🎾 7 Brainstorming Methods, Shazam's Song ID Secret, Miro's Pricing Strategy, PM Performance Evaluation & 10 Must-Read Books Pre-PMF
+ new niche AI tutorials and ideas
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This is Sunday 1-1-2-3 with George.
Welcome to the 86th edition.
Today we have:
7 Problem Statement Brainstorming Methods [with Examples]
How Shazam IDs Over 23,000 Songs Each Minute
Miro's Pricing Strategy Unmasked
Better Approaches To Evaluating PM Performance
10 Product Books Ultra Relevant Pre-PMF
Sr. Director of Product @ Slack: “We Didn’t Use an Issue Tracker”
Why Product Management Is Hard
+ new niche AI tutorials and ideas
💾 7 Problem Statement Brainstorming Methods [with Examples]
Do you want to get better at crafting problem statements?
I know I always do, even if I feel like I’ve done it many times. It’s like a never-ending lust that I feel: to get better at it.
Once again,
comes through with a good one. Here are the 7 methods:Desired Outcomes: Focus on what the customer wants to achieve. Ask questions like “If you had what you want today, what would that do for you?”. This helps in understanding the customer's desired outcomes and thinking of alternative ways they might try to accomplish those outcomes.
The Smart Sailboat: Use the Smart Sailboat technique to differentiate between internal weaknesses and external threats while brainstorming. This technique starts with team objectives and successes to date, providing clear objectives and context for brainstorming.
The Value of Abstraction: Abstract the problem statements to remove dependency on a specific medium, channel, process, or perspective. This helps in widening the scope and considering various solutions.
Specific Scenarios: Focus on specific scenarios rather than hypotheticals. Ask questions like “When was the last time you did X? Can you walk me through what that process looked like?” to gain insights into the actual challenges faced by the customers.
Continuous Discovery: Collect quotes, feedback, and problems from customers on a regular basis. Engage in continuous discovery habits to test assumptions through user interviews and de-risk projects through iterative experimentation.
Peripheral Problems: Identify and articulate a wide range of problems that customers are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Understanding peripheral problems is key to building a deeper understanding of the customer’s overall context.
Brainstorm Alone, Shortlist Together: Brainstorm ideas individually to avoid self-censorship and influence from others. After brainstorming alone, come together as a group to shortlist the best ideas.
This massive posts has a lot of other goodies:
🧐 Question
☕️ How Shazam IDs Over 23,000 Songs Each Minute + Miro's Pricing Strategy Unmasked + Better Approaches To Evaluating PM Performance
I loved this short video about Shazam, the app that lets you identify what song you’re hearing. It inspired me to write more on:
the evolution of product (they started with brick phones that required you to call a number to identify the phone),
the importance of solving hard technical problems in an elegant way (the way they approached the matching problem is so cool),
my favorite product pattern: 1-button product & UI (the Shazam button) as the epitome of folding a complex reality into a single point.
Also not to miss is this video by Patrick Campbell, the guy behind ProfitWell (a $200M bootstrapped success story).
His specialty is pricing strategies, and in this video he breaks down Miro’s pricing pages.
A must-watch for product folks who want to get better at pricing:
Finally, fresh out of the oven, a new Shreyas video talking about the different stages of a product, and how the evaluation of the PM has to match that stage.
He touches on the shape of OKRs as well, which is something I wish I had known sooner in my career:
🍪 Quick Bites
🤖 AI
That's a wrap for today. Stay focused and see you next week! If you want more, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@nurijanian)
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Who's George?
I’m an underdog product manager.
Product management in New Zealand (where I live) is still a relatively immature discipline. I also came into it late via data science and UX. I may be older than others, but I often feel like a rookie.
To become better at my craft, I learn and explore new ideas relentlessly.
Then I share high-quality, tried-and-true ideas that can be used right away.
How I can help you:
If you want to feel smarter, I’ve compiled my best actionable finds in prodmgmt.world.
If you need to figure out prioritization in your role, get The Big Book of Prioritization.
See you next week.
— George.
Thanks for the shoutout George! 🫶