Knowledge Base

Tools, ideas and methods that help you become a better product manager

4 Disciplines of Execution

The 4 Disciplines of Execution is a model for focusing work on important goals despite the daily interruptions and distractions. In the book by the same name, Chris Mcchesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling explain it as an “Operating system for achieving the goals you must achieve”. (read more)

A/A Testing

An A/A test, (also known as an uniformity trial), is an experiment where two populations are exposed to the same experience (in contrast to an A/B test where the groups are exposed to different experiences). The technique is primarily useful to validate the testing infrastructure and cohort assignment for A/B testing. (read more)

A/B Testing

An A/B Test (also known as a Randomized Controlled Trial) is a controlled experiment aimed at measuring the impact of a product change, with the intent of proving causality. Essentially, an A/B test is a reliable way of judging, with high probability, whether an observed user behaviour is caused by a specific modification in how a product looks or how it works. When A/B tests are applied systematically, they can be used to release valuable product changes with confidence, and to prevent low-value or damaging changes from being released. (read more)

AIDA Model

The AIDA Model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is the earliest documented mnemonic for customer engagement models (1898), originally used for advertising and marketing. (read more)

Air Sandwich

An Air Sandwich plan (also known as an Underpants Gnomes Plan) contains lofty objectives and a detailed feature roadmap, but nothing in between. Such plans are typically misleading because there is no clear way to track progress apart from measuring effort, no way to challenge assumptions and no clear strategy to deal with unexpected problems. (read more)

Attitudinal Metrics

Attitudinal metrics measure user attitude, how users feel or what they say about the product. They are usually collected through surveys, interviews or focus groups. In product management, attitudinal measures are often used to track perceived usability and customer satisfaction. (read more)

Beachhead Market

A Beachhead Market (also called a Beachhead Segment) is an initial market segment that a new product can capture, allowing it to expand and grow so that it can start capturing customers in other market segments. Using a beachhead segment allows new entrants to break into an established market with an early version of a product that is not at parity with market leaders. (read more)

Big Rocks Theory

The Big Rocks Theory is a metaphor for prioritisation popularised by Stephen R. Covey in First Things First. It suggests prioritising the most important things to be done first, or they would not be done at all. (read more)

Bowling Alley Framework

The Bowling Alley Framework (also called Straight-Line Onboarding) is a user journey optimization technique from Product Led Growth, helping to reduce the “time to value” and increase conversion and retention during the initial user interactions with a product. (read more)

Christmas prioritisation

Christmas Prioritisation is a method for splitting a large initiative with complex objectives into a sequence of smaller and simpler milestones based on urgency. It is named based on a mispronunciation of the name of Chris Matts, a UK-based business analyst who combined prioritisation methods with ideas from financial trading models to create Real Options. (read more)

Community Suggestion Forum

A Community Suggestion Forum is a digital inbox for community feedback and proposals that allows people to vote for each other’s proposals, leave comments and discuss ideas. It’s primary purpose is to engage the user community without overwhelming customer support or product managers. The forum allows users to provide feedback and have a feeling of being heard, but it does not place the burden of replying to each individual proposal on customer service people. (read more)

Confidence Meter

The Confidence Meter is an estimation tool that helps product managers evaluate the reliability and credibility of proposed improvement ideas based on the strength of the supporting evidence. (read more)

Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritisation filter for work based on urgency and importance. It helps schedule work and priorities by categorizing tasks into four categories: (read more)

Expectation Ratings Survey

The Expectaton Ratings (ER) survey is an attitudinal research method that captures the relationship between perceived and effective usability. It is particularly useful for prioritising user experience improvement tasks and redesign ideas. (read more)

Experimentation Growth Model

The Experimentation Growth Model (also called the Experimentation Maturity Model and the Experimentation Evolution Model) describes the typical phases that product teams and organizations follow while developing technical and organizational capabilities for experimentation (such as A/B testing), in particular in the context of online software products. It can be useful for teams and organizations both for self-assessment and as a set of guidelines to improve their experimentation capabilities. (read more)

