AI Models reliability
Reliability can have many meanings. By reliability I refer to the ability of an AI model to, given any input or prompt, generate an output that is consistent with the expectations of what we define as success.
Defining success means maximizing a reward function, which is indeed to be intended as how we define success for the model.
This forces us to define variables for said reward function, for the function to be maximized. Hence, here we are going to define the KPIs we shall focus on to improve the reliability of the model itself.
The ability to maximize the reliability of the model is key to having a model - and a business - that can be distributed at scale. Doesn't matter if it is B2B or B2C, reliability is fundamental to scale companies’ distribution. The key is to spend time on selling my solution without having to worry about the, on average, results of the outputs of the model.
Not all industries need 100% reliability. Some, such as the legal or medical fields, of which decisions’ outcomes have bigger impact need a reliability level of to be 100% or close to that. As a matter of fact, those are dealing with the lives of people. However, others can afford today to have less reliability: an 85% reliability is acceptable in many industries.
What's next for companies? As the current segment of foundational models is crowded by giants like open AI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, etc.. where the money and the scale needed to properly train the models are unattainable for most of the business, companies shall focus on the reliability of the outputs by performing tests and evals at scale. As a matter of fact, companies today in YC mainly spend their time doing that.
This is, in addition to distribution, what companies today shall concentrate on.
Sources:
Lessons from Successful Startup Founders: Insights from “Founders at Work”
Successful startup founders demonstrate determination, adaptability, and the ability to pivot business plans as needed. Building a strong team, focusing on customer feedback, and continuously improving products are key strategies. Strategic acquisitions require maintaining the core team and culture. Effective marketing relies on creating quality products that customers naturally promote. Transitioning from a small to large team involves evolving leadership skills. Success is a mix of luck and preparedness. Practical advice includes clear vision documents, open communication, building middle management, and empowering user marketing.
I recently finished reading Jessica Livingston’s "Founders at Work". Throughout the book, I highlighted the passages that resonated the most with me. Here are some key takeaways.
The Power of Determination and Adaptability
One of the most crucial qualities of a startup founder is determination. Starting a company involves navigating through numerous challenges and setbacks. As Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, points out, having a good co-founder can significantly impact your journey. The experience of adapting to six different business plan changes before finding success with PayPal is a testament to the importance of flexibility.
Crafting and Evolving Your Business Plan
A business plan should be viewed as a communication tool rather than a rigid guide. Flexibility and the willingness to pivot are essential, as initial plans often evolve. The unpredictable nature of startup success can be likened to a series of connected, yet unforeseeable events, where each step potentially leads to significant breakthroughs.
Building a Strong Team
The significance of assembling a strong team is just THE thing. Talent attracts talent, and having the right people around you can make all the difference. Keeping the founding team together is crucial for maintaining the startup’s vision and effectiveness. Investing in top talent, even if it means higher costs, pays off in the long run through increased productivity and innovation.
Customer Focus and Continuous Improvement
“Talk with customers and build something people want” is one of the most famous aphorisms of YC. It is essential to engage with customers and incorporate their feedback into product development to foster loyalty and ensure the product meets their needs. Continuous product improvement is the best strategy for long-term success. As Levchin mentions, "Nothing works better than just improving your product."
Strategic Acquisitions and Maintaining Culture
The challenges of acquisitions highlight the need to maintain the core team and culture of the acquired company. Yahoo’s experience with Viaweb serves as a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of poorly managed integrations. Keeping the original team intact can help preserve the innovative spirit and operational efficiency of the startup.
Effective Marketing and Sales Strategies
Effective marketing often stems from creating a great product that customers will naturally want to share. Educational marketing is particularly valuable when entering new markets or dealing with complex products. As Livingston notes, "Marketing is just making the product good enough that people spread it on their own, and giving them ways to do that."
Leadership and Management Evolution
Transitioning from a small to a large team requires different management skills. Founders often need to adapt or bring in new leadership to handle the growth effectively. Good hiring practices and investing in top talent are crucial for sustaining growth and maintaining a competitive edge.
Luck and Preparedness
Success is often a mix of luck and being prepared to seize opportunities. "Success is 50 percent luck and 50 percent preparedness for that luck," a sentiment echoed by many founders, underscores the importance of staying ready and adaptable to changing circumstances.
