Summary & Key Takeaways
Inspired is the go to book for product people (product leaders, product managers, and even engineers and designers) for understanding the entire process in creating high valued products. Having been a product leader myself, I’ve used many of the ideas and concepts I came across in this book in my daily work.
The book touches on all the different pieces that have to come together when building a product, like who’s involved, what their roles are, and the actual tools and strategies involved in building products. The best parts of the book, in my opinion, center around the different tools and methods for product discovery and customer interactions.
Key Takeaways:
The aim of product management is to find/build a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.
The high-fidelity prototype should replace many of the formal documentation that most product managers use because it is superior in many ways.
Testing with real users is the most important job of the product manager.
Notes & Quotes
It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is
“It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build.”
Goal of product management
“Discovering a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”
Users and engineers typically think in different ways
“Engineers are typically very poor at user experience design — engineers think in terms of implementation models, but users think in terms of conceptual models.”
The job of the product manager is to find the minimal product that meets objectives
“The job of the product manager is to identify the minimal possible product that meets the objectives — valuable, usable, and feasible — minimizing time to market and user complexity.”
“Your job as product manager is not to define the ultimate product, it’s to define the smallest possible product that will meet your goals.”
Focus should be on the functionality, not how to do it
“The key is that it describes the functionality and behavior of the product to be built, and not how it will be implemented.”
Meetings should have a clear purpose
“There are so many reasons for aimless, unconstructive meetings, but one of the biggest culprits is that it’s not always clear to the participants exactly what the purpose of the meeting is, what problem is to be solved, and what the specific issues or obstacles are.”
Visual design communicates emotion
“The visual design communicates and evokes emotion in the product (which is far more important than you may think).”
It takes time to understand users and customers
“It takes time, over the course of several projects, to truly develop the necessary understanding of users and customers.”
Product managers and engineers are equals
“One key to this relationship is for each of you to understand that you are peers — neither position is subordinate to the other.”
Involve the engineers along the way
“One of the most common mistakes that product managers make is to come up with a great product definition, and then throw it over the wall to engineering. That just postpones the critical negotiation process of what’s wanted vs what’s possible until there’s not enough time to be able to make good and informed decisions.”
Minimize churn once engineering has begun
“Do everything you can to minimize churn once engineering begins to develop the product. Churn is changing requirements and product definition.”
Sit next to the developers
“When the developers are not sitting right next to you, then all of the normal challenges of communication and execution are magnified.”
Don’t outsource for cost, just for the best people
“For most professional positions, outsourcing should not be about cost savings — it should be about assembling the right people for the product.”
Must be able to empathize with your target market
“The ideal product manager does not necessarily have to come from your target market..but they absolutely need to be able to empathize with your target market.”
Persuade co-team members through trust
“This persuasion is done by mutual trust and respect — both of which depend on the integrity of your product manager.”
You should understand every role, don’t have to be an expert
“The product manager may not be an expert in every role of the product team, but he should have a deep understanding and respect for what each team member is responsible for, and he should be willing to trust those people to do their job.”
Overcome obstacles is part of the job
“But he knows it is his job to see that each and every one of those obstacles is overcome.”
The product vision comes reality through the rest of the team
“The successful product manager knows that it is through the rest of the team that his product vision will become a reality, but that it is his product vision.”
A big part of successful products is seeing how to apply technology
“A big part of defining a successful product is in understanding new technology and seeing how it might be applied to help solve a relevant problem...understand it and see its potential.”
Product managers should be successful at presenting information clearly and in an engaging way
“The successful product manager has a minimal number of slides, he is engaging, clearly knowledgeable and passionate about his product, he speaks clearly and to the point, his slides provide relevant supporting data for what he is saying, and he has unambiguously stated his main points and what he needs from the audience after the presentation.”
Note: See Presenting to Win: The art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman
It’s important to understand distribution and sales channels
“It is also important to understand the different types of sales and distribution channels because these impact the product as well.”
