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Here's a list of old episodes in date order! There have been some great conversations so feel free to binge them all!

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Episode 123 - Using Solution Tests to Make Sure You're Building Products Users Want (with Jim Morris, Founder @ Product Discovery Group)

Experimentation
Product Analytics
Product Design
Product Discovery
 

Episode 123: Using Solution Tests to Make Sure You're Building Products Users Want

Jim Morris, Founder @ Product Discovery Group

8 May 2022

8 May 2022 Jim Morris head shot

Listen here!


Content Warning - May Contain Adult Language or Themes
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A message about mentoring

I'm passionate about mentoring & think it is a high leverage activity for product managers as they develop in their careers. I mentored 76 people in Q1 2022 but have realised I don't scale so am working with a buddy to match mentors & mentees. Sign up here to be a mentor, mentee or both!

About this Episode

An interview with Jim Morris. Jim's a product discovery & experimentation coach who wants teams to stop wasting their time with discovery if they're not going to do anything with it. He's currently running Product Discovery Group out in Silicon Valley.

We talk about a lot, including:

  • The goals of Product Discovery Group, the problems he helps to solve, how he got started as a product discovery coach and that time he hung out with Jeff Bezos
  • How many companies see funding as the ultimate validation of their idea but forget to talk to their customers and check if the idea is actually viable for the business
  • Why we need to remember that product discovery is not just there as an artificial stage gate to delay decision making and should always serve the overall business goals
  • How there are bad product companies with good product managers and good product companies with bad product managers, and how Silicon Valley startups are in the same boat as the rest of us when it comes to good product discovery practices
  • How we can bed product discovery in with leadership, how to persuade them that there's a different way to lead, and how to skill up product teams that have never done product discovery before
  • The concept of a Solution Test, the importance of presenting multiple solutions, why you have to get interactive rather than just show stuff, and why you should never concentrate on usability first
  • How to apply structure to your discovery data collection to make it easier to extract insights from the data and turn them into action

And much more!

Contact Jim

You can reach out to Jim on Twitter, on LinkedIn or check out Product Discovery Group.

Jim Morris and me before the recording