Practical advice from the book
1. Write Foundational Documents: Clearly articulate the vision and technological needs of your startup.
2. Maintain Open Communication: Regularly engage with users and incorporate their feedback.
3. Build Middle Management: As the company grows, a strong middle management structure becomes essential.
4. Empower User Marketing: Provide tools that enable users to promote your product.
Conclusion
All in all, "Founders at Work" provides invaluable insights from experienced entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of determination, adaptability, strong team dynamics, customer focus, and strategic thinking. It was a very interesting book from which you can have a detailed view on what needs to be done for a startup to be successful.
Product Managers will be the first one-person billion dollar company
In a rapidly evolving AI landscape, product managers are uniquely positioned to become the architects of the next billion-dollar, one-person companies. As AI increasingly automates tasks traditionally handled by junior developers, PMs' skills in writing precise requirements and specs become invaluable. By leveraging AI's capabilities, PMs can transform their detailed prompts into fully functional applications, democratizing innovation and reducing costs. This shift emphasizes the importance of writing as a tool for clarity and creativity, enabling PMs to drive technological advancements and entrepreneurial ventures efficiently.
As we all know, AI is advancing and it is doing it rapidly. As of today, AI can do the job of a junior/mid developer, and can perform simple and repetitive tasks like bug fixing.
AIs of today, given a complex infrastructure or architecture problem, may be able to give an sufficiently reliable answer, but lack of the company-specific context in which that question has been posed. If they have been trained on some specific company's data and architecture, then things may change. But we are not there, yet.
AI will replace junior devs
This is why I believe AI will primarily replace junior developers, and will ultimately democratize and lower the costs of doing an MVP. AI's capability to handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks makes it an ideal tool for replacing junior developers. By automating code generation, bug fixing, and initial testing, AI can drastically reduce development time and costs.
This shift will democratize access to technology, allowing startups and small businesses to bring their ideas to market more efficiently and affordably. It's an exciting era where innovation is more accessible than ever, opening new possibilities for creativity and entrepreneurship. What a great time to be alive!
Think big
Let's think bigger. What is an AI prompt? What happens when I write to ChatGPT (or whichever other AI) "generate a webpage with this and this characteristic"?
What I am doing is giving text-based prompts (in this case in English) which the AI will translate into code. As AIs quality improves, more complex text prompts (or perhaps Product of Feature Requirements Pages) will be properly managed.
As the masters of writing specs down, it will be product managers the ones to create the new apps, the new website, and ultimately the next one-person billion-dollar company!
Importance of writing
Writing is thinking! As the greatest Paul Graham says, writing forces clarity and precision, transforming and often improving the initial thoughts. Writing is a critical tool for intellectual rigor and discovery, essential for anyone wishing to develop fully formed ideas on complex subjects.
PMs' job is to act as the mediator between business and tech and to write documentation and requirements. Who better than them to be the best equipped to write prompts that will translate into an app?
Engineering = executing?
Are we sure that engineering is just executing? This is something that should deserve a whole specific blog post. As a matter of fact, developers can also elevate themselves as product managers, and in fact they are 100% able to do this.
Does this mean that PMs should not learn or know anything on how to code? In my opinion, they should do it because it opens your mind and you can be more creative with your writing, as well as see problems from a different perspective (and write them down in a more precise and better way to become the next one-person billion dollar company)
Budget for meetings
Discover how budgeting for meetings can enhance productivity in digital companies. Learn how to set limits on meeting hours, gather data, and implement buffers to optimize your team's time and efficiency.
In the dynamic world of digital companies, meetings can quickly spiral into an all-day, back-to-back, endless spiral. Coming from the financial world, why don’t we think that also the meetings can have a budget? The concept is simple: setting a cap on the number, or hours, of meetings an individual can have in a week.
This isn't a one-size-fits-all approach; different roles will have different caps based on their unique responsibilities. The primary goal here is to reduce friction and reclaim valuable time.
Start with Data
How many meetings are we really having?
Before we can make any changes, we need to understand our current state. Gathering and analyzing this data is indeed crucial: it will help us see the extent of the issue, if there is any, and to identify patterns. For some roles, frequent meetings might be necessary, but data will help us anyways to make informed decisions.
