Ant Murphy Profile picture
Jun 20 2 tweets 1 min read Read on X
High WIP (work-in-progress) is one of the worse viruses for you business can have.

It's damaging on two fronts:

1) It hurts your customers = lower quality, poor outcomes, slow work, etc...
2) It hurts your people = stress, overwork, disengagement, etc… Image
P.s. high WIP is often a symptom too, not the cause.

It's typically a sign of:
- a lack of focus
- unclear of missing strategy
- inability to say 'no' (yes culture)
- lack of transparency

• • •

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More from @ant_murphy

May 14
Energy Management > Time Management

About 18 months ago I made the switch from only managing my time to managing my energy.

5 changes I've made:
- Focus sprints
- Better sleep
- Exercising later in the day
- Work right away
- Scheduling everything in my calendar
1️⃣ About 18 months ago I started doing 1.5 hour focus sprints.

The notion was based on the neuroscience of ultradian cycles - which is essentially the internal body clock.

Our ultradian cycles are 90 minutes. Meaning that the max we can concentrate is 90 minutes. Image
2️⃣ Poor sleep = poor energy.

No amount of energy/time management can make up for poor sleep.

Sleep has been a big topic for me since my son started school this year so it threw it into disarray. Consistency is key.
Read 11 tweets
May 11
"Here’s a hack I use to dealing with stakeholders coming with solutions, rather than problems.

Don’t try to work backwards, work forward."

Let me explain.

No doubt you’ve been in this situation before. Image
A stakeholder has come back from a conference or read one of the latest Forbes article and they’re pumped to jump on the latest trend.

And you’re now being asked the implement it.

But it’s pretty clear that it’s a solution looking for a problem.
The typical advice is to work backwards and unpack the problem they’re trying to solve.

However, working back towards a problem can be a stretch for some stakeholders.

I’d also bet that you’ve run into some resistance trying to do so too. Image
Read 8 tweets
Jul 4, 2023
Most Product Managers are terrible story tellers because they don't have any scaffolding.

We all have great stories on our product already.

We just need a way to firm it up.

Here is a structure I use regularly.

I call it "Building a narrative top-down, bottom-up"

/1 🧵
⬇️ Top-down:

Starting at your product vision you can create a narrative/story all the way down. It looks something like this:

To realise [VISION]
Our strategy is [XYZ]
We'll focus on [OUTCOME X]
By solving [OPPORTUNITY Y]
Through building [X]

/2
This can then be applied back up the chain.

⬆️ Bottom-up

We need to build [X]
To solve [OPPORTUNITY Y]
In order to move the dial on [OUTCOME X]
And achieve our strategy [XYZ]
To realise [VISION]

/3
Read 6 tweets
Jun 22, 2023
*UPDATED* Product Discovery activities by risk.

Product Discovery is elusive and tricky to put down on paper because the activities you do is largely driven by what kind of risk you have.\

/1


🧵👇
💰 Viability Risk:
- Market Analysis
- Market sizing
- Segmentation
- Competitor Analysis
- Perceptual Mapping / Positioning Research
- Customer interviews
- Business modeling
- Price Testing
- Forecasting
- Kano Analysis
- Analytics
- etc

/2
❤️ Desirability Risk:
- Customer interviews
- Ethnographic Research
- User testing
- Focus Groups
- Surveys
- Observation / Contextual Inquiry
- Prototyping
- 404 / Fake door tests
- A/B Tests
- JTBD Analysis
- Analytics
- Customer Journey Mapping
- etc

/3
Read 8 tweets
May 24, 2023
One week ago, I got a call from a friend at 10pm at night.
7 hours later I was on an international flight 🛫

I got a text on Saturday night from a friend who runs a training business

Sensing the urgency in his voice I replied and he immediately called.

/1 Image
What had happened was the trainer had pulled out 24 hours before they were scheduled to start.

This was the first of several courses with a new client and was not the first time this person had cancelled. They had already rescheduled this training once before.

/2
With the impact of the economy globally right now, my friend really couldn't afford to lose this client.

His business was on the line and had no where else to go.

/3
Read 9 tweets
May 23, 2023
Here are 8️⃣different Product Roadmap formats:

⏰ Timeline Roadmap (❌ best to avoid where possible)
🗺️ Now-Next-Later
🚀 Release Roadmap
🎭 Theme Roadmap
🌳 Tree Roadmap
🌟 Outcome Roadmap
❤️ Customer Journey Roadmap
💭 Dream Mapping (thanks @squadformers!)

👇🧵/1 Image
1) ⏰ Timeline Roadmap

First up, is the most common and controversial…
the ‘Timeline Roadmap’.

Timeline Roadmaps are common because of their dates. They're similar to project plans and can give a false sense of certainty about when something will be delivered.

/2 Image
This makes Timeline Roadmaps one to avoid. However, they can still be effective when dates are communicated as indicative, not 'set in stone'.

/3
Read 21 tweets

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