🔱 #2 - Proof of Worth Tasks, Payment first & more...

Hello fellow learners!

This week we’re looking at a few interesting things from the product, design & technology world, which I’ve uncovered. Let’s get cracking!

In the military, there is a saying:

Marines take the beach,
Army takes the country and
Police govern the country

Reid Hoffman takes this analogy straight into scaling products, by equating:

- small team to get a product market fit.
- larger team to scale (blitzscaling)
- governance to sustain growth (prevent mistakes)

This is fairly pretty apt for startups and product teams wishing to scale.

Be consistent on the vision, flexible on the details!

Shreyas Doshi, product guru extraordinaire, shed light on Proof of worth tasks that PMs end up doing to justify their presence on the team. The thread itself is a gold-mine:

Shreyas Doshi@shreyas

Proof of Worth, a gentle product management rant: When an early-career PM starts on a team, they might be told that they must build credibility with the builders (eng, design, analytics…) They must prove their worth. Fine advice, but it can go wrong long-term. 1/11

6:24 PM · May 30, 2020

92 Reposts · 653 Likes

The question I have to you is:

What percentage of your work is spent in doing Proof of Work tasks?

None

Some of the time (<20%)

Half of my time (~50%)

Most of the time

There is no shying away from the fact that sometimes we end up doing work that is ‘Proof of work’ even though it might be just to fill a gap. Remember, the transition between lending a hand and an obligation is subtle and happens without your notice.

A few months ago, I wrote about designing a payment first approach:

(Read more)

The idea is fairly simple: by taking the payment first, you’re locking the user into committing to transact. This sort of works to get their interest (now that the biggest hurdle has been overcome).

I was pleasantly surprised when on Amazon.ae and on amazon.com, this approach is being trialed. Love to know if you have had a similar experience? What do you think about this? Tweet or reply to this mail!

Gathering feedback is not easy. Especially if your form is clunky and requires navigation around multiple pages. However, for pointed feedback (like the one you saw above), you’re pretty much stuck. Hence, I set out to make my own service. Heroku was a bad option since the servers sleep when you’re not using them and their data persistence is…. ehh.

You can read more about how to do that here.

Side note: The tech section will be focused around how we can use technology to solve some of the challenges we’ve faced. I don’t think I’m the best source for ‘This week in tech’ - there are much better sources out there. The aim of this section is to expose you to the possibilities — you may choose to do them for yourself, or get someone to help you. Let me know if that direction works for you?

Colors play an important part in the way our product is perceived. If you’re hard-pressed for new color ideas, checkout this palette:

This beautiful palette comes from the color trends of 2022 by Shutterstock. You can find some beautiful colors here.

I stumbled upon this article, when I was looking for an infographic to share with my wife on web design errors. The article is good. These are the points:

• Don’t make users wait for content to load

• Don’t open internal link in new tabs

• Don’t use too many typefaces

• Don’t use too many colours on your website

• Don’t use generic photos of people

• Don’t let promotion steal the show

• Don’t play background music or auto play videos with music

• Don’t hijack scrolling

• Don’t use horizontal scroll

• Don’t sacrifice usability for the sake of beauty

I think all of them are valid, but maybe 2015 in their do’s & don’ts, unless your organization/team prefers to violate them, in 2022. Maybe share this with them, if they’re bad?

Weekly recap of the PTOTDs (as I like to call them) won’t be done any more in this newsletter. Instead, I’ll pick up the most popular (be engagement) and share that:

PMs are defined by the hell they go through – you are not meant to be happy, just busy. Not saying that happiness eludes PMs, but if you were happy, you would be comfortable. And comfort doesn’t innovate.

No matter the structure of management, you can find ways to add value, grow yourself and your team and be an effective leader. Absorb everything, retain somethings.

Thank you for reading!