Data will also allow us to spot the systemic presence of back-to-back meetings. These are the worst, as they leave no time to breathe, to debrief (individually or as a group), and to prepare for the next meeting.
An idea here may be implementing buffers between meetings can give people the necessary time to debrief, organize action items, and prepare for the next task. This small change can lead to significant improvements in the quality of outcomes and overall productivity.
All or nothing
When we talk about reducing meetings, the immediate reaction is to suggest eliminating them altogether. This isn't the aim nor the scope of this blog post.
We need to distinguish between reducing unnecessary meetings and canceling all meetings. The focus is on streamlining our processes and cutting down on non-essential gatherings to improve efficiency, not to zero in and adopt a one site fits all approach to the issue.
If they want to, people are smart enough to work around the process or the system and will find ways to have more meetings. Once again, this is not the point of this initiative.
Elon’s Algorithm
Elon Musk’s strategy of removing elements to see their impact, as outlined in Isaacson's biography, can be applied here. By cutting some meetings, we can better assess their importance and reinstate them if necessary!
I spoke about Mushk’s algorithm here.
Measuring Success
The success of this initiative should be measured in hours saved rather than FTEs. The goal is to allow everyone to perform their roles more effectively. Saving time on unnecessary meetings frees up valuable hours for high-impact tasks, driving overall organizational efficiency.
Question every requirement
Learn the importance of questioning every requirement in product management. Understand how to identify unnecessary parts, simplify processes, and enhance efficiency by challenging assumptions and optimizing workflows.
Elon Musk, in his biography of Walter Isaacson, explains to have 5 commandments.
1. Question Every Requirement
Every requirement must have the name of the person who made it. Don’t accept vague sources like “the legal department” or “the safety department.” Find out exactly who is responsible. Once you know who it is, question the necessity and details of the requirement, no matter how smart or experienced the person is.
Important: Requirements from smart people can be the most risky because others might not question them enough. Always question these, even if they come from me. This will help make sure the requirements are better and less likely to cause problems.
2. Delete Any Unnecessary Parts or Processes
Get rid of any part or process that isn’t absolutely necessary. You might need to add some back later. If you don’t end up adding back at least 10% of what you removed, you probably didn’t delete enough. The aim is to simplify and make things more efficient.
3. Simplify and Optimize
After deleting the unnecessary parts, focus on making what’s left simpler and better. Make sure everything works as efficiently as possible. A common mistake is trying to simplify and optimize parts that shouldn’t even be there. Make sure you’ve removed all unnecessary parts before moving on to this step.
4. Speed Up Processes
Once everything is simplified and optimized, work on making the remaining processes faster. Every process can be quicker. However, only do this after you’ve completed the first three steps. At the Tesla factory, I made the mistake of speeding up processes that should have been eliminated instead.
5. Automate
Automation should be the last step. The big mistake Musk made in Nevada and Fremont was starting with automation. They should have waited until all requirements were questioned, unnecessary parts and processes were removed, and everything was simplified and optimized. Only then they should have automated.
Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Elon Musk
Six-week cycles
Discover how six-week cycles can boost productivity and streamline planning in product management. Learn from Basecamp's approach to structuring work, optimizing deadlines, and ensuring teams have time to innovate and breathe.
Basecamp works in six-week cycle sprints. Six weeks is long enough to build something meaningful start-to-finish and short enough that everyone can feel the deadline looming from the start, so they use the time wisely.
The majority of their features are built and released in one six-week cycle.
The decisions are based on moving the product forward in the next six weeks, not micromanaging time. They don’t count hours or question how individual days are spent. They don’t have daily meetings. Focus is at a higher level.
The cycle
Calendars Dilemma
Committing time and people is difficult if we can’t easily determine who’s available and for how long.
When people are available at different times due to overlapping activities, planning turns into a frustrating game of Calendar Tetris. Working in cycles drastically simplifies this problem. A cycle gives us a standard planning size both for shaping and scheduling.
Basecamp learned that two weeks is too short to get anything meaningful done. Worse than that, two-week cycles are extremely costly due to the planning overhead. The amount of work you get out of two weeks isn’t worth the collective hours around the table to “sprint plan” or the opportunity cost of breaking everyone’s momentum to re-group.
