AMA: Appcues VP of Products, C. Todd Lombardo on Product Development Process
July 27 @ 10:00AM PST
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Appcues VP of Products, C. Todd Lombardo on Product Development Process
Top Questions
C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Name and shame them! (kidding) Look, these things may happen and sometimes they can be amazing, sometimes they're a waste. Ask youself why this happens? Do they see a need you're not addressing? Do they want to showcase their skills? Or is it something else? If you build trust with your en......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
I'll start with an upfront caveat - there is no one product development process. How you go about development will depend on what you want to develop: An entirely new product? A feature? An improvement on a feature? If I simplify - you need to: 1. Form a hypothesis on a problem that needs t......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Two week iterations are very common and can work effectively if you've broken the work down in such a way that you're delivering customer value within each sprint. The question I have is: What does "on time" mean? If you're off by a day a week or even a month, that rarely matters. If yo'ure of......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
I generally go by this guide
7 to 10 engineers for every 1 designer
1 product manager for every 7 to 10 "makers" (designers + engineers)
It's never a hard and fast rule as every company is different. I find that B2C companies need more designers and PMs, but not always.
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
I don't know of any company that doesn't have this constraint in some manner! Ultimately you have to ask a very very critical question: What's important? Here's a video of Jon Ive talking about Steve Jobs lesson on focus. Every minute of every day: Why are you talking about this if it's no......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Hm. There appears to be an undercurrent of "us vs them" in your question, maybe this is intentional, but look at your inner beliefs on that to see if there's a negative bias towards engineers. What control are you unwilling to give up? And why? First ask: What do you control and what do the en......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
We have something we call a "common roadmap discovery doc" that has a set of questions around the problem that the PM, the designer and a tech lead (engineer) all work on together. The doc has questions about the problem to solve, the evidence we have around why it's important, the technical chal......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
As soon as we start talking about the idea. PMs need to have a hypothesis about what a good outcome looks lie in the beginning. For example we were talking about some changes to our API recently and I asked if there was a way we could measure how many accounts change thier use of our API to in......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Communicate, communicate and communicate more! We have a quarterly product strategy meeting where the PMs share their plans and the execs ask questions ahead of the work being done, so there's time for the PMs to go back with the engineers and designers to refine based on any course correction......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Ask them to repeat it back to you in their own words. "Explain it to me like I'm 10 years old!"
Ask them where they have the most confidence and the least confidence about what they are delivering.
Can they identify all the points of failure in their approach?
459 Views
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
I've worked with some teams that have dedicated QA people and others with none. If QA falls solely on 1 person, this can also become a challenge where engineering is not checking along the way becuase the attitude is "Oh, QA will catch it" and this can create inefficiencies in your process. Th......Read More
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C. Todd Lombardo
Co-author Product Roadmaps Relaunched • July 27
Depends on the problem! Who has the best knowledge to help assess?
This could be a product manager, an analyst, a designer, or an engineer!
It is likely a team of people, often informal, that help assess the "right" problem to solve for an organization.
405 Views
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