Ben Nadel

Product is fun, complex, messy, and there are no shortcuts. Once you accept that—and embrace it—amazing things happen to your career. Cat Hicks, PhD puts this better than anyone: "Doing research with developer teams, something that really strikes me is how much people look for ways to make complex problems easy rather than make it easy to work on complex problems What I mean is, sometimes it's really useful to admit we just are trying to accomplish tough things. Asking how we can support our teams who NEED the time and space to work through that, it's often a much more tractable lever than trying to change the inherent nature of the work I think it behooves me to say as a psychologist here that I think people are actually really excellent at working on complex problems! It's one of the reasons research with developers is so great. Overall devs love to learn, love to be curious, love to innovate. It is core stuff. What would it look like if we could ask, "how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem-solving" instead of "how do I take away all these annoying hard problems." The stuff we want to accomplish in the world is hard. But can be joyful to accomplish."

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When should you rely on your good taste 🤑 vs. when should you rely on the results of a test🧪? 👩‍🔬Some folks are believers in testing and validating everything. 😎Others say, to hell with testing, I’m an arbiter of cool, and I decide what goes. Like it or leave it. IMO, it’s not all or nothing in either camp. Here’s how I decide when to rely on opinions of many vs those of the few: 🧪TEST when: • You're targeting a mass market and need to validate broad appeal • The cost of being wrong is high (think: major product launches, big budget campaigns) • You have clear metrics that define success • There's significant disagreement among stakeholders • You're entering unfamiliar territory or new markets 🤑TASTE when: • Speed to market is crucial • You're creating something truly innovative that people don't know they want yet • You're targeting a niche audience you deeply understand • The brand voice needs to be distinctive and polarizing • Your gut has consistently proven right in similar situations 💡Bottom line: Great marketing is both art and science. Know when to lean into each. What's your take? When do you trust your gut vs. test? #marketing #strategy #experimentation

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I love this more nuanced approach from David Morris for determining what product ideas should get on the roadmap. The technique I use and coach most often is a bit simpler. It's "doable" vs "desirable". David's Viable + Feasible is a nice way to split out the two aspects of my "doable". I define great product management is a simultaneous exploration of the doable vs desirable space to find the optimal tradeoff between the two. So, the exercise I facilitate has people put post-its up on the wall on a two-dimensional graph where the x-axis is how "doable" the idea is. The y-axis is how desirable it is. The "best" ideas end up closest to the upper-right corner. I then draw two squiggly lines on the chart, generally meandering, going from upper-left to lower-right. The first line is quite close to the upper-right corner, meaning that only a small fraction of the ideas will be above and to the right of it. Anything above and to the right of it is considered a commitment for the roadmap timeframe under consideration. The second line is close to the first and catches the stretch goals for the roadmap timeframe. I'd love to host such an exercise for anyone who's interested, using David's nuanced version of "doable". Thoughts? Owen Farrell, Tony Reinert, and Tony Mantoan, you've seen me host these exercises many times. How well do you think this alteration to my exercise would work? https://lnkd.in/eaTGz6ep

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NEW: Internal Threads Internal threads allow you to spin up conversations in Slack from Pylon. It's great when you want to start a conversation with someone, but they primarily use Slack (e.g. engineers, product people or anyone who isn't living out of the support system). Common internal threads we are creating at Pylon: 1/ #bugs to report a potential bug 2/ #project channels to ask a team a question about a specific feature 3/ #feedback to report product feedback to the team It's been one of the most game-changing features we've released and we're so excited to share it with everyone. Enjoy!

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I once asked a lead engineer on Angular: Which is better: Angular or React? His response: "Both require good engineering to be effective." So, my developer friends, consider this a reminder that "frameworks" like Diátaxis are fine, but they still require good engineering--such as UX, information architecture, style, maintenance processes, and so on--to create great documentation experiences for your customers. Alas, the framework alone isn't enough.