Don’t micromanage, enable
“Once you are convinced that the members of your team are capable of success and properly equipped to succeed, then you will need to step back and let these talented people do their job. If you micromanage your product managers, they will not step up and take ownership the way you need them to. If you can’t trust your product managers, you need to find product managers you can trust.”
Should have a good relationship with the executives
“It is essential that all of the key players in the company — particularly the CEO — have a good and trusting relationship with the head of product management. The entire company depends on this person, and he must be open and transparent with his decisions and reasons, accessible and approachable by all.”
Value of NPS
“Make sure you’re always moving in the right direction, and consider the impact on the NPS of everything you do.”
Problem with engineering focused companies
“Because engineering organizations are typically designed to focus on building a product right, rather than building the right product.”
Designers are most valuable early in the process
“Designers are most valuable very early in the process, when the product manager is working to understand the target market and come up with a solution.”
Management by Wandering Around
“Managers need to get out of their office or cubes and spend time with the people from across the company, not in meetings, but informally. It’s easy and it works.”
You should be sharing a lot
“If you are willing to share with others the issues that you’re struggling with, you’ll find that word will get around and people may stop by with suggestions.”
Pay attention to how much time is spent on progress
“This starts by increasing awareness of churn, and that begins with measuring it. There are lots of ways to do this, but in one form or another, try to track how much of your week/month/quarter is spent on forward progress.”
Do pre-meeting work
“The main point here is to actually conduct the real meetings before your official meeting. This means going individually to the key influencers and stakeholders prior to the actual meeting and giving them a preview of your points, listening to their issues, and ensuring that they are already on board by the time the group meeting happens.”
Don’t just say what a problem is, offer a solution
“Most managers prefer to see your recommendations on how to solve problems you encounter rather than just a statement of the problem.”
What is possible is always changing
Ten questions for assessing product opportunities
Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
How big is the opportunity? (market size)
How will we measure success? (metrics/revenue strategy)
What alternatives are out there now? (competitive landscape)
Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
Why now? (market window)
How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no go)
Opportunity assessment should focus on the problem, not solution
“The opportunity assessment should just discuss the problem to be solved, not the particular solution you may have in mind.”
The hardest question is value proposition
“The hardest question to answer is usually the first in the opportunity assessment, the value proposition.”
Choosing what products is key decisions for a company
“Choosing the right set of products to pursue is among the most important decisions a company will make.”
Focus on opportunities
“I would rather have the team worry about investing in the best opportunities.”
Some software teams think the work is done once launched
“I think what’s really going on is that there is a tendency in software companies to assume that the product is already about as good as it can be, and continued investment won’t make much of a difference.”
What you should understand cold about any product
The economics of your product
Revenue model
Total costs of the product
How much you pay each new customer
The lifetime value of each customer
The return the product has generated for the company
Make friends with the finance department
“I could benefit a great deal from making a friend in the finance department.”
“I also have a theory that people in finance are often fairly quiet, and not the type to come to your desk advocating product opportunities. Usually, you’ve got to go to them.”
Always keep two versions of the product going in parallel
“One technique I have found very useful is to always keep two versions of a product going in parallel. In other words, as soon as you start the engineering for release 1.0 and switch into execution mode for that project, then you start up the discovery for release 2.0 in parallel.”
Product Principles
Product principles serves as the foundation for product features
Principles can bring a team together
“Another benefit I have found is that more than any other document, a set of product principles can bring together the product team — especially product management, user experience design, engineering, and marketing — and get the team on the same page.”
Prioritize them
“While there’s value in identifying your guiding product principles, you also need to prioritize them.”
Frame the decisions being made
“For virtually all product decisions, the key is to properly frame the decision to be made, and to first get everyone on the same page in terms of:
What problem exactly are you trying to solve?
Who exactly are you trying to solve this problem for — which persona?
What are the goals you are trying to satisfy with this product?
What is the relative priority of each goal?”
Prioritization is extremely important
“It is extremely important to take prioritization seriously — you should get the team to agree on the specific ordering, most to least important.”
