The Main Thing

Outcomes over outputs… but really outputs

With all of the rhetoric in the industry about outcomes over outputs, how much of it is translated into practice? Scrum still talks about sprint commitments (outputs), SAFe has product increments, business cases are still used to define the scope and budget for what is to be built, and some companies equate team autonomy with anarchy.

What has been your experience? If you’ve managed to agree on outcomes I’d love to hear in the comments how you worked around the challenges of management confidence, funding and governance.

* Scroll down to see last week’s poll results.

This Weeks Updates

Special Addition

2023 Tech Industry Review: AI Breakthroughs and Market Shifts

Explore 2023's pivotal tech events & innovations with UXDX. Insight into AI advancements, economic shifts & new strategies to look out for in product development for 2024.

Enabling the Team

How Leaders Fake Psychological Safety by Ron Carucci
Only about a quarter of leaders develop the skills needed to create psychological safety for their teams.

Who Should Rule the Product? by Itamar Gilad
Who should decide which products and features to launch? The answer is neither managers, nor business stakeholder, nor PMs.

Product Direction

How to Build a Habit-Forming Enterprise Product by Nir Eyal
Increasing customer retention on enterprise products by just 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

Revenue Goals are Not Company Strategies by Rich Mironov
It's the Silly Season: locking down 12 months of iron-clad commitments, non-negotiable delivery dates, and accurate revenue predictions.

Continuous Discovery

Asking Better User Interview Questions by Any Murphy
A comprehensive guide to conducting user interviews covering: 1) How to structure a user interview for maximum impact and 2) How to design better questions to elicit high-quality responses.

Do Personas block Systemic Change? by Alastair Somerville
The design process is captivated by user stories and personas. The individual layer remains the focus layer but often problems are at a systemic level.

Continuous Design

The Power of Habit: How Understanding Habits Loops Can Improve User Retention by Mathieu Thys
Product managers must understand habit loops to increase user retention. What are habit loops? And how can you make the most of them?

The UX Of Delivering Parcels by Peter Ramsey
A deep dive into the experience offered by 6 parcel delivery services. Let’s just say some improvements could be made.

Continuous Delivery

Let’s Learn How Modern Javascript Frameworks Work By Building One by Nolan Lawson
Nolan decided to build another javascript framework to learn how to do it and also so HackerNews would have another framework to complain about.

12 Software Architecture Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them by Pierre Pureur and Kurt Bittner
Teams develop better solutions, only reuse when it makes sense, deliver to uncover your architecture and more.

New Video Release This Week

Charles River Laboratories is a traditional established large enterprise. Jeff shares how he and his team used their design skills to become effective agents of change in a complex environment. 👇👇👇

JOB OF THE WEEK

Director of Product Design
🏬 N26
📌 Full-Time, Remote, (Europe - Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna)

About N26
N26 is the first 100% mobile bank to have been granted a full German banking license from BaFin. Recognized for their entrepreneurial spirit, their mission is to build a truly user friendly banking tool, powered by the latest technology.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: What are your thoughts on performance reviews?
Users responded:

There was not a lot of love for annual reviews. One person put it succinctly:
“I don't like judging people and I don't like being judged by people. People are biased and fallible.” 

There were some great comments from people on how they do better, more frequent reviews using weekly 1-on-1s and quarterly reviews to ensure more continuous improvement throughout the year.

But not everyone dislikes annual reviews. The decisive factor is how the manager delivers the review. I love this quote:
“My manager is really great at noticing the positives that we don't notice in ourselves, and if I ever doubt that I had a great year she'll remind me of everything I accomplished and how great I did.”.