5 Ideas That Will Shape Your View Of Building Products
Some tools and mental models for building products
Hello -
I've been thinking a lot about mental models after reading Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann. I wanted to share a few of the ideas and models I find myself referencing throughout the product development lifecycle.
Pareto's Principle
Also known as the 80/20 rule, this is the idea the majority of results come from a minority of causes. Identify the narrow set of features or customers that drive the majority of impact on your business and focus on improving that functionality and delighting those users.
Reversible vs. Irreversible Decisions
This has been written about by Jeff Bezos in his 2016 Shareholder Letter. The idea is that there are two types of decisions — reversible, which make up the majority of decisions and can be easily changed later, and irreversible, which are hard to change. Reversible decisions should be made quickly and without perfect information since you can adjust the course quickly. Irreversible decisions should be made carefully and require more extensive information gathering before reaching a conclusion. The key is knowing which type of decision you are making beforehand so you can act accordingly.
Inversion
To get a different perspective on a problem it often helps to think of it in reverse. Instead of thinking through why something will work, think about the reasons it won’t. Instead of forecasting from the current state and projecting forward, try backcasting by thinking backward from your end goal. A helpful technique for fostering this is by conducting a “Premortem” before starting a project.
Probabilistic Thinking
Product development requires making decisions based on assumptions and imperfect information. Probabilistic thinking is the process of using logic and estimation to guess the outcome of a particular event. This type of thinking helps inform where to place your bets on what problems to solve and which solutions to build.
Theory of constraints
“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” Identifying bottlenecks and working to reduce or remove those constraints will improve throughput. This model can apply to any system at work — whether that's a particular step in the funnel of the product you are building or in a process your company is using.
If you are interested in more - here is a full list of 15 ideas and mental models for product managers I shared last month.
Thanks for reading and stay safe!
Alex Pedicini