Thread by @BrandonMChu

I just published "Product Management Mental Models for Everyone", a latticework of ideas for building products blackboxofpm.com/product-manage…

Also coming to you in tweet form:
1⃣-4⃣: 💰 Figuring out Where to Invest
5⃣-🔟: 🎨 Designing and Scoping
🔟➕: 🚢 Shipping and Iterating

1. Return on Investment

A finance concept: for every dollar you invest, how much are you getting back? In product, think of the resources you have (time, money, people) as what you’re “investing”, and the return as impact to customers.

2. Time value of shipping

Product shipped earlier is worth more to customers than product shipped at a later time.

3. Time Horizon

Related to the Time Value of Shipping, the right investment decision changes based on the time period you are optimizing for.

4. Expected Value

Predicting the future is imperfect. Instead, all decisions create probabilities of multiple future outcomes. The probability-weighted sum of these outcomes is the expected value of a decision.

5. Working Backwards (Inversion)

Instead of starting at a problem and then exploring towards a solution, start at a perfect solution and work backwards to today in order to figure out where to start.

6. Confidence determines Speed vs. Quality

The confidence you have in i) the importance of the problem your solving, and ii) the correctness of the solution you’re building, should determine how much you’re willing to trade off speed and quality in a product build.

7. Solve the Whole Customer Experience

Customer experiences don’t end at the interface. What happens before and after using the product are just as important to design for.

8. Experiment, Feature, Platform

There are three types of product development: Experiments, Features, and Platforms. Each have their own goal and optimal way to trade-off speed and quality.

9. Feedback Loops

Cause and effect in products are the result of systems connected by positive and negative feedback loops.

10. Flywheel (recursive feedback loop)

A state where a positive or negative feedback loop is feeding on itself and accelerating from it’s own momentum.

11. Diminishing Returns

When you focus on improving the same product area, the amount of customer value created over time will diminish for every unit of effort.

12. Local Maxima

Related to diminishing returns, the local maxima is the point where incremental improvements creates no customer value at all, forcing you to make a step change in product capabilities.

13. Version two is a lie

When building a product, don’t bank on a second version ever shipping. Make sure the first version is a complete product because it may be out there forever.

14. Freeroll

A situation where there is little to lose and lots of gain by shipping something fast.

15. Most value is created after version one

You will learn the most about the customer after you launch the product, don’t waste the opportunity to build on those learnings.

16. Key Failure Indicator (KFI)

Pairing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with metrics you don’t want to see go in a certain direction, to ensure you’re focused on healthy growth.

AFAIK there is no methodology for using these mental models. If you try and use them as a checklist — going through each and seeing if they apply to a product situation — you will end up doing to mental gymnastics that will confuse and frustrate you and those around you.

Instead, they simply become part of your latticework, helping you make better decisions about product, and giving you the language to communicate the why behind complex decisions to your team

And as you accumulate more models, ideally through experience, the better you will get.