Be transparent in decision making
“I think it is very important for product managers to be completely transparent in their decision making process and reasoning. You don’t want the team thinking that you’re just following your intuition. Every member of the team should be able to see the goals and objectives you are using, their priority, and how you assess each option. The decision — and the reasoning behind how you got there — should be clear to all.”
This is very important in leading a team
Importance of reference customers
“Most marketing people will tell you that nothing is more important or compelling when launching a product than to have a solid set of reference customers.”
Charter User Programs
What a group of reference customers is
“Your goal is to end with at least six happy, live, referenceable customers from your target market. That means you’ll probably need to start with 8-10. So your job is to recruit these customers right at the start of your project.”
Partner, not custom
“You want a partner in developing the product — you do not want to build a custom solution just for them, and you’re not a project shop.”
“You will need to explain to each member of the program that you are trying to come up with a general product — something you can successfully sell to a large number of customers. You’re not trying to build a custom solution that works only for that particular company.”
Release it to them first and make sure they’re happy
“Make sure you release the software to these people before the general release, and make sure they are live and happy before the public release. When you launch, they’ll be ready to stand up for you.”
Great products come from charter user programs
“It is from getting to know enough of these people — and digging with each of them into their underlying needs — that we get the insights necessary to discover great products.”
Some are better fits than others
“As you meet users, you’ll start to naturally find that some are much more useful to you than others in terms of fitting your target profile, or the level of insight they can provide. For these people, establish an ongoing relationship.”
The questions the product discovery process answers
“What technologies can I apply to solve this problem in a better way?”
“What should the user experience be?”
Product management is all about choices
“Product management is all about choices — making decisions about what opportunities are worth chasing, which problems are worth solving, what features will provide the most value, what the best time-to-market trade-offs are, and which customers are most important.”
Be at every user interview
“For the same reason that the product manager needs to be present at every usability test of his product, he or she needs to be at every user interview. The product manager needs that deep understanding of the target user that comes from talking with as many users and customers as possible.”
User interviews should be done early
“Make sure they are done as early in the process as possible.”
Value of personas
“Personas help you prioritize what’s important”
Decide on who a release is for and who it is not for
“just as important as deciding who a release is for, is deciding who it is not for. It is an extremely common mistake for a product to try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.”
Each release should focus on one user persona
“I try hard to get the product manager to focus each release on a single primary persona. It’s not that the release won’t be valuable and usable by others, but your focus on each release should be to do a great job for just one type of target user.”
Personas are not substitutes for talking 1-on-1
“In no way is the process of creating a persona a substitute for talking face-to-face with real target users, and testing your designs on real users.”
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Prototype test with range of users
Use high-fidelity prototypes instead of product specs
“In my mind, there’s only one form of spec that can deliver on these requirements, and that is the high-fidelity prototype...The term ‘high-fidelity’ refers to the fact that this should be a realistic representation of the proposed user experience.”
Benefit is that they can actually be tested
“The most important benefit in my view is that — unlike a paper document — a high-fidelity prototype can be tested. You can put it in front of actual target users and ensure that they can figure out how to use your product (usability), and also determine if they care to use your product (value). You don’t actually have a spec worth handing over to engineering until your prototype passes these two tests. Doing this form of testing while you are in QA or Beta is far too late in the process.”
It reduces time to market
Don’t do UX and implementation in parallel
“One thing that many teams try to do in parallel — but should not — is user experience design and implementation.”
It’s hard to make changes once implementation has begun
“Once implementation begins, it becomes increasingly difficult to make the fundamental changes that will likely be necessary as you work through your user experience design ideas.”
First requirements and design, then implementation and testing
“The requirements and design happen together, and then implementation and test can happen together.”
Still should loop in engineering from the start
“You will still need at least someone from engineering to review the design work from the start, as it’s critical for them to assess feasibility and costs along the way. This is necessary to inform the design process.”
