Derek Koch

🎙️ Have Burning Product Management Questions? Ask away! Ever found yourself grappling with product strategy, navigating user research, or juggling stakeholder demands? Maybe you're just curious about the ins and outs of product leadership? Well, you're in luck! Join me on the Dear Melissa segment of my podcast, where I'm diving deep into YOUR burning questions about Product Management. Here's the scoop: ✅ You can keep your questions broad or specific, but give me enough context so I can answer as accurately as a I can. ✅ Your privacy matters—rest assured, your name will stay anonymous. ✅ Don't hold back! Feel free to submit as many questions as you like! From revamping company strategies to mastering the art of product leadership and even picking the perfect tools and frameworks, we're covering it all! Head over to DearMelissa.com and share your questions. Yours could be featured on an upcoming episode! (P.S. Need a quick response? Drop me a voicemail—I'll give your questions top priority!) 🚀

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Metrics come up all the time in talking about how to prove design systems value. The prevailing idea is that increasing adoption is the key to unlocking value. I disagree. I think it may be a part of success, but it is a bad way to express value. Here is why! Adoption is the kind of metric you get when you throw up your hands because you can't get the right data or you're more focused on building the design system than what you can build with it. It is the equivalent of "well, people seem to use it, so it must be great!" this can be fine if you're just starting out, but it doesn't tell you how your system is actually delivering value. Heck, NPS (which is also pretty imperfect), or a qualitative ask of product teams of "how valuable is the design system to your daily work?" or "what would change if the design system went away tomorrow?" is a better proxy for value than just "do people view some pages or login once a week?" Adoption can be pushed as a mandate. After seeing hundred of design systems up close, I can say definitively that high adoption doesn't differentiate between dream design systems and that 17 tool spaghetti monster that has documentation in Excel with hundreds of links to a private Git repo along with a 22 swim lane flowchart that you just... keep... scrolling... down. The only reason why adoption persists as a common metric is because even really bad design systems have the ability to generate significant value. So what's better? First, we need to hone in on the unit of repeatable value. This differs depending on the stated goal of the design system, but the vast majority of good design systems that operate at a significant scale are focused on how fast the organization can build products using the system (that's not the same as building components or designs in the system itself). At Knapsack, we tend to express this at this as cycle / iteration time from design to code across product teams that consume the design system -- either faster iterations or fewer iterations. We tend to focus on capacity because individual cycle velocity is often poorly understood and varies between product teams or disciplines. However, most teams have a fair handle on their capacity both for a single cycle and across a historical range of cycles. These can also be expressed easily as a relative percentage increase or decrease. It also accounts for a lot of secondary things (e.g. QA time) There is a goldilocks zone that consistently lands between 20 - 40% greater cycle capacity. For most of our customers, that's literally millions of dollars. If you're using adoption, you're not alone. We've heard time and again on the Design Systems Podcast that folks look at this metric ALL THE TIME as a measure of success, but it certainly doesn't paint the full picture, nor is it the north star for understanding value.

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I had a great time at Product-Led Alliance last week speaking on product-led growth at different stages of the product lifecycle. Specifically what kinds of strategies and tactics you can utilize to take advantage of PLG with different business goals in mind. A "playbook" is just an abstraction that talks about the combination of tactics, strategies, tools, and techniques being used to achieve your objectives. One of the slides I used was below, which highlights playbooks in growth and maturity, and then matrices generated in tactics when you combine Viral Tactics with Education and Awareness, which is more applicable to growth-stage of the lifecycle. Viral Tactics with Differentiation and Expansion, which is more applicable to the mature phase of the product lifecycle, are also matrixed. Each of these tactics are useful to consider, can drive your lower-level KPIs in ways that are easy to measure and can move the needle, and empower PLG within your product.