Longer cycles
This led them to try longer cycles. We wanted a cycle that would be long enough to finish a whole epic, start to end. At the same time, cycles need to be short enough to see the end from the beginning. People need to feel the deadline looming in order to make trade-offs. If the deadline is too distant and abstract at the start, teams will naturally wander and use time inefficiently until the deadline starts to get closer and feel real.
After years of experimentation, they arrived at six weeks. Six weeks is long enough to finish something meaningful and still short enough to see the end from the beginning.
Breathing
If they were to run six-week cycles back to back, there wouldn’t be any time to breathe and think about what’s next. The end of a cycle is the worst time to meet and plan because everybody is too busy finishing activities and making last-minute decisions in order to ship on time.
Therefore, after each six-week cycle, they schedule two weeks for cool down This is a period with no scheduled work where they can breathe, meet as needed, and consider what to do next.
During cool-down, programmers and designers on teams are free to work on whatever they want. After working hard to ship their six-week stories, they enjoy having time that’s under their control. They use it to fix bugs, explore new ideas, or try out new technical possibilities.
During the cool-down, there is also the strategic planning activity for the upcoming six-weeks cycle.
Bugs
They fix them, if they are not critical:
during cool-downs
in a bug smash, which they do once a year and they clear the backlog of bugs
Team
Their teams consist of either one designer and two programmers or one designer and one programmer. They’re joined by a QA person who does integration testing later in the cycle.
These teams will either spend the entire cycle working on one story, or they’ll work on multiple smaller stories during the cycle.
Sources:
Effective Communication
Master effective communication strategies in remote, product-led organizations. Learn how to prioritize asynchronous communication, minimize meetings, and ensure clarity and transparency.
Effective communication strategies are now more than ever important for us to excel as a remote, product-led organization.
Pillars
Communication is Continuous: Every action or inaction communicates something. Especially inaction: people is not stupid, and when they see inaction the first thing that they do is thinking the worst (also because they do not have enough information).
MOST IMPORTANT Asynchronous Over Real-Time: We should prioritize writing and documenting over real-time verbal communication to reduce interruptions and increase clarity. A meeting composed of 10 people means that:
those 10 people are not doing something else
everyone else in the organization is left out
Important: this does not mean that we should abolish meetings. Rather, we need to invest in documenting important things that happen throughout the company in order for everyone to be on the same page and to promote transparency.
Minimize Meetings: Use meetings as a last resort and emphasize written communication. See point above for this.
Clarity is Key: Aim for clear communication to avoid repetition and misunderstandings. Once again, meeting can be a good way to clear misunderstandings but people should get used to read and when they have questions leave a comment.
If I have a question, that can be solved in a meeting. But what if that same question had risen to another person not in that meeting? By leaving a comment (and by the person answering the comment) we build transparency for everyone to clear out any possible problem.
Effective Use of Time: Respect others' time and avoid unnecessary synchronization. The keyword for 2024 should be focus, or better, uninterrupted focus. This does not mean that we need to abolish meetings, gatherings or emotional connections, rather we should invest in chunks of times for people to do deep, focused work. This will be a consequence of the behaviour we will have
On this, see the masterpiece by Paul Graham Maker vs Manager schedule - Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
Promote Reflection: Encourage employees to reflect on their work and communicate their thoughts. It is very important to execute, but it is also important to, recurringly, take some time to reflect on what has been done to improve and iterate. We shall issue quarterly reflection moments where all together we understand how to improve.
Daily Practices
One Central Tool: Utilize one single tool for all internal communication. This gives clarity and stability in the group.
Routine Check-Ins: Daily and weekly check-ins are important to assess the work of people. In Basecamp, they found a way to automate it by which a bot asks daily and weekly, from a template, check-in questions. Answers are then saved and reviewed by the manager
Social Interaction: It is important to schedule periodic social interactions to foster team bonding. I would see them at least once a quarter, for new teams once a month for the first 6 months.
Heartbeats and Kickoffs: We should invest more time in providing regular summaries of past achievements and of future plans for each team, to be shared company-wide. This is done for us to promote flawless information sharing and transparency. The concept of knowledge base goes in this direction.
Embrace videos
Learn how embracing video recordings can enhance productivity and communication. Discover the benefits of asynchronous updates, including flexibility, uninterrupted presentations, and efficient Q&A sessions.
I was in a video call with 57 people ranging from the sales and business development team.
