This document outlines five habits that can help create better products faster: 1) Always start with customers by finding their critical problems and solving them better than others; 2) Continuously improve products through acquired habits that are regularly followed; 3) Think deeply about reducing steps and doing thorough research upfront; 4) Use data by seeking it out before taking action and having a single metric goal; 5) Focus on the right thing by having small, focused teams working on the main customer problem. The habits are supported by examples and recommendations for applying them in product development.

1. Five Habits to Create Be er Products Faster
Hiten Shah
hnshah@gmail.com
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2. View this presentation online:
http://kiss.ly/prohabits

3. Product, Engineering, Marketing, Growth, Sales
What do you do?
 

4. Find the critical problems
your customers have and
solve them be er than
anyone else.
This is your job.

5. An acquired behavior pattern
regularly followed until it has
become almost involuntary.
HABIT

6. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

7. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

8. So, you think you’re the
customer and you feel
their pain…
you
them

9. h p://kiss.ly/peoplewant
You Are
Not Your
Customer

10. HTTP://KISS.LY/LEANCUSTDEV

11. HTTP://CRAZYEGG.COM

12. Go Where Customers Are!
HTTP://CRAZYEGG.COM
Be Human. Help People. (9/2006)

13. TODO:
Engage with your
customers!
Go to them. Don’t wait for them to come to you.

14. HTTP://KISS.LY/WORKBACK
We try to work backwards
from the customer, rather
than starting with an idea
for a product and trying to
bolt customers onto it.
Ian McAllister, Amazon
Working Backwards

15. TODO:
Write a launch blog post
before you start any
product development
It’ll force you to start with the customer and find their problems.

16. Focusing on outcome,
rather than category,
industry, or product type,
lets you understand your
real competitors.
Intercom on Product Management
HTTP://KISS.LY/PRODUCTBOOK
Jobs to be Done

17. HTTP://INTERCOM.IO

22. TODO:
Find out what job(s) people
hire your product for
Helps define what customer’s want from your product in their own context.

23. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

24. Start SMALL Iterate fast
Don’t do this.

25. Go Where Customers Are!Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
HTTP://KISS.LY/MVP

26. Go Where Customers Are!Start With a Cupcake
HTTP://KISS.LY/CUPCAKE

27. TODO:
Create a minimal product
which satisfies the job
Build less to get product in customer’s hands sooner and you’ll learn more faster.

28. Go Where Customers Are!
HTTP://KISS.LY/PLAYBOOKS
Create Your Playbook
Checklists, guidelines,
screencasts, specifications
and requirements are just a
few ways to make the tasks
people do in your company
repeatable and scalable.
Write It
Down.

29. TODO:
Write the process down so
it’s easier next time
Product processes aren’t repeatable unless they’re documented.

30. Collaborative Product
Development Process
We Used In 2012

31. Collaborative Product
Development Process
We Used In 2012

32. Collaborative Product
Development Process
We Used In 2012

34. Updated Golden Motion Process We Used In 2012

35. FREEBIE: Idea to Release Product Development Process
VIEW THE GOOGLE DOC: HTTP://KISS.LY/IDEATORELEASE

36. FREEBIE: Project Status Template
USE THE GOOGLE SPREADSHEET: HTTP://KISS.LY/PROJECTSTATUS

37. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

38. Click. Click.
Awesome.
Many of the best ideas come
from deeply thinking about
how to make things easier
for other people.
HTTP://KISS.LY/EASYTWEET

39. TODO:
Figure out how to reduce the
number of steps
Help people accomplish their goal with the least amount of steps. A ention spans are short. Every step counts.

40. Evolution of A/B Testing
THE ORIGIN STORY

41. One way I have worked around my
engineering deficiencies has been to hire the
skills onto the marketing team. For example,
in my last long-term VP Marketing role I
hired a front-end designer/engineer to design
and code landing pages and a dedicated DBA
to build reports and run ad hoc queries.
SEAN ELLIS (VP OF MARKETING, LOGMEIN 2003-2007) HTTP://KISS.LY/SEANENG
Old School A/B Testing

42. Google Website Optimizer went into beta in 2006

43. First Generation A/B Testing

44. First Generation A/B Testing
Required engineering effort so it took days to
get experiments started.
Marketers were unable to run enough
experiments.
People who figured out how to experiment
faster, got more growth.

46. Optimizely started in 2010

47. Second Generation A/B Testing

48. Second Generation A/B Testing
A single line of JavaScript installed once and
experiments start in seconds.
Marketers can now run many types of
experiments on their own.
Fast growth is becoming more common.

49. Top 5 A/B Testing Platforms
Adobe
3%
SiteSpect
4%
Google
8%
VWO
8%
Optimizely
77%
The results of
deep thinking!

50. What’s next for
A/B Testing?
We’re Thinking Deeply About…

51. TODO:
Take the time to do
thorough research up front
It’s faster to research than to write code. Upfront depth prevents you from building the wrong things.

52. HTTP://PRODUCTHUNT.COM
Making product people’s lives easier one product at a time.

53. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

55. All product initiatives need a single
metric and target goal.
Steve Cox, VP of Product and Engineering at KISSmetrics

56. Data doesn’t make decisions for you.

57. Data informs your decision making.

58. Before You Build Anything, Make an Educated Guess.
HTTP://KISS.LY/OPTDATADNA

59. When You’ve Already Got Usage, Analyze It.
What percentage of your
customers or users have
adopted each feature?
Intercom on Product Management
HTTP://KISS.LY/PRODUCTBOOK

60. TODO:
Seek out data before you
take any action.
Whether you have data already or not, finding it and analyzing it to determine your next steps is critical.

61. 1. Always Start With Customers
2. Continuously Improve
3. Think Deeply
4. Use Data
5. Focus
Five Product Habits

62. Small teams mean fewer distractions,
less risk of ge ing mired in pet rocks,
and a singular shared focus on the
customer problem at hand.
David Cancel, Dri t / HubSpot / Performable / Ghostery / Compete

63. HTTP://KISS.LY/GROWTHFOCUS

64. A company can only do one thing
at a time.
Arjun Sethi, Founder and Troublemaker

65. TODO:
Are you are working on the
right thing, right now?
If you can’t answer this question, you should stop and reassess everything you are doing.

66. SIMPLE RULE OF BUSINESS GROWTH
Easy to understand. Difficult to execute.
Focus +Sequence = Speed
How fast you growWhat you choose to do The order in which you do those things

67. Hiten Shah
How can I help you?
hnshah@gmail.com
@hnshah