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Six Core Competencies of Great Product Leaders I've been incredibly lucky throughout my career to work with and learn from some truly outstanding product leaders. Drawing from these experiences, I've identified six core competencies that I believe are crucial for excelling in product management leadership. These are the areas where we can all grow: 1️⃣ Customer-Centric Thinking – Prioritize your customers and their needs above all. 2️⃣ Strategic Competence – Envision the long-term, aligning your product roadmaps with broader business objectives. 3️⃣ Execution and Analysis – Make data-driven decisions and manage your resources wisely. 4️⃣ Empathy and Communication – Inspire your team and communicate your vision while leveraging valuable feedback from stakeholders. 5️⃣ Adapt and Learn – Embrace cross-disciplinary collaboration and continuous learning. 6️⃣ Courage – Step up to make tough decisions even when the data isn't perfect. ==================== We all have areas to develop, but these are the skills to focus on to be a great product leader. Know someone who demonstrates one or more of these qualities? Feel free to tag them in the comments!

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Chief Product Officers have the shortest tenure of any C-Suite member: 2.5 years. In my recent interviews with Product Leaders, a common theme emerged - navigating a role under a non-technical Founder/CEO can be extremely challenging…but not impossible: CPOs that focused on educating their org about how product works, shared their vision and strategy constantly, and showcased how product metrics tied to clear ROI and customer value had longer tenures and better, more collaborative relationships with the rest of the organization > those who didn’t.

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Solve for information asymmetries! Architecture & Civil Engineering - Layout interpretation ~other industries: Healthcare - <Prescription> interpretation Financial Products - <Subject to market risks documentation> interpretation Loans - <Fine print> interpretation There’s going to be a slew of startups commercialising this year with a value prop of simplification using AI

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Interesting thing I've learned about building a benchmarking tool is that what a lot of early adopters actually want is an influencing tool. Completely reframes product features. Example: Old feature: Auto generated board reports 1. Choose metrics 2. Generate Graphs 3. Download as pdf/ppt New feature: Show me the stories I could tell with my data. 1. Here are the stories you can tell 2. Choose story 3. Generate metric benchmark graphs that help tell that story 4. Suggest narrative 4. Download Excited to see where peoplemetrics.fyi goes :-)

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Ethics and product management - perhaps one of the tougher questions we face today. Christian Idiodi and I discuss the issues in the latest podcast…

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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Lenny Rachitsky I listened to your amazing podcast with Todd Jackson about product market fit. The 4P framework ( persona, problem, is amazing. All the benchmarks, strategies, and tactics that Todd Jackson shared are spot on. Recently, Sequoia Capital put out a solid framework, the ARC Product Market Fit Framework for Hair On Fire, Hard Fact, and Future Vision. When I combine these two, 4P relates well with the Hair on Fire category of the products. I wonder how the 4P framework would work with the products' Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. Lenny Rachitsky Todd Jackson I wish I could hear more about PMF in the Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. For rest, These are amazing content about #productmanagement, #productmarket fit, #startups Here are links: 1. This is the link to the entire podcast: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 2. This is where the 4P description starts: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 3. This is the link to the ARC Product Market Fit podcast. https://lnkd.in/ezprPT-Q

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🎙️ Have Burning Product Management Questions? Ask away! Ever found yourself struggling with product strategy, navigating user research, or juggling stakeholder demands? Maybe you're just curious about the ins and outs of product leadership? Well, you're in luck! Join me on the Dear Melissa podcast segment, where I dive deep into YOUR burning questions about Product Management. Here's the scoop: - You can keep your questions broad or specific, but give me enough context so I can answer as accurately as a I can. - Your privacy matters—rest assured, your name will stay anonymous. - Don't hold back! Feel free to submit as many questions as you like! From revamping company strategies to mastering the art of product leadership and even picking the perfect tools and frameworks, we're covering it all! Head over to DearMelissa.com and share your questions. Yours could be featured on an upcoming episode! (P.S. Need a quick response? Drop me a voicemail—I'll give your questions top priority!) 🚀 #DearMelissa #ProductManagement #ProductStrategy #UserResearch

