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Escaping the Build Trap

How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

Melissa Perri

O'Reilly, 2018

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Melissa Perri cleverly tackles an almost unimaginably common blunder. Companies often measure their success by their output – how much product they ship and how many product improvements they introduce. All too often, this focus on output eclipses what really matters: customer outcomes. Leaning on her experience with numerous companies, Perri calls this mistake being caught in the “build trap” and offers a remedy. She urges you to prioritize how your merchandise solves your clients’ problems. Her insights will be particularly valuable to product managers, product development executives, and teams involved in Agile and Scrum.

Summary

Companies often measure success by “output,” prioritizing what they ship over its value to customers.

Focusing on output instead of customer outcomes is the “build trap.” Sound product management offers an escape route: Optimize value for your business and its customers.

Consider Marquetly, an online subscription service offering training classes. The company staffed up with hundreds of developers who, having embraced Scrum, understood the importance of working with product managers. Marquetly’s leaders assigned marketing people to product management, reasoning that they knew the audience, even if they lacked product management experience. The newly hired product vice president, faced with delivering on promises the sales team had made to customers, set up demanding deadlines for building products from nothing. She had no time to think through a plan of action.

The CEO declined to hire experienced product developers, insisting that Marquetly could train its incumbent staff. Leaders complained that the product they needed in the field wasn’t forthcoming. The company had numerous initiatives underway that required several teams, yet...

About the Author

Melissa Perri, founder of the Product Institute, instructs product managers online on how to think effectively. She also teaches product management at the Harvard Business School.

Escaping the Build Trap

How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

Read or listen offline

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Summary

Companies often measure success by “output,” prioritizing what they ship over its value to customers.

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