Five Stages of Growth

The Five Stages of Growth model provides guidelines for focusing on a specific type of work at different times during a product lifecycle, and can be helpful to select objectives and product development ideas that could create a big impact. (read more)

GIST model

GIST is a hierarchical planning model developed by Itamar Gilad while working at Google, and documented in his book Evidence Guided. (read more)

Growth Pyramid

The Growth Pyramid (previously called The Startup Pyramid and The Startup Growth Pyramid) is a model for product evolution after the product/market fit. It provides guidelines and milestones that a product needs to achieve before significant growth. (read more)

Guardrail metrics

Guardrail metrics (sometimes called diagnostic metrics) help keep a process on track by detecting unintended impacts, unwanted side-effects and avoiding short-term solutions that might cause long-term damage. (read more)

HEART framework

HEART is a framework for user-centered metrics developed at Google to track progress towards goals for consumer (B2C) web applications. It helps product teams decide how to measure the impact of design changes, set the Overall Evaluation Criteria for A/B tests and track user behaviour changes at large scale. The HEART framework is user-centered instead of business centered, so it focuses primarily on the delivered value part of the value exchange loop. (read more)

Hierarchy of Effects

Hierarchy of Effects systems capture customer engagement flows in an idealised sequence of stages, in order to plan marketing campaigns, design product funnels and develop metrics to monitor user progress towards product goals. Some notable examples are AIDA, REAN and AARRR. (read more)

Hierarchy of Powers

The Hierarchy of Powers is a model that sizes up product opportunities and economic competition in relation to different types of economic power, to help guide product development and investment decisions. The model is specifically useful to predict growth opportunities and what a product needs to achieve in a specific market environment to compete successfully, and to drive alignment between different types of forces influencing product growth. Combining and aligning different types of power allows a product to achieve “escape velocity” and beat the market. (read more)

ICE Score

The ICE Score is a prioritisation method for quickly comparing different ideas based on three factors: Impact, Confidence and Ease. (read more)

Idea Bank

An Idea Bank is a holding space for potential product improvement ideas. It serves both as an inspiration for future work and as a buffer against overloading the active backlog. (read more)

Impact Estimation Tables

Impact Estimation Tables (IET) are a tool for impact/effort scoring. They can be used to compare alternative design ideas, to analyse key risks, to estimate and to help with planning, prioritisation and tracking iterative delivery work. (read more)

Impact Mapping

Impact mapping is a lightweight visual and collaborative planning technique that helps to focus product delivery on outcomes and promotes the idea of optionality, with many different ways of achieving the same outcomes. (read more)

Kano Model

The Kano Model captures customer preferences and expectations related to product attributes or functions. It offers insight into which attributes of a product are valued by customers and in which way, to assist with prioritisation, product development and increasing customer satisfaction. It also useful to predict when investments in some product areas may not necessarily increase customer satisfaction, as it can provide guidelines on what kind of work is likely to result in significant improvements. (read more)

Kano Survey

The Kano Survey is a quantitative research tool aimed at discovering consumer expectations related to product functions and aspects of product quality. This type of survey can help choose between alternative options for a function, uncover hidden customer expectations about basic product functions and potential exciters, and help with prioritisation of product development work. It can also help to prevent over-engineering by identifying unnecessary features and improvements that would not contribute to customer satisfaction. (read more)

Levels of Evidence

The Levels of Evidence model (also called the Hierarchy of Evidence) ranks trustworthiness of different types of information. It was originally created for critically analysing medical research papers and therapy studies. The model is interesting from a product management perspective as a way to systematically apply a confidence score for prioritisation systems, such as ICE or Impact Estimation Tables. (read more)

Likert Scale

The Likert Scale is a common attitudinal survey format, requiring survey participants to select an option between “Strongly agree” and “Strongly disagree”. The most common scales have 5 or 7 points, but others such as 4 or 3 point scales are also used. (read more)