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The 80/20 rule is one of the most important principles for PMs, yet many can struggle to apply it in practice. One of the best applications is when scoping a new product / epic / feature. Start by identifying the 20% of potential functionality that can provide 80% of the value. Here's how: When evaluating proposed functionality, ask yourself: Is this absolutely needed in order for the user to accomplish the task? Or, would this only marginally enhance the speed / ability in which the task is performed? Add the list of enhancements to the backlog, then use a tight feedback loop with early adopters to determine what to build next. #productmanagement #pareto #principles #software #userexperience

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Work at a natural pace. In Cal Newport's new book "Slow Productivity" he walks through 3 components to accomplishment without burnout. 1. Do fewer things 2. Work at a natural pace  3. Obsess over quality Working at a natural pace is an area I'm focused on as I transition to whatever is next in my career. Most of my career's natural pace was driven by anxiety, coffee, HIIT workouts and more caffeine - which I'm pretty sure isn't what he means. In my late 40's though, that just doesn't work anymore. Nor do I want it to. It's a tricky philosophy though because if you're in the startup world I don't know how you build something meaningful and work at a natural pace. I've never seen it happen. It appears this is a philosophy that needs to be applied to a specific time and place vs. everyone, everywhere. Anway, I don't have the answers, I'm just exploring different questions. What I do know is working at a natural place seems to be more appropriate for where I am today. 

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What if your product could sell itself?💡 In this Product Thinking episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Wes Bush, CEO of ProductLed and author of "Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself." Wes is a pioneer in the product-led growth movement, which flips the traditional sales model. Instead of relying on a sales team, the product itself drives acquisition, engagement, retention and revenue by proving its immense value upfront. Our discussion covered key insights like: 👉 Building products so valuable that users naturally want to upgrade and pay 👉 Optimizing seamless user experiences that convert free users to paid 👉 Rapidly demonstrating your product's core value to facilitate adoption As Wes emphasized, product-led growth goes far beyond simply offering free trials or open access. It's about meticulously crafting an exceptional first product experience that instantly captivates users and showcases the immense value from the start. Wes provides a fresh perspective on this increasingly important approach. Our discussion offers insights into effectively implementing product-led principles in any business. Have you embraced product-led growth strategies? What successes or challenges have you faced? Share your experiences and insights below! Listen now: https://lnkd.in/eBJePuVx #ProductLedGrowth #ProductStrategy #UserEngagement #SaaS #ProductManagement

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Claire Vo's Config keynote, "Hard Truths about the Future of Product Management," deeply resonated with me. I know multiple product leaders who went from leading big teams of PMs to being "Super IC PMs." 90% of them are much happier (and fulfilled) in their roles compared to when they were managing people. I also loved the slide below. Companies should consider incorporating some of the competencies into their career ladder. 👇

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Ever pondered how to sharpen your product sense, especially when diving into a new industry? 🤔 I just listened to a podcast episode that had me nodding in agreement. This episode debunked the myth that product sense is an innate gift. Instead, it's a skill cultivated by engaging deeply with your environment and staying endlessly curious. Here's the essence in bite-sized takeaways: - Balancing Act: Domain expertise is crucial, but don't let it cloud your curiosity or humility. It's about finding that sweet spot between knowing your field and staying open to learning. it. - Quick Wins: Developing product sense swiftly by: 1. Dive deep into understanding users and customers. 2. Immerse yourself in data to see how your product is used and evolves. 3. Familiarize with your company's operations and the personalities within. 4. Explore the competitive landscape and industry trends. Taking a leaf from my own experience, when I hopped into the edtech world several years ago from a solid educational background and hands-on teaching experience, I fell for the expert trap. Thought I had it all figured out about users but I didn’t. I realized that relying solely on my domain expertise without sufficiently engaging with user feedback was a misstep. It was a tough lesson in the importance of humility and adaptability. This experience taught me to seamlessly integrate product sense into my daily routine when building products.

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Delivery-focused. Execution-oriented. Not Strategic. Or (my new favorite internet slur) ZIRPM. In a startup context, getting stuff off the production line IS strategic (despite what the haters say). Here are a few reasons why: Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog: https://lnkd.in/dPDuKYQb

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