The video call lasted 1h30, it was a presentation of the results of the quarter. Country managers intervened after the initial speech of the main manager illustrating their achievements and what could have been improved. People were reading the slides.
So I asked myself: what if these 57 salespeople would actually use this time to sell?
In order for us to achieve this, we need to embrace a more asynchronous organisation. This does not mean no more meetings, but we shall reduce the ones we can avoid.
Limitations of a video call
Even if video calls and plenary meetings have the value of erasing geographic barriers, and reuniting a whole company in a single screen, video calls present shortcomings for specific situations.
Such as:
A video call represents a limited amount of time (i.e. 1h30) and hence forces everyone to be present on that day at that time, when maybe they could have had better things to do (i.e. selling)
Even if the number is virtually unlimited, there is a maximum amount of people that can sit on a video call
Hybrid calls are annoying
If in a plenary video call multiple people are in the same room, then they need to share the same equipment.
The following problems arise for remote participants:
Can’t hear the people in the room well
Background noise since the microphone of the sharing people is on all the time
Can’t clearly see facial expressions since each face takes up only a small part of the screen
Can’t easily see who is talking since the screen shows multiple people
Hard getting a word in since the people in the room are advantaged to speak
The people sharing equipment also have problems because they don’t have their own equipment:
Can’t screen share something themselves
Trouble seeing details in screen sharing since the screen is further away from them
Can’t scroll through a slide deck at their own pace
The disadvantages for remote people are much greater than for the sharing people and hard to notice for the sharing people.
Solution
When giving updates, we need to embrace a video-recording based culture to allow everyone to benefit from the content in the time and place of their choice.
Benefits of video recording
Host(s) can speak uninterrupted
By adopting video recordings for company-wide updates, the person presenting can share their insights, news, and announcements in a streamlined manner.
This approach cuts down on the distractions and breaks in the flow that often come with live sessions, ensuring the core message is communicated effectively and clearly.
The advantage of being asynchronous
The shift towards video-recorded updates embraces the diverse schedules and time zones of a modern workforce, offering a significant advantage: flexibility.
Employees can watch these updates when they fit their schedule, making sure nobody misses out on vital information due to conflicting agendas.
Go 2x Speed
An added benefit of video-recorded updates is the control it gives viewers over how quickly they consume the content. For those who prefer a quick catch-up, speeding up the video to 2x allows them to get the gist in half the time.
Recording
Videos can be stored and accessed later, making it easy for anyone to catch up or refresh their memory on company updates.
Recording allows for meticulous preparation and editing, ensuring the message is polished, precise, and tailored to meet the audience's needs, further enhancing the quality of communication within the company.
Q&A
What about “live” questions? With a video recording I cannot do a live Q&A session.
We shall not advocate of eliminating video calls. Rather, we shall use the time when we are together in the most productive way possible. This is the reason why, a call of 57 people of 1h30 can be substituted by:
the sharing of a video-recording of the presentation (the “reading the slides”)
a 30 min (2/3 of time saved) Q&A session where just the ones with questions or the ones who would like to listen to questions of others can participate
Good Product Manager / Bad Product Manager
Explore the traits that distinguish good product managers from bad ones. Learn how effective PMs drive product success through visionary leadership, clear communication, and strategic market positioning.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of the tech industry, product management is a pivotal role in shaping successful products.
The Role of a Product Manager
The role of a product manager (PM) can be linked to that of a CEO of their product.
Good PMs are not just coordinators but visionaries who drive the product from conception to market success. They ensure that the product aligns with the company's goals and customer needs while staying ahead of the competition.
Bad PMs, on the other hand, limit themselves to mere marketing roles and often provide excuses for their failures. This fundamental difference sets the stage for the impact a PM can have on a product's success.
Balancing Critical Factors
A good PM must balance a multitude of factors, including company goals, customer demand, competition, and their own knowledge gaps.
They understand the company’s capabilities and limitations, set realistic product strategies, and conduct thorough market research. This comprehensive approach ensures that the product not only meets current customer needs but also anticipates future demands.
Clear, Written Communication
Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful product management.
Good PMs:
clearly define product requirements in writing, ensuring that every team member understands the product's vision and objectives
maintain up-to-date Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) and actively communicate any changes.
