This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Making Decisions
With all the signals and data pouring in, you need to make decisions. Often, there is no clear, correct answer at any given moment. But you have to make a decision and do so swiftly. Product development is a complex and risky process, and leaders and managers need to make decisions based on signals, not noise.
You can conduct market research to understand the satisfaction gap your customers currently experience. You can analyze usage data from your customers, have feedback forums, and look for trends in support issues. Looking outward at the market, you can assess competitive offerings, industry reports, and trends. You can consult with experts in the field. You can do usability testing with real customers to see how your products and services are used in the wild.
Be mindful that satisfaction gap data is almost always a signal. Data requesting specific features that close a gap is almost always noise.
Sometimes, you will not have all the information, and you still need to decide. Sometimes you have to rely on gut feeling.
While influenced by data and signals, WeChill often relies on gut feelings to guide its decisions about which shows to create, keep, or cut. It still values the instincts and intuition of its team members. In some cases, this has led to surprising successes, like a television series called Weird Stuff that was initially rejected by multiple networks before finding a home at WeChill.
Of course, not every gut feeling pays off. For every Weird Stuff, there is a show that fails to find an audience or connect with viewers. But even when a project does not work, WeChill is willing to take risks and try new things, knowing that the biggest successes come from unexpected places sometimes.
Everything is a hypothesis. You will not know if something brings value to customers until they receive it and you get feedback. The trick is to keep your decisions and experiments small so you can validate ideas quickly and either abandon them as soon as they do not work out or proceed to the next step because you are getting a strong signal.