Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

Good Qs,
Good Ps.31 Good Questions Product Makers
can ask to build Great Products.
by Eli Holder
hi@eliholder.com

“That’s a great
question.”

Work Work Work.Eli’s Background

unblab. “Spent about 10 minutes training it to recognize
my important emails and it's already saved me
hours and hours of sorting through messages.”acquired by

“Until I saw your graphics and your ‘result
stories’, I really wasn’t that dissatisﬁed.
Now, I want to view all of my data this way.”

Nodd helps team leaders
get honest, constructive
feedback from their
teams at work.
"I loved the emojis and
the survey format was
awesome. I was engaged
the whole time. Excellent
platform.”
“It’s like the slack of 1:1s”
Nodd.co

Dumb. Slightly less dumb.
2009 2016
The power of questions.

Goal of this talk:
Hooray
Questions!

Why Questions?
“The
Unknown
Unknowns”
i.e. the epistemology
of Donald Rumsfeld

Unknown
Unknowns
Known
Unknowns
When you learn a new question:

Goals of the talk:
1. The power of Questions
2. Asking the right Questions
3. Tons ‘o’ Product Questions

1. Who are we? Why are we here?  
(strategy & existential crises)
2. Who’s our audience? What do
they want? (user research)
3. What are we trying to do? Why
should we?(opportunity assessment)
4. How should we solve the
problem? (design sprinting)
5. Are we approaching Product /
Market Fit? (build, measure, learn loop)
Big Product Q’s(for each Product Lifecycle Stage)

Related Product Q’s.
Who are we? What’s our mission? What’s our aligning metric? What are our organizational objectives for the quarter/year (OKRs)? Who are the
stakeholders? What are their goals? Why invest more in the product (e.g. instead of sales?) Who’s going to be building it? What are their personal
goals and interests? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How much of their time do we have (e.g. are they cross functional? do they have
other projects? are there churn risks?) What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses? What are people’s expected communication styles? What’s
the organization’s culture (e.g. Risk tolerance)? What’s the organization’s perceived brand? What are the expectations for a product manager?
What’s the (target) business model? What stage is the company at? What’s the prevailing role within the company? Who are the other companies in
the space? How is your company different? Tech advantages / debt? Design advantages / debt? Data advantages? What are the religious issues that
everyone’s tired of discussing? External requirements? Whats your support team like? How do you (think) you make money? Who’s our audience?
What do our users think about on the subway? Who are our primary (and secondary) users? What does a typical day look like for them? What
problems are they currently experiencing? (What are the 5 whys for the problems? What are they doing now to solve them? What do they like about
the current solution? What do they dislike about the current solution? What are they feeling?) What are the most important dimensions to describe
them? (e.g. demographics? behavior? company role? values? physical attributes? ) Who are the extreme users? What do our users value? What are
their goals? What are their obligations? What are their frustrations? What are their stresses? What gets them excited? Who are the people in their
lives? How do they typically interact with them? What’s the users value to us? What language do they use to describe their experiences? What other
products / tools are they using? What are they reading? Who are they following? How do they find / buy related products? How do they fit into
purchasing decisions? What can they spend? When do they spend? What’s their organization’s culture like? How do they fit in? What’s their
organization’s business model? How do competitors perceive them? What does academia think about them? What problem are we solving? (value
prop) What problems are incidental (non-goals)? For whom do we solve this problem? (target market) How big is the opportunity? (market size)
How will we measure success? (metrics) What alternatives are out there now? (competitors) Why us? What’s our differentiator? Why now?
(market window) Why might this a bad idea? How will we market this? Other considerations for success? How should we solve this? What are all
the different ways we could possibly solve this? How are our competitors solving this? How have academics solved this? How have people solved
similar problems in different industries? Which solution is the best for us to pursue? Which solution is most interesting to the team? Which solution
has the most learning potential? Is it technically feasible? (What’s the relative complexity?) Is it consistent with the behavior / data we’ve collected
so far? What are the main things we expect users to do (Jobs to Be Done / stories)? What would it look like for the user to do that? What user

Who are we?
Why are we here?
Product Lifecycle Stage #1:
Q:
Strategy & Existential Crises

What’s the mission?Q:
Who are the stakeholders?
What do they want?
Q:
What are our strengths &
weaknesses?
Q:
Strategy & Existential Crises

Why it’s importantFollow your dreams, idiot.

