On evaluating and deciding

online - simplify decision making

So you've got great new ideas but you need to decide on what to do next. In most consumer product development where there is a volume of (potential) users, e.g. a popular public service such as Facebook or Amazon, this is relatively easy as you can go through an MVP process, do some lean startup experiments or even run some A/B test and make changes. 

B2B product management doesn't have quite the same volume of usage or "want" being a driver, for example a SaaS platform about coordinating snow ploughs won't be able to gain much more usage during the summer months. With this in mind I am going to take a look at five things I've read this month and pick a key idea from each to build up a toolbox that can be applied.

  1. Ask the right questions, once we know we are solving the right problem then we are off to a good start. Keeping the bias out of questions and using techniques such as conjoint analysis to find relative preferences are two ways to get useful information from those questions.
  2. Take a step back and look at things logically. In The Most Powerful Lesson I’ve Ever Learned In Business Mike McCue talks about how he made the decision on a buy out offer where the initial response may not have been in his long term interests.
  3. Know the impact of your decisions, as discussed in Value-Based Technical Debt Model and Its Application this is often hard. Especially with impact such as technical debt.This quote from page 1 says it all for me  
  4. No, really understand the impact of your decisions: Even if some things may be outside of your expertise or direct control, but that doesn't meant they won't impact you in a big way.
The last two points are vital in knowing if you've been successful in meeting your goal, and can move onto the next priority for your business, or if you need to take corrective action.

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