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Overcoming the 20% feature usage challenge

Product Management

Three product leaders to learn from at #mtpcon inside Pendomonium

Janna Bastow is one of the co-founders of Mind the Product, and kicked off her first event for product people with ProductCamp London in 2010, in an effort to meet and learn from other product managers. 

As a product manager always looking for better tools, Janna also co-founded <a href="https://www.prodpad.com/" title="product management and roadmapping software">ProdPad</a>, product management and roadmapping software for product people. 

She often starts and stops conversations with the question: “What problem are you trying to solve?”

Janna Bastow

<p>With the start of a new year &#8211; like nearly every other human being on the planet &#8211; I have been struck by a spell of optimism and the spirit of self-improvement. And up there on the list is becoming a more awesome product manager.  </p>
<p>As product people, we’re in the business of forming a new discipline. In 2014 the Mind the Product community learned a lot. From <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/dave-wascha-inside-mind-product-manager/">Dave Wascha</a> encouraging product managers to be bold in decision-making, to <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/leisa-reichelt-changing-organisations-to-improve-products/">Leisa Reichelt</a> on how to change organisational behaviour, and ProductTank meetups focused on everything from <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/video-changing-a-global-product-culture/">change management</a> to <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/video-making-data-actionable/">decision making</a>, product thought leaders made leaps and bounds in defining our craft. </p>
<p>In the spirit of keeping that great movement rolling forward, here are five Mind the Product resolutions for product people in 2015:</p>
<h2>1. See more customers</h2>
<p>Customer testing should be the bread and butter of modern product management; not the cherry on the cake. This year, aim to work it into every step of your product process so that you can be confident your decisions are based on real customer feedback and data. Part of this leap is overcoming the taboo around testing as a timely, costly or bothersome process and just a natural part of what you do. John Dobrowolski <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/getting-value-customer-testing/" title="Getting Value From Customer Testing">has some guiding points</a> on how you can make it happen.</p>
<h2>2. Learn to be humble and play nice</h2>
<p>The best ideas can come from anyone &#8211; colleague or customer &#8211; so resolve to give them a chance.  If you&#8217;re convinced one of your own ideas has great potential then one of the most effective ways to get your team on board is to plant the seeds for them to discover it themselves. If it really is the best, then your idea will get the support it needs. Sure, you don&#8217;t get credit this way, but what you do get is <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/product-managers-5-ways-you-can-make-an-engineers-job-easier/" title="Product Managers: 5 ways you can make an engineer’s job easier">a better product and a happier team</a>. Let&#8217;s remember what&#8217;s important in 2015.</p>
<h2>3. Kill more features</h2>
<p>Product managers need to resolve to be ruthless. Even a small amount of time and resources spent on developing a feature can make it feel very tough to delete code. But being a feature hoarder has its risks &#8211; wasted money and dilution of your value proposition <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/to-kill-a-feature/">to name but a few.</a> Dave McClure says we should kill one feature a week and see what happens.</p>
<h2>4. Do less</h2>
<p>Now I&#8217;m certainly not saying that this is a year to sit back and relax. It&#8217;s the time to test more, play more, experiment more, but not necessarily to *do* more.  Make 2015 about learning and you&#8217;ll see that you turn out much higher quality products by the end of the year. Dedicate some time to understanding <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/the-minimally-viable-feature-approach/" title="The Minimally Viable Feature Approach">the MVF approach</a> and brushing up on testing processes so that when you do less, it&#8217;s worth more. </p>
<h2>5. Don&#8217;t try and do it alone</h2>
<p>We did indeed come a long way in 2014, but 2015 is our product tribe&#8217;s golden moment. When trying to figure out new challenges and get better at your craft, you don&#8217;t need to do it alone. Mind the Product is the biggest product community in the world &#8211; today we&#8217;re more than 8,000 strong and #mtpcon 2014 saw over 1,000 of you come together from 39 different countries to move this discipline forward, together. Get involved this year at your local <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/meetups/">ProductTank meetups</a> and at <a href="http://www.mtpcon.com">#mtpcon London or San Francisco</a> to share your expertise and learn from your passionate product peers. </p>
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Janna Bastow

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