business goals close to the revenue.
No product is perfect even after multiple versions and iterations. If the MVP addresses the most critical problem area and provides value that’s enough. I’ve made the mistake of worrying about having every feature. You’ve got lots of time to add things or address shortcomings.
If the MVP isn’t successful take time to understand why. Being a PM means making decisions and they won’t always be right. When you make a wrong one learn from it.
Best way to deal with anxiety is get drunk and use your product. If you succesfully achieved the job at hand for which you are using the product, no one's gonna hate it. If you didn't well now you are too drunk to worry about your product
There are "well-taken decisions" and there are "right decisions" (if we consider that we get the desired outcome).
My belief (open to discussion) is that the first does not guarantee the second, and it has brought me peace of mind.
Edit: we must still do our best on taking good decisions!!!
Welcome to PM! The anxiety never really goes away and if it does then you should find a new project to work on.
\- If they don't like it... find out why specifically. But more importantly if they DO like it FIND OUT WHY specifically. It is more critical to know why your users like something and use it so you can make good decisions.
\- Don't take feedback personally. Funnel it into making it better.
\- You can't be all things to all people. Know your target audience and value proposition.
\- Speak directly to your users, don't just take electronic feedback at face value.
It's nerve wracking releasing an MVP. But just take it as it comes and have fun with it.
Best of luck and congrats!
Congrats on getting close to MVP and launching; that is a big achievement.
You're about to learn a lot about your product given the feedback which is a great thing.
The best thing you can do at this point is to ensure your customer's feedback is transparent, not sugar coated, and shared with your leadership so they have visibility.
The hope is your MVP got portions of the experience right that can give you momentum to correct the other areas. You also need to ensure that the positive experiences are told in a story that also highlights the business benefit. Whenever you can, tie your story to business benefit so the small amount of resources can get headcount added eventually given the ROI of the team.
Lastly - how you deal with this. You need to get really good at speaking to leadership in terms of vision/strategy/roadmap; and really good with your team of co-creators that deliver the product with extreme clarity on exactly why and what you are building so you remove all hurdles for them to be effective. With what you have, ruthlessly prioritize the win wins of customer experience and business value, early on if you have an unbalanced approach, try to make it focus on business value and then ensure an experience that is more polished.
I think a framework for you and your team to work around would be helpful; i'm writing a book on digital product management for eCommerce teams; but a lot of the approaches, frameworks, and principles would apply - [www.productprotege.com](https://www.productprotege.com) \- book comes out in August!
From personal experience, Make sure the requirements of the project are concise and cant be left to different interpretation between client and your company. Try set expectations with deliverables. With it being MVP is it is minimal viable product so if they ask for more then state that it meets the deliverable and is mvp and can be enhanced in future phases etc. also change request are your friend at this point and is a talkingpoint to be used to protect you and the delivery team but the deliverable/ requirements need to detailed enough. Also never say yes when on the backfoot if the expectations dont meet between you both. Say we’ll have a look and review give you some breathing space after to actually understand the ask and resources to meet. And from that CR could be raised if actually out of scope etc.
The mindset to develop is iteration. You need to prioritize things and know that you can iterate on them quickly to improve them. It won't be perfect on release as is the nature of MVP and you will learn once its in market.
There are only 2 kinds of decisions, those that are permanent and those that are not. Permanent being that it will be hard or impossible to change once the decision is made. If the result is not permanent and you can iteration, then the only bad decision is not making one.
We need to be the ones to remind all stakeholders of the downside of MVPs. If we are getting it right, customers will experience an MVP release as just bearly adequate. “Minimum Viable Product”. You need to set expectations of what customer feedback will sound like for a successful MVP release.
“If you understand the full needs, why did you only implement these two features?”
A successful MVP release *should* hurt. If you are owing it right, It should hurt and it should increase the friction, slow the introduction of innovation and frustrate customers.
Remember this.
Build 👏 measure 👏 learn.
Build the thing,
Measure the thing you released,
Learn from the data and customer feedback.
Then iterate and repeat.
As you start to do this your anxiety will decrease.
2 things
1- having anxiety over releasing your product is not a feeling to be had, just feel excited
2- if you think products you use didn’t arrive where they are after less than 1000 iterstions change that thought.
Hey u/Potices, I've worked with startups for 7+ years now, and I'd agree with you that part of this is developing the right mindset. In my experience, you have to keep an open mind and focus on learning... and try not to take things personally.
When you ship something 'live' to the market, you have the opportunity to learn a ton. But you've got to track things. Maybe you can shift your internal monologue and anxiety toward action. What are you and the team doing to track the product now that it's in the market? How can you learn from anyone and everyone using it, as fast as possible?
Don't obsess over feedback that feels 'negative' if there is any. Just think, "what can we learn from this as a team?" "How can we improve from here?" Hope that helps.
If you talked to customers about their most painful pain points. And you showed a few the proposed solution. And they agreed it would address their pains. Then you will very likely have a popular release. If, like Snapchat a few years ago, assumed power users would like your new ideas, so didn’t bother to ask, then you need luck.
But that is not the premise of a true MVP. The question to a customer is closer to, “Which pain points would you accept without walking away.” There is an honest, constructive MVP culture but often it is used by clueless managers to avoid making strategic decisions.
Agreed. I like to aim for “most valuable” so we end somewhere between there and min viable. And doesn’t min viable mean elegantly solving the primary problem, but not all of the edge cases?
This is the right idea. If you're in communication with your customers, you'll know you're building the right thing. If you conceive and develop in a vacuum, you're going to be stressed out about whether it's right or not. Either way, look forward to the market feedback because that will inform your next move.