This clarity prevents misunderstandings and keeps the team aligned.
Bad PMs fail in this regard, providing vague instructions and allowing critical details to fall through the cracks, leading to misaligned visions and product failures.
Clear communication is simply MANDATORY
Defining Goals and Advantages
Good PMs set explicit, written goals for their products and personal objectives. They have a deep understanding of their product’s competitive advantages and can articulate them consistently. This clarity and consistency in goals and advantages drive the product’s market positioning and strategic direction.
Bad PMs, however, often have unclear goals and inconsistent product positioning, which confuses both the team and the market.
Focus on the Sales Force and Customers
A strong relationship with the salesforce and customers is essential for a PM. Good PMs understand the actual conditions in the field and build products that meet the salesforce's needs, thereby fostering a supportive and motivated sales team. They know key customers personally and leverage this knowledge to inform product decisions.
Bad PMs neglect these relationships, resulting in poor field performance and low salesforce morale.
People are KEY!
Essential Skills for Product Managers
Marketing and communication are critical skills for PMs.
Good PMs are proficient in various marketing functions, from executing product launches to developing collateral and training the salesforce. They prioritize tasks that are critical to their product’s success and create materials that reduce redundant efforts. Discipline is also crucial; good PMs maintain project updates, submit status reports on time, and avoid over-promising.
Achieving Group Product Manager Capabilities
Good PMs demonstrate skills beyond their immediate role, showcasing capabilities that are expected of group product managers. They work well with executives, leverage the entire organization, and resolve critical issues with intensity and focus.
Transitioning to a Product-Led Company
To become a product-led company, the following steps are essential:
Empower Product Managers
Treat PMs as CEOs of their products. Give them the authority and responsibility to drive the product vision and execution.Foster a Product-Centric Culture
Encourage all departments to align with the product vision. Make product success a company-wide priority.Implement Clear Communication
Ensure product requirements and goals are clearly documented and communicated across teams. Regularly update PRDs and ensure everyone is aligned.Focus on Customer and Sales Feedback
Establish strong connections between PMs, the salesforce, and customers. Use their feedback to inform product decisions and improvements.Invest in Training and Development
Provide comprehensive training for PMs on best practices and key skills. Encourage continuous learning and improvement.
Source
Good Product Manager / Bad Product Manager - Ben HorowitzHow to conduct a discovery interview
Discover the essential framework for conducting effective discovery interviews in product management. Learn best practices for active listening, empathy, and summarization, along with key questions to uncover user pain points and needs.
I am writing this blog post is to try define a framework to conduct a discovery / product requirements interview.
Objective
The goal of the interview is to obtain information about how the product is used, with specific reference to the pain points and the needs.
Any software you will ever build will be used by people. For this reason, you need to understand your user persona first.
It is very important to understand who is the user you have in front of you, and what are his needs and pain points. Speaking with an aerospatial engineer with 15 years of tenure in SpaceX with respect to a junior accountant in an SMB in, say, Greece is completely different. They will have way different needs as well as ways to approach a solution.
Take into account the element of the country’s culture as well.
Best Practices
Recording: if possible, record the meeting to being able to rewatch it after and being sure not to lose anything. Also, save this recording in a place where it won’t get lost.
Active Listening: Pay close attention to the user's responses and ask follow-up questions for clarification.
Note-taking: Document key points and insights from the conversation.
Empathy: Show understanding and appreciation for the user's perspective. Make them feel important, because they are: without proper information in this phase all the rest will fail (concept of shit in shit out).
Summarization: At the end of the call, summarize the main points to ensure mutual understanding. Here, AI could help.
Call-to-action: End the meeting with a clear next step and call to action, the goal should always be directed to understanding how to best help (and simplify the life) of the user you interviewed
Perform User Stories: Add user stories to allow the “client” to impersonate in the daily work
Prioritization: Classify the requirements into categories such as 'Must Have', 'Should Have', 'Could Have', and 'Won't Have'. This helps in managing expectations and focusing on the most critical aspects first.
Key Questions
Understanding the User
Who is using or who will be using the feature?
Can you tell me more about your (or their) background?
Understanding Current Workflow
Can you describe your current workflow or process related to this feature?
What specific tools or methods are you currently using in relation to this task or process?
How does this process fit into your broader work responsibilities or objectives?
What is working best?