Mathiness

Mathiness is a term for calculations and formulas that may look and feel like rigorous mathematics but lack true analytical rigor or validity, and often disregard logical coherence or factual accuracy. (read more)

Novelty Effect

A Novelty Effect is a short-term effect causing bias in A/B test results when checking the impact of a new feature. If the feature is noticeable, users will be interested to try it out, so early usage data might not be representable of general trends. The A/B test variant containing that feature might seem to perform well at first, but the effect quickly declines over time. (read more)

Now-Next-Later Roadmap

The Now-Next-Later Roadmap (NNL) provides an overview of product delivery in three time horizons: immediate, relatively soon and long-term. Each delivery item in the roadmap documents two key aspects: the problem to solve, and how solving that problem relates to an existing product objectives. (read more)

Objectives and Key Results

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a popular framework for setting goals to align teams and drive towards common outcomes. It’s based on a hierarchical breakdown of higher level goals (objectives) into component activities (key results), which become objectives on the next level of the hierarchy. In that way, company-wide objectives can be connected through several levels of metrics hierarchies to key results for a team or even an individual contributor. (read more)

Opportunity Solution Tree

An Opportunity Solution Tree is a visual representation of different ways a product can achieve a business outcome, showing various product opportunities, solutions and assumptions. By clearly visualising underlying assumptions and product opportunities, it helps to avoid Air Sandwich plans. (read more)

Overall Evaluation Criteria

The Overall Evaluation Criteria (also called the Overall Evaluation Criterion, or a Fitness Function) is a quantitative measure of the objective of a product experiment. An OEC can range from a single metric to a set of complementary metrics, and it can be specific to a single experiment, related to a set of experiments, or focused on longer-term aspects of product success. (read more)

Palchinsky Principles

In the book Adapt, Tim Harford lays out three key principles for adaptive planning, explaining them as the problem-solving approach of Peter Palchinsky. Palchinsky was a civil engineer in charge of several huge infrastructural projects in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, who in the early 20th century intuitively applied what would today be called iterative delivery, systems thinking, optionality and experimentation with feedback cycles. The three Palchinsky principles are important because they succinctly capture the essence of most modern successful product development approaches. (read more)

Patton's Customer Outcomes

Jeff Patton, in the article The Mindset That Kills Product Thinking, proposed a simple five stage progression of customer outcomes, particularly suitable to consumer-oriented software products: (read more)

Performance Path Map

A Performance Path Map is a sequence of key skills users need to acquire on the path from a beginner to an expert in a specific domain. The map is useful as a design aid and a prioritisation tool for product management. It is also useful a motivator for users, helping with customer retention and turning advanced users into active promoters. (read more)

Persona Spectrum

A Persona Spectrum is an extension of the classic product management concept of a user persona, allowing for a wider discussion about the contexts in which users take on the role of the persona. (read more)

Pioneers - Settlers - Town Planners

Pioneers - Settlers - Town Planners (PST) is an organizational model for aligning teams based on the maturity of the product or service they provide, instead of the usual organizational division by business units (such as finance, marketing, IT). Pioneers invent, Settlers turn inventions into products, Town Planners turn products into utilities for Pioneers. (read more)

Pirate Funnel

Pirate Metrics capture a typical customer lifecycle for consumer products in five stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. The name of the method comes from the initial letters of the five stages (AARRR) and its resemblance of how stereotypical pirates talk in cartoons and comedy movies. (read more)

Product Opportunity Assessment

Product Opportunity Assessment is a structured questionnaire designed to identify good product opportunities, help with delivery focus and understand what would be required for a product to succeed in exploiting the opportunity. It can also be used to identify poor opportunities and help a product team avoid or park them, to prevent the delivery organization from wasting time. (read more)

Purpose Alignment Model

The Purpose Alignment Model (also called Purpose Based Alignment Model) is a set of heuristics for handling different types of work, based on a combination of two factors: mission criticality and market differentiation. (read more)