Job is to come up with the minimal functionality to meet business objectives
“The job of the product manager, working with his designer, is to come up with a high-fidelity prototype with the minimal functionality necessary to meet the business objectives, yet with a user experience that users can figure out how to use — and actually want to use.”
Make the trade-offs early on and with others
“So the many trade-offs of what is in and what’s cut have already been made — and made collaboratively.”
Difference between usability testing and value testing
“In usability testing, you’re seeing if users can figure out how to do the necessary tasks, while in value testing you’re seeing if they actually care about those tasks and how well you’ve solved them.”
Testing your ideas with real users is the most important thing for a product manager to do
“Testing your ideas with real users is probably the single most important activity in your job as product manager.”
You have one chance to understand the user before they see the product
“You have a one-time-only opportunity with each user you test — the opportunity to learn how they think about this problem today, without your product.”
Start from a blank state
“Rather than start them out at your prototype’s home page, you might instead want to start them out with an empty browser and see what they do.”
Note: This is also the recommendation of Google Venture’s Design Sprints. Helps you understand how they think about finding your product, or what category of products/jobs-to-be-done they put your product in. See Sprint for more about this.
Good to test marketing and copy content too
“See if they can tell from the home page or landing page of your prototype what it is that you actually do, and especially what might be valuable or appealing to them.”
Tips for testing with users
Be sure to tell him or her that (1) this is just a prototype — it’s very early product idea — and it’s not real, (2) they won’t be hurting your feelings by giving you their honest opinion — good or bad, and (3) you’re testing the prototype — you’re not testing him or her.
Keep them in “use mode” rather than “critique mode”. What matters is whether users can easily do the tasks they need to do, and whether they value the product...So watch what they do more than what they say.
There are three important cases you’re looking for: (1) the user got through the task with no problem at all and no help, (2) the user struggled and moaned a bit but eventually got through it, or (3) the user got so frustrated he gave up.
Act like a parrot. Repeat what they say, to be clear on what they are saying and doing.
Fundamentally, you’re trying to get an understanding of how your target users think about this problem, and to identify places in your prototype where the model the software presents is inconsistent or incompatible with how the user is thinking about the problem.
Respond to feedback quickly
“I have found that you can significantly accelerate the process of getting to a good product by responding more quickly to feedback.”
Six is the magic number
“Generally, if you can get through six consecutive users who understand and appreciate the value of the product — and can get through the key tasks — you’re in good shape and you’ve done your job.”
Improving Existing Products
Too many features can make a product worse
“But all too often these added features just end up making the situation worse and not better.”
Need clear understanding of what you want to achieve
“As with new product development, everything starts with having a very clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.”
Live a breathe the metrics
“Your job as product manager is to live and breathe these metrics. Every day you should ask yourself what you can do to improve them.”
What matters is moving the needle on important metrics
“What matters is what actually move the needle on the metrics you are driving towards.”
Don’t just listen to what users say
“Instead, focus on relentlessly pursuing your metrics by studying live use and working the numbers in the right direction.”
Gentle Deployment
Reduce the possible disruption to your users
“The key is to be as sensitive as possible to the disruption that your changes will cause. Give people the opportunity to learn the differences when they have the time, and try to minimize the impact of any problems or issues your changes may cause.”
Rapid Response
Respond quickly to issue after launch
“I advocate that all project teams schedule a phase that begins at launch and lasts typically a few days to a week...it is all about responding quickly to what you learn once the product has been launched.”
Use metrics to measure success
“When measuring success, you need to have a clear, prioritized set of business metrics...Further, you need to know what results you would consider to be a success and what results you would consider a problem.”
Succeeding with Agile Methods
Design should be ahead of the rest
“You and your designers should always try and be one or two sprints ahead of your team.”
Use prototypes and user stories
“Replace heavy PRDs and functional specs with prototype and user stories.”
Demo at the end of sprint
“At the end of each sprint, make sure you demo the current state of the product, as well as the prototype for the next sprint.”