“What’s our one metric that matters”?
“What are our near-term OKRs”?
“What are our product principles”?
Ask:
What’s the mission?Q:

Who are the stakeholders? 
What do they want?
Q:

This is not you.This is not you.

1. Conformity bias
2. Positivity bias
3. They don’t know
4. Don’t want to look dumb
challenges:
What do they want?
Q:

What do they want?
Q:
“What are your 3 biggest hopes for this project?
“What are your 3 biggest fears for this project?
“Any other considerations?
Ask:
The Hopes / Fears Exercise:

Hopes / Fears Exercise Results:
What do they want?
Q:
Answers:
Hopes:
• That project X opens up a new market for us
• I’m optimistic about the chance at a new market
• That project X opens up a substantial new revenue
stream for us
• That X has interesting technical challenges
Fears:
• That project X is much more technically difﬁcult
than we expected
• That we get distracted and don’t give project X a
fair shot
• That we’re just excited about the revenue
opportunity and not solving a real problem.

Hopes, Fears, and
Psychological Safety.

What’s our mission? What’s our aligning metric? What are our
organizational objectives for the quarter/year (OKRs)? Who are the
stakeholders? What are their goals? Why invest more in the product (e.g.
instead of sales?)
Who’s going to be building it? What are their personal goals and interests?
What are their strengths and weaknesses? How much of their time do we
have (e.g. are they cross functional? do they have other projects? are there
churn risks?) What are the team’s strengths and weaknesses? What are
people’s expected communication styles?
What’s the organization’s culture (e.g. Risk tolerance)? What’s the
organization’s perceived brand? What are the expectations for a product
manager? What’s the (target) business model? What stage is the company
at? What’s the prevailing role within the company?
Who are the other companies in the space? How is your company different?
Tech advantages / debt? Design advantages / debt? Data advantages?
What are the religious issues that everyone’s tired of discussing? External
Strategy: Relevant Q’s.

Audience Q:
Any questions so far?

Who’s our audience?
What do they want?
Q:
User Research

“Set up at least 30 meetings, or
you won’t have a good product.
Michael Sippey
Former VP Product
Twitter
User Research: Why?

Allison Smith*
27, Cleveland
New Mom
Yahoo Mail User
*Not really Allison But
thank you to this person
for CC Flickr photo.
How does Allison
use email?

What does a typical day look like?
What’s important to them?
What’s holding them back?
What do they think about on the
subway or on the highway?
Qs:
Who’s our Audience?Q:

“If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said:
Faster Horses.”
Henry Ford*
Model-T Inventor
*Not really

What do users want?Q:
1. They can’t say what they want
2. They won’t know what’s possible
3. It’s not their job to know
challenges:

“How do you currently do [area you
want to explore]?”
“What are the top 3 things you love
about how you’re doing it now?”
“What are the 3 biggest frustrations
with how you’re doing it now?”
Ask:

Happy Event
Frustrating Event
Emotion Timeline Exercise.
"If you were to draw a chart of your
emotions throughout your experience
[doing X], with peaks when you're most
happy and valleys when you're most
unhappy, what would that look like?"
Ask:

A designer describes the 360
performance review experience.
Choose my
reviewers.
Find out it’s perf
review time.
Find out I have to
write 4 reviews
I write the reviews,
feel relieved
A long time goes
by and I forget
about it.
Boss emails to
say it’s time to
have the talk.
Talk day.
Promotion!
Emotion Timeline Exercise Results:
Answer:

Who are your competitors’
customers? What do they value?
Q:

User Research: Relevant Q’s.
What do our users think about on the subway?
Who are our primary (and secondary) users? What does a typical day look like for
them? What problems are they currently experiencing? (What are the 5 whys for
the problems? What are they doing now to solve them? What do they like about
the current solution? What do they dislike about the current solution? What are
they feeling?)
What are the most important dimensions to describe them? (e.g. demographics?
behavior? company role? values? physical attributes? ) Who are the extreme users?
What do our users value? What are their goals? What are their obligations? What
are their frustrations? What are their stresses? What gets them excited? Who are
the people in their lives? How do they typically interact with them? What’s the users
value to us?
What language do they use to describe their experiences? What other products / tools
are they using? What are they reading? Who are they following? How do they find /
buy related products? How do they fit into purchasing decisions? What can they
spend? When do they spend? What’s their organization’s culture like? How do they fit

Q:
Opportunity Assessment
What are we
trying to do?
Why should we?