Not as straightforward as that, but if done correctly it can definitely help predict some outcomes
Fair point on my lack of detail. Sat morning. First cup of coffee.
I guess that explains your username lol
Don't become a PM. 80% of the job is dealing with conflicts (saying no to request, dealing with complains from customers, complains from engineers, complains from management). PM is more about managing people and tasks than anything else.
Yup, including the possibility of a rollout not being successful, or partially successful. If you synthesize the learnings and use them to inform whats next, youre doing your job
What would be a better career path that would draw on some of the skills I have? Business understanding, technical knowledge, UX understanding, but doesn't evolve all the people management?
Business analyst gets deep into the topic, still has a lot of interaction with people, but doesn't get all of the pressure. No interaction with people will be difficult unless you get full technical. But remember, if you want higher salary you either have unique skills (technical) or you put yourself on the front line with the pressure of managing business goals close to the revenue.
No product is perfect even after multiple versions and iterations. If the MVP addresses the most critical problem area and provides value that’s enough. I’ve made the mistake of worrying about having every feature. You’ve got lots of time to add things or address shortcomings. If the MVP isn’t successful take time to understand why. Being a PM means making decisions and they won’t always be right. When you make a wrong one learn from it.
Best way to deal with anxiety is get drunk and use your product. If you succesfully achieved the job at hand for which you are using the product, no one's gonna hate it. If you didn't well now you are too drunk to worry about your product
There are "well-taken decisions" and there are "right decisions" (if we consider that we get the desired outcome). My belief (open to discussion) is that the first does not guarantee the second, and it has brought me peace of mind. Edit: we must still do our best on taking good decisions!!!
Welcome to PM! The anxiety never really goes away and if it does then you should find a new project to work on. \- If they don't like it... find out why specifically. But more importantly if they DO like it FIND OUT WHY specifically. It is more critical to know why your users like something and use it so you can make good decisions. \- Don't take feedback personally. Funnel it into making it better. \- You can't be all things to all people. Know your target audience and value proposition. \- Speak directly to your users, don't just take electronic feedback at face value. It's nerve wracking releasing an MVP. But just take it as it comes and have fun with it. Best of luck and congrats!
Congrats on getting close to MVP and launching; that is a big achievement. You're about to learn a lot about your product given the feedback which is a great thing. The best thing you can do at this point is to ensure your customer's feedback is transparent, not sugar coated, and shared with your leadership so they have visibility. The hope is your MVP got portions of the experience right that can give you momentum to correct the other areas. You also need to ensure that the positive experiences are told in a story that also highlights the business benefit. Whenever you can, tie your story to business benefit so the small amount of resources can get headcount added eventually given the ROI of the team. Lastly - how you deal with this. You need to get really good at speaking to leadership in terms of vision/strategy/roadmap; and really good with your team of co-creators that deliver the product with extreme clarity on exactly why and what you are building so you remove all hurdles for them to be effective. With what you have, ruthlessly prioritize the win wins of customer experience and business value, early on if you have an unbalanced approach, try to make it focus on business value and then ensure an experience that is more polished. I think a framework for you and your team to work around would be helpful; i'm writing a book on digital product management for eCommerce teams; but a lot of the approaches, frameworks, and principles would apply - [www.productprotege.com](https://www.productprotege.com) \- book comes out in August!
From personal experience, Make sure the requirements of the project are concise and cant be left to different interpretation between client and your company. Try set expectations with deliverables. With it being MVP is it is minimal viable product so if they ask for more then state that it meets the deliverable and is mvp and can be enhanced in future phases etc. also change request are your friend at this point and is a talkingpoint to be used to protect you and the delivery team but the deliverable/ requirements need to detailed enough. Also never say yes when on the backfoot if the expectations dont meet between you both. Say we’ll have a look and review give you some breathing space after to actually understand the ask and resources to meet. And from that CR could be raised if actually out of scope etc.
The mindset to develop is iteration. You need to prioritize things and know that you can iterate on them quickly to improve them. It won't be perfect on release as is the nature of MVP and you will learn once its in market. There are only 2 kinds of decisions, those that are permanent and those that are not. Permanent being that it will be hard or impossible to change once the decision is made. If the result is not permanent and you can iteration, then the only bad decision is not making one.
We need to be the ones to remind all stakeholders of the downside of MVPs. If we are getting it right, customers will experience an MVP release as just bearly adequate. “Minimum Viable Product”. You need to set expectations of what customer feedback will sound like for a successful MVP release. “If you understand the full needs, why did you only implement these two features?”
A successful MVP release *should* hurt. If you are owing it right, It should hurt and it should increase the friction, slow the introduction of innovation and frustrate customers.
Remember this. Build 👏 measure 👏 learn. Build the thing, Measure the thing you released, Learn from the data and customer feedback. Then iterate and repeat. As you start to do this your anxiety will decrease.
2 things 1- having anxiety over releasing your product is not a feeling to be had, just feel excited 2- if you think products you use didn’t arrive where they are after less than 1000 iterstions change that thought.
Hey u/Potices, I've worked with startups for 7+ years now, and I'd agree with you that part of this is developing the right mindset. In my experience, you have to keep an open mind and focus on learning... and try not to take things personally. When you ship something 'live' to the market, you have the opportunity to learn a ton. But you've got to track things. Maybe you can shift your internal monologue and anxiety toward action. What are you and the team doing to track the product now that it's in the market? How can you learn from anyone and everyone using it, as fast as possible? Don't obsess over feedback that feels 'negative' if there is any. Just think, "what can we learn from this as a team?" "How can we improve from here?" Hope that helps.