Meme apps retention 🧲, Improving growth mindset 📈🧠, Product analytics fundamentals 📊, Building great PM orgs ⚡️, Prioritizing ideas over user needs 🚦
Weekly Recap 09 🔁
👋 Hey, Sam here! Welcome back to the 🔁 Weekly Recap edition 🔁 of The Product Trench. Each week, I curate deep dives, trends and resources related to product management and leadership.
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Here are my favourite articles this week. Let's jump straight into it.
Why high growth, high churn products never seem to work (6 min read)
Meme apps and AI poducts often experience viral spikes but suffer from poor retention, driven by the dopamine rush of novelty rather than genuine user engagement. These short-lived surges give an illusion of success but can't sustain long-term growth. Real growth requires products that retain users and build on a stable customer base. Founders should leverage the initial viral boost while focusing on creating sticky, valuable experiences that can grow steadily over time.
Product analytics fundamentals for PMs (3 min read)
Product analytics is essential for PMs to understand user behaviour and improve products. Focus on actionable key metrics aligned with business goals. Use quantitative and qualitative data to provide a complete picture of user behaviour and interaction with your product. Select the right tools and set up a robust analytics framework. Communicate insights effectively to drive data-driven decisions and improve user experience.
Improve growth mindset in your company with a weekly experiment review meeting (7 min read)
Develop a growth mindset in your company to drive sustainable and predictable growth by implementing structured rituals like weekly experimentation reviews and embracing failures as key learning opportunities to ensure a culture of growth that is both defensible and scalable.
Plausible vs correct (AI) (4 min read)
AI systems generate plausible but not always correct answers because they rely on patterns rather than understanding truth. Product managers shouldn't confuse AI's statistical outputs with genuine insights. It's crucial to discern when human intervention is necessary, especially in high-stakes fields. The goal is to use AI tools to complement human judgment and ensure outcomes that truly benefit users rather than relying solely on AI-generated content. Understanding AI's limitations helps in making better technology choices.
Building a great product management organization (5 min read)
Crafting a stellar product management organization hinges on four pillars: Organizational Design, Strategy, Operations, and Culture. Start by defining clear roles and responsibilities to avoid overlaps. Ensure strategic alignment with business goals and effective deployment. Leverage data and customer feedback for informed decisions. Cultivate a customer-centric culture focused on outcomes, continuous learning, and empowerment. Regularly assess and refine these areas to maintain agility and drive innovation.
You're not just solving user problems (6 min read)
Focusing solely on user needs can be limiting. While understanding users is crucial, balancing these insights with other methods and evaluating ideas against broader company goals is equally important. This balanced approach ensures the development of high-impact products that serve both users and business objectives effectively.
Releasing new features nobody cares about (4 min read)
Assess your team's current situation to identify opportunities to streamline your development flow. Avoid becoming a feature factory by focusing on goals, solving real problems, and being willing to drop non-viable ideas. Coordinative workflows increase delivery time and waste, whereas collaborative workflows create value faster and adapt better to changing plans. Understand your product development flow to implement gradual improvements, simplifying processes through collaboration with stakeholders and team members.
👋 That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week! See you next time.
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