Startup Product Management
What you want for the early team
“The founder hires a product manager, an interaction designer, and a prototyper.”
Starts with the correct product
“But any startup has to realize that everything starts with the right product.”
Innovating in Large Companies
Culture and manager matter
“The two biggest factors influencing your ability to innovate in a large company are your corporate culture and your manager.”
Watch and listen to users
“One of the easiest ways I know of to innovate is to just watch (and listen) as actual users attempt to use your current product or a competitor’s product.”
Need to match the product to the user’s mental model
“But the user doesn’t think in this way — he has a conceptual model in mind for how he wants to think about this problem, and what he expects the system to present. Frustration happens when the user is presented not with something that reflects his conceptual model”
Succeeding in Large Companies
Embrace the way things are done
“The key is to learn and accept how things get done in your organization...If you want to succeed in your company, you’ll need to embrace it.”
Work on the critical things for your success each week
“Make sure you have the time during the week to work on the items crucial to the success of your product: your product strategy, your roadmap, the current prototype of the next release, your understanding of the competition and — especially — talking to actual users and customers.”
Find out where you can have an impact
“Most people wander around in the dark and bitch about it being dark, instead of learning where the light switches are.”
Lessons from Apple
Hardware serves the software
“Apple understands that the role of the hardware is to serve the software.”
Change
New technologies = new opportunities
“New technologies enable new solutions that may not have been possible or feasible until now.”
Combine what is desirable and what is possible
“Remember: great product managers combine what is desirable with what is just now possible.”
Emotion in Products
People buy and use products largely for emotional reasons
Focus on your customers buying emotions
“Once you have clearly identified and prioritized the dominant buying emotions your customers bring to your product, focus on that emotion and ask yourself where else they might be able to get that need met? That’s your real competition.”
Note: this would fall under Michael Porter’s Threat of Substitutes
Ask ‘what sucks?’
“I like my product managers to focus on the most miserable thing people have to deal with everyday. If you can solve that problem, that actually changes behavior, and that can lead to the truly big product wins.”
Focus on the people NOT the technology
“Don’t focus on the technology of your product, just think about the people that you’re trying to help.”
Keys to Consumer Internet Service Products
Spend 20% of engineering’s time on scaling
“The only way I know to avoid that is to pay your taxes by working on scale continuously from day one, and don’t let yourself get to the brink.”
Ask how to get customer to share it with their friends
“Consider what you can do with your product to enable users to invite their friends to try it.”
Keys to Enterprise Products
Don’t build product features based on potential sales
“One of the biggest mistakes companies make is that they think they can get their product requirements from their customers...but the most dangerous example of this is when the sales organization brings in a potential customer that has a big check all ready to sign if you’ll just agree to put these seven features in your product.”
Note: A literal problem at one of the companies I’ve worked for
Design for the sales channel
“It’s critical to design your product around the needs of your sales and distribution channel.”
Note: something so few companies actually do, can be a competitive advantage
Keys to Platform Products
Focus on the end-users
“Many extremely successful platforms have been downright awful for the developers. But they succeeded because of compelling value to the end-users and — therefore — to the application providers.”
Best Practices
The role of product managers
Spend the majority of your time on product management activities, not other things
The role of user experience
“For most software products the user experience is all-important”
Collaborate closely with an interaction designer and engineer
Opportunity assessments
Make sure you know what problem you’re trying to solve, who you are trying to solve it for, and how you’ll know if you are successful.
Charter user program
“If you only do this one thing, it will ensure that you do several other things right, starting with direct and intense user interaction.”
Product principles
Help you to make the right choices and prioritize the right things
Personas
Focus your releases on one customer type and understand their behaviors and emotions
Focus on discovery
“The primary responsibility of the product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”
The use of prototypes
“One of the most important product discovery techniques is to create a high-fidelity prototype.”
Test prototype with target users
“Knowing how to get feedback on product ideas is probably the single most important skill for product managers.”
Measure to improve
“The successful product manager uses data to make important decisions, especially when trying to improve an existing product.”