From The PM Handbook
(mostly).
Opportunity Assessment: Huh?

1. What problem are we solving?
2. What problems are we not solving?
3. For whom do we solve this problem?
4. How big is the opportunity?
5. How are people solving it now?
6. What’s the competitive landscape?
7. Why us? What’s our differentiator?
8. Why now? Why hasn’t this been solved yet?
9. How will we get this product to market?
10.How will we measure success?
11.What factors are critical to success?
12.Given the above, go or no-go?
The Opportunity Assessment:

12.Given the above, go or no-go?
Reason #1 for

8. Why now?
9. How will we market this?

Q:
What is the #1 Most Important
Question about a Product?

The Most Important Question:
What problem are we solving?*Q:
*Independently of how we might solve it.

Advil.
Features are for suckers..
What problem are we solving?Q:
310M Americans experience
mild headaches and body pain
due to inﬂammation at least
once per year. We’ll make that
pain go away.
This:
We’re manufacturing doses of
ibuprofen. They’ll come in blue
or brown pills. The bottle is
child proof. We’re advertising
the hell out of them.
Not This:

“Shiny feature X.”
CEO: It needs to be social. Add share buttons everywhere!
PM: Sir, it’s a porn site. How many people share porn on Facebook?
CEO: The investors say we’re not growing fast enough. And some site
called “Buzzfeed" is really taking off because of the sharing.
PM: It sounds like you’re saying the real problem is growth? Are there
other ways we could solve that?
Get to the root of the problem.  
Avoid building things that don’t add value.

80M Americans have have a
hard time ﬁnding things on the
internet.
Finding information on the internet.
Problem
Idea #1 Portals and directories (yahoo)
Idea #2 Search by phrase matching
(altavista)
Idea #3 search by phrase matching
and back links signal (google)
Problem framing leaves room for multiple solutions.

PM:
Designer:
*Quits. Goes to Facebook.*
Problem framing helps PMs avoid irritating  
designers and engineers.
The signup button must be
big and red so more people
will see it and click on it.

Q: How big is the opportunity?

Expected Ransom: 
$1 Million
Cost of Space Laser: 
$16 Septillion
??????

Q: How big of an opportunity is
it to hold the world hostage?
Cost of Space Laser:
Opportunity Size:
+$6,300,000,000,000
(available cash, top 5 countries)
-$15,600,000,000,000,000,00
(estimated cost of death star)

holding the world hostage?
Opportunity Size:
$6,300,000,000,000
(available cash, top 5 countries)
(market size) (ransom)
x $1.26T = $6.3T
(opportunity)
top 5 countries

Q:
Ask:
How big is the opportunity?
q1: How big is the market?
q2: What’s the unit impact?
Then: What’s q1 × q2?
solve: (market size) × (impact) = (opportunity size)

(market size) (revenue)
x
7B people
×
10% w/o internet
=
$3.73 = $2.6B/yr
(opportunity)
700M people

typography for Medium?
(Medium Readers /mo) (credibility acts)
x +1.5% = 510k ♥’s
(opportunity)
34,000,000

5,000,000
x 10
x 365
5,069,444
~8
users
seconds
days
hrs/yr
lives/yr

12. Given the above, go or no-go?
value > features
worth it? worth it.

3. What problem should we solve?
How big is it?(opportunity assessment)

3. What problem should we solve?
How big is it?(opportunity assessment)
}Let’s
talk!
hi@eliholder.com

Summary:
1. The power of Questions
2. Asking the right Questions
3. Product Questions
4. Let’s talk!
hi@eliholder.com.

Thanks!
hi@eliholder.com
bit.ly/good-product-questions

Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and Managers

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