IMPORTANT What keeps you awake at night instead?
Identifying Challenges and Pain Points
What are the main challenges or pain points you face in this process?
How do you currently address these challenges, if at all?
Have there been any recent instances where the current system has hindered your productivity or efficiency?
Are there any repetitive or redundant tasks in your current workflow that you believe could be automated or streamlined?
IMPORTANT Can you walk me through some of the use cases you mentioned?
Can you describe a situation where the absence of this feature significantly impacted your work?
What workarounds or alternative methods have you employed to cope with the limitations of the current system?
Feature Expectations and Priorities
What are the most important features or functionalities you would like to see in this new feature?
Can you provide specific examples or scenarios where this feature would be particularly useful?
Are there any industry-specific requirements or standards that the new feature should adhere to?
IMPORTANT What level of technical expertise do you and your team possess regarding similar features or tools?
Integration with Existing Systems
How do you envision this feature integrating with your current tools or systems?
Defining Success
What would success look like for you with this new feature?
How would you measure the effectiveness or impact of this new feature in your workflow?
Additional Thoughts and Needs
Is there anything else you would like to add or any other needs that we should consider?
IMPORTANT If you had a magic wand, what are the three things you would like to see in the solution to simplify your life?
The Interview
Before the interview
Research the User → Understand the user's background and their interaction with similar products.
Prepare Questions → Prepare open-ended questions that encourage detailed responses.
Agenda → Send an agenda before-hand together with any material (i.e. a presentation)
At the beginning of the interview
Introduction → Start with a warm welcome and a brief personal introduction.
Purpose Explanation → Clearly state the goal of the interview. Be clear and avoid any misunderstanding. Ideally this step should have been clarified in the agenda already
During the interview
Qualification questions → Ask questions to understand the background of the person
Guided questions → Ask questions related to the problems of the person and to how do they currently use the solution
User stories → Ask, also via screen sharing, to be walked through some of the typical cases both where they struggle and where they do not
Conclusion of the interview
Recap the Discussion → Summarize key takeaways to ensure mutual understanding
Next Steps → Explain how their input will contribute to the project and what to expect next.
Act as a Journalist
Acting as a journalist does not mean mere record-keeping; it is about nurturing an ecosystem where information is not just stored but is actively shared, understood, and built upon.
In principles
Acting as a journalist does not mean mere record-keeping; it is about nurturing an ecosystem where information is not just stored but is actively shared, understood, and built upon.
Achieving such an ideal state demands more than just a commitment: it demands a company’s culture that values and excels in clear writing.
The quality of documentation in terms of clarity, accessibility, and engagement plays a significant role in determining its utility and longevity.
Leadership needs to lead by example
The influence of leaders, ranging from founders to frontline managers, in prioritizing and practicing high-quality writing, is an essential element to drive the change.
Such a stance inspires all members of the organization to refine their writing skills and enhance their communicative clarity.
Leaders are tasked with not only guiding the organization's strategic direction but also shaping the quality of its collective knowledge repository.
“This leadership commitment to documentation sends a clear message about the organization’s values”
Documentation shall happen at any level
At each level of the organization ladder, specific expectations related to documentation should be set.
For entry-levels, the focus might be on contributing to project documentation under supervision. As they move through the ladder, their involvement and responsibility in documentation deepen, eventually leading to defining documentation standards at senior levels.
This structured approach ensures that documentation becomes an integral part of an individual's career development, embedding it deeply within the organization's culture.
Star of the week
To maintain and stimulate interest in documentation, an idea is to name "Document Star of the Week" (or of the Month).
This tradition serves to spotlight documentation’s importance, relevance, and criticality throughout the organization, recognizing the efforts of individuals and setting benchmarks for quality.
Do not forget to… DELETE
An essential piece of advice for managing a growing repository of knowledge is empowering members to delete outdated or irrelevant documents.
This proactive approach to information management ensures the documentation remains relevant, streamlined, and accessible.
Think of it as gardening, where regular pruning is necessary to prevent the garden from becoming overgrown and chaotic.
In conclusion
Adopting a journalistic approach within organizations transforms documentation from a mere task into a cultural cornerstone.
By prioritizing high-quality writing and encouraging clear communication, leaders can foster an environment where information is not only preserved but actively utilized and refined.