WoB#3 - Vision, product discovery, tech debt handling, ethics in design, managing your calendar

Welcome to this week's edition of Whisky on the Blocks, highlighting the latest updates to the Blocks Catalog and the best findings for the week.

👋 Hey! My name is Piotr, and welcome to my newsletter on building blocks for successful tech product companies.

💬 In this week's issue:

• 👉 Best practice spotlight: Inspire your teams by providing a compelling vision of the future you want to unlock

• ➕ … and three other best practices

• 👉 A product discovery technique - Opportunity Solution Tree

• 👉 How can paying technical debt 2x your team’s impact?

• 👉 6-step guide to take control of your calendar.

• 👉 Ethics in product design

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🔍 Best practice spotlight: Provide inspiring vision

A vision describes an exciting future you want to unlock.

Example of vision: Create the most compelling car company of the 21st century. (Tesla)

Learn more:

• Why should you care about setting the vision?

• What are examples of great vision?

• What are the characteristics of a great vision?

• How to create a great vision?

• Who should be involved?

• What else, besides vision, should be in your strategic context?

• How to create a strategy once you have a vision?

• Templates & more things to read

  • The Product Vision Template

  • Product Vision FAQ

  • Vision vs. Mission

  • Vision vs. Strategy

  • Company Vision Workshop Miro template

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Other best practices

A few other best practices to pick your interest:

• 👉 Prototype things before you ask engineers to code

• 👉 Drive towards continuous delivery

• 👉 Shorten new employee onboarding time by creating a checklist

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Other good reads

Three Product Teams

by John Cutler

Comparison of three popular models for product teams

1. Sprint, Story, and Backlog-Centric

2. Team and Mission-Centric

3. Engineer-Centric (with Rockstar PMs)

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Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Thinking

by Teresa Torres

A helpful product discovery technique to visualize and chart the best path to your desired outcome.

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Technical debt: Can investing in it unlock 2x team impact?

by Will Larson

A good, outcome-oriented approach to paying technical debt with a simple 4-steps guide on how to start today.

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Designing Your Time as a Leader

by Don Neufeld

6-step guide to take control of your calendar.

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Are You Solving the Right Problems?

by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

A longer post on how powerful problem-reframing can be, including 7 practical exercises to do on your own.

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6 Questions all experienced designers should be able to answer

by Koos Looijesteijn

Great, thought-provoking post about ethics in product design.

🐦 Tweet of the week

Chris Hladczuk @chrishlad

Who you work with matters way more than what you work on.

🍞 Food for thought

Piotr Kacała @piotrkacala

There is a difference between leadership and management. #Leadership inspires people to achieve more. #Management makes sure you get the right person to do the right job to get you there. You need both.

😄 Weekly smile

Kristin Elise McDonald @Kristine1ise

what you built vs what your users wanted

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Have a great week!

Piotr 👋