QUPER model

QUPER (QUality PERformance) model is a method for defining release plans and targets for cross-functional, system-wide quality aspects of a system (such as usability, performance, scalability and similar…). It aids with prioritisation and roadmap planning. (read more)

REAN model

REAN is a customer journey model useful for defining product marketing funnels and metrics for user engagement analytics. The model consists of 4 stages (Reach, Engage, Activate and Nurture) and takes the name from the initial letters of each of the stages. (read more)

Real Options

Real Options methods help to structure iterative delivery staged investments and prioritisation based on the financial derivative option valuation techniques. A “real option” is the right, but not an obligation to take a certain action in the future (such as implementing a feature or committing to a milestone release date). Unlike financial derivatives based on which the method is named, real options are not traded or sold. Instead, the thinking behind derivatives trading with options is used to evaluate when to take a certain action, and if to take it at all at that point. (read more)

Research Engagement Platform

A Research Engagement Platform is a tool that helps teams reach out to potential research participants, speeding up the preparation for structured research activities such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and user testing. Such tools typically alow teams to collect and manage lists of potential research participants, segment participants by interest, send out invitation e-mails or communicate to groups of potential respondents, and track responses and engagement to inform and facilitate future activities. (read more)

Single Ease Question Survey

The Single Ease Question (SEQ), also known as the Task Ease Question, is a post-task attitudinal survey looking at the ease of completing a task. It’s particularly useful as a diagnostic measure, complementing larger post-scenario surveys. Although very simple, it’s shown to be highly relevant and reliable. (read more)

Suck Zone

The Suck Zone is the period between the first exposure to a product and the point where a new user feels confident enough to perform basic tasks. It is useful for analysing retention and churn and designing strategies to help users become more competent and interested in continued use. (read more)

System Usability Scale

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a structured attitudinal survey for quantifying how users feel about the usability of a product, using 10 questions and resulting in a single numerical score. It is quick, robust and reliable. Because it provides a numerical score, it can be used for benchmarking, relative comparisons of different systems, to track trends and changes over time and to detect unexpected impacts. (read more)

Technology Acceptance Model

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a 12-question survey useful for predicting technology product adoption and usage frequency. Slightly modified, it can also be used to predict Likelihood-to-Recommend scores. (read more)

Three Horizons Model

The Three Horizons Model places product bets and investments in three different categories based on how quickly they are expected to deliver a return on investment. It enables companies to plan and approach product development in different ways for different horizons, effectively allowing high risk bets to proceed in a controlled way but not stifle them based on standard operating procedures and expectations for mature products. (read more)

Tog's paradox

Tog’s Paradox (also known as The Complexity Paradox or Tog’s Complexity Paradox) is an observation that products aiming to simplify a task for users tend to inspire new, more complex tasks. It’s one of the key reasons for the symptom of requirements changing after delivery in enterprise software products, and for feature creep in consumer products. Tog’s Paradox also explains why it’s futile to try to completely nail down requirements for a software product, as the product itself will have an impact on the users, causing them to demand new functions. (read more)

Usability Metric for User Experience

The Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) is a standardised attitudinal survey, particularly useful for tracking the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of products when the physical space for survey questions is limited (such as inline forms on web sites and mobile applications). (read more)

User Learning Effects

User Learning Effects are changes to user behaviour and habits caused by interactions with a product. Users modify their behavior based on their experiences with a digital product or service, which can cause bias in A/B testing and influence long-term behaviours beyond the time frames for typical experiments. Considering user learning effects during A/B testing is important to prevent short-term gains that cause long-term losses, and to increase the relevance of shorter experiments. A/B tests need to account for both immediate user reactions and for how users adapt over time. (read more)

Value Exchange Loop

The Value Exchange Loop (or Value Exchange System) is a mental model clarifying how the two main types of product value co-evolve. Melissa Perri defined the model in the book Escaping The Build Trap, as a way to stimulate product management and delivery teams to gain closer understanding of users and customers. (read more)