Product Mastery
10 concepts · ~25 min · Intermediate
Learn to build what matters: from MVP validation to roadmap prioritization, product analytics, and the metrics that predict success or failure.
What You'll Learn
- ✓Conduct Jobs-to-be-Done interviews to validate assumed market problems
- ✓Prove product-market fit using the Sean Ellis survey before scaling marketing
- ✓Build a Now/Next/Later roadmap organized by outcomes, not features
- ✓Score features with RICE framework and defend prioritization decisions with data
- ✓Set up a product analytics stack that tracks the 5-8 events that actually matter
- ✓Identify your product's activation moment and optimize onboarding around it
- ✓Choose a North Star Metric and connect every roadmap item back to it
User Research
Product
💡 The Concept
User Research is the systematic investigation of your target audience's behaviors, needs, and motivations. It exists to invalidate your assumptions before you spend expensive engineering hours building a product nobody actually wants. True research focuses on what users *do*, not what they *say* they will do.
⚠️ The Trap
The most dangerous trap is asking leading, hypothetical questions like 'Would you pay $10/month for this feature?' Humans are terrible at predicting their future behavior and want to please the interviewer. They will say 'yes' to your face and then never open their wallets when the product launches.
🎯 The Action
Conduct 'Jobs-to-be-Done' interviews focused entirely on the past. Instead of asking what they want you to build, ask: 'Walk me step-by-step through the last time you tried to solve this problem. What exactly did you do? What tool did you use? How much time did it take?' Pain lives in the past, not the future.
Scenario Challenge
You are researching a new B2B expense management tool. You bring in a CFO who complains that their current tool is 'too slow and clunky.'