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My quick tip if you're interviewing for a CTO role: If you'll be the ONLY engineer on the team... It's not a CTO position. 😜

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There's an oft-cited stat from Pendo that 80% of software features are rarely, if ever, used. While it's impossible to know the accuracy of that, it's not hard to believe. I've been part of multiple feature factories, where emphasis was put on new features to 'claim' rather than taking time to ensure we've actually solved the desired problem before moving onto the next. If you're a Product Manager/Leader in the Indy area, join us on August 14 for a conversation around best practices for measuring product success. We'll have food, drinks, and hopefully some great learnings! (Registration link in the comments)

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One of the best ways to get a dev team stuck in analysis or design paralysis is to make them believe they're only getting one shot at it. Because then they'll pack for all contingencies.

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Thought experiment... delete your roadmap. Stop everything. Now play things out... For the past year or so I have experimented with an activity. I ask teams to imagine that they stop "shipping". Nothing new. No improving existing features. They keep their jobs, and fix major production issues, but otherwise stay idle. When possible, I ask them to refer to some sort of business dashboard or statement. How do these numbers change? They imagine industry press, coffee machine conversations, customer feedback, and board meetings. What happens with the passing months? Could X possibly go unchanged? Would you be surprised if Y doubled? The responses are very interesting. It feels unnatural to imagine doing nothing (even if doing nothing may be the best decision). We're wired to keep ourselves busy and talk ourselves into our grand plans. In some businesses, the impacts of doing nothing are felt quickly. In others, teams find they can go a year or more without real "damage". A competitor gains ground. Cost of acquisition increases. Team members leave for a competitor (or to start their own businesses). It hits home that successful products are a slow burn, the result of many decisions over time. To tackle the exercise, some teams review the past year. How did that work contribute to where the business is today? For new product launches, add-ons, packages, etc. it is easy to say "if we hadn't done this, then X wouldn't have happened." We gravitate to obvious connections, but that is a trap of sorts. The purpose of this exercise is to surface assumptions, and to focus the team on the Opportunity. Yes, it is "not realistic". It takes some practice, but more than practice it takes freedom and safety. Freedom to explore a possible future without judgement. "Non-business" types (if there is such a thing) need to feel free to explore the problem-space. Give it a try! With a big cross-functional group. Folks with more familiarity with “the numbers” should be prepared to teach and guide. Folks with more familiarity with the long-term, slow-burn issues (market share, inertia, product phases, ecosystems, etc.) should do the same.

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How do you make technical folks trust your marketing? The mistake we notice companies make, again and again, is to promote a solution before they’ve shown they know about the problem developers want to solve. What strategies have you found effective to demonstrate you understand dev problems?

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I've long struggled with calling saying something has "Good" or "Bad" Developer Experience (DX) because it's extremely binary and doesn't really help product teams improve their DX. For that reason when I started the Developer Advocacy program at Twilio and began to work with product teams on improving their DX we ended up creating the "DX Spectrum" framework that is helping product teams evaluate their DX better and helps to answer the question "How do we create a magical developer experience?" https://lnkd.in/ggMmCx_e

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🔍 Are Your Tests Lying to You? Probably... Ever rerun a failed test only to see it pass? Flaky tests are a serious problem. Here’s why they matter and what you can do about them: 🚩 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗙𝗹𝗮𝗸𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺: Erodes Trust: You start ignoring not just the flaky tests, but all your tests. Impacts Morale: Team confidence in the test suite and overall quality diminishes. 🔧 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗙𝗹𝗮𝗸𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀: Identify Flaky Tests: Use build tools like Maven or Gradle to retry failed tests. Automate cross-build detection to pinpoint flaky tests. Quarantine Flaky Tests: Move them out of your main test suite. Use tags like "ignore until" to temporarily exclude them. Fix or Delete: Fix the root causes of flaky tests. If a test adds no value, consider deleting it. Prioritise Fixing: Schedule regular time to address flaky tests. Swarm as a team to find common root causes. ✅ 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗧𝗶𝗽𝘀: - Separate Flaky Tests: Run inherently flaky tests in a different environment. - Reduce Dependencies: Use stubs or test harnesses to avoid flakiness in key tests. - Invest Wisely: Dedicate time to make your tests faster and more reliable, saving time in the long run. Don’t let flaky tests undermine your efforts. Identify, quarantine, and fix them for a more reliable test suite and a happier team. #devteams #saas #scaling #QA #testing #automation

