Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

"Developing a product mindset is essential for any engineer, and it becomes mandatory when aiming for an engineering leadership role." I read that in Hybrid Hacker newsletter about engineering leader roadmap some time ago.

So I decided to improve my product mindset and understand what product managers really do 😉 with one of the most popular book in that area - Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan.

Key thoughts from the book:
✏️ Product teams should have enough autonomy and wide set of responsibilities. Teams should have the ownership of the product they develop.
✏️ Product should have an inspiring vision. Vision is what business wants to achieve.
✏️ Product should have a strategy. A strategy describes how vision will be achieved.
✏️ Product teams should have correct business context to make right decisions.
✏️ Teams should use fast and cheap prototypes to test business ideas.
✏️ If the company uses OKRs, then they should be set for teams not for individuals.
✏️ Сontinuous product research and innovation are the foundation for the business success.

Principles for a good product vision:
✔️ Always start with Why. Define the main product goal.
✔️ Focus on the problem not the solution.
✔️ Be ambitious.
✔️ Be ready to break something old to build something new.
✔️ Be inspirational. Your vision should excite people, they should want to be a part of the product.
✔️ Be aligned with current industry trends.
✔️ Focus on the future.
✔️ Allow flexibility in details.
✔️ Require extra efforts to achieve. If it's easy to achieve the vision, it may be not ambition enough.
✔️ Evangelism. Regularly explain product vision to the teams and stakeholders.

Principles for a good product strategy:
✔️ Focus on one user profile or business niche at a time.
✔️ Align with the overall company's strategy.
✔️ Align with the marketing strategy.
✔️ Focus on customers not competitors
✔️ Share the strategy with the teams.

The principles and recommendations about product vision and strategy were the most valuable parts of the book for me. Other chapters felt a bit trivial - like using prototypes, making them cheap and fast, not doing real product from MVP, knowing your customers, etc. Anyway, the book is really good to improve understanding of product management.

#booknook #product #leadership