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What's the real cost of not involving developers early? ...Yes, involving developers early means more meeting hours. But the cost of NOT involving them? ↔ Constant back-and-forth clarifications ⏳ Rework and delays ⛓ Team disconnection 😑 Frustration ❓ Anything you'd add? Question for you Product Leaders out there: What's the costliest 'hidden' expense you've seen from leaving developers out of early product discussions? Do you agree that we should involve developers early on? What positive examples have you seen from involving developers early in the product process? Thank you so much to Eric Cussen for enriching our recent webinar. #ProductManagement #Agile #Leadership #ProductDevelopment #EngineeringCulture #ProductStrategy

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Is Your Ship and Debit Program Leaving You Dead in the Water? Without the automation of your rebate programs, your margins may run aground. #HighTech #RevenueOptimization #RevenueManagement

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What do we mean when we talk about "continuous performance monitoring"? It's all about creating guardrails to prevent #webperf / #ux regressions: 🟡 Performance budgets 🟡 Automated testing 🟡 Detailed diagnostics 🟡 Annotated test history Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gDX_9Zuf #pagespeed #sitespeed #webperformance

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Automation is AWFUL if done poorly. Here is a super quick lesson on one thing you can do to make your automation AWESOME. We at Dragin know that our competition doesn't know this secret...mainly because of how much faster we are than them. Hint: It's not even close. So to be a pal, I'm sharing this secret with the world! Ok, it's not really a secret. But it is one of the most important concepts in programming and most programming courses don't even touch upon it. Weird. #programming #coding #concurrency #python #stratcamp #markross

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Conference Drama + Cringe 🙄 I could use some hugs or LOLz 🤗 I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm still hearing from folks still expecting to see me at the Innovate QA Events conference. ***To be clear, I will not be there*** I don't want to be part of any 'false advertising', as I'm still listed on the program @ https://lnkd.in/g-Zh3P_n . I'd asked to be removed right away, and asked that they would make sure folks knew that i wouldn't be there, and they said they would. But, I'm still on the public schedule, haven't seen them tell folks I won't be there, and people are reaching out to me expectig me to present and wanting to meet at the conference. They'd asked me to speak, and I agreed to do it for free, on whatever topics would be helpful to them, In the interest of supporting the #testing community in the #seattle area. Cringe: They told me they were kicking me off the schedule. Which is super awkward, never happened before, but OK. The crazy thing is the reason I was told I was booted 😂 --I don't want folks to think I bailed on them, or I'd done something weird. What I was told: They took on a sponsor, who thought I was "competitive", and demanded that I be removed from the conference or they would pull their sponsorship. Super strange I thought, and unprofessional at best. Crazier, the conference actually agreed to do it. 🤡 I guess I could think of it as a backhanded compliment? There is only one sponsor right now, and the company name rhymes with testRigor, as in "Rigor mortis". Extra dissappointing, is that I remember trying to help the founder of that company at a conference a few years ago encouraging him to not give up over dinner at a mexican restaurant and picked up the bill. I even helped edit his pitch deck and gave him advice on fundraising--when he was officially a "competitor". 🙄 More awkard, testRigor just had a webinar related to the conference that was, well, it was a poorly executed sales pitch were when he tried to demo the integration of AI into his product, it failed to execute a test step correctly, and kept clicking seemingly random things, eventually gave up, and essentially mumbled that, well the AI does strange things all the time. That video might be available online. That said, I hope the rest of the conference goes well, just know that I won't be there if you were expecting to hear about "Testing for AI Safety", or "AI can Test". And, I guess I won't be attending/supporting the conference or related #Seattle meetups. Felt I had to share so folks knew I was a 'good actor'--it could look strange from the outside, and I don't want folks to be surprised, or decieved. I intended to be there and follow through, and not my fault. Maybe karma isn't a thing, but at least I have my time back 🤔 🤷‍♂️

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