Better Product Managers, and Product Management

When is “done” done?

April 15th, 2010

When is a product task done?

A) When the requirements are complete?

B) When the code has been written?

C) When it has been deployed to production?

Answer: none of the above. A task isn’t done until you’ve validated that it accomplished your goal.

( You did have a reason for adding that feature, right?)

Here’s a platform-agnostic view of what we’re doing with our product backlog now:

  • Write requirements for the task as usual.
  • Add a hypothesis of how you think this task will improve your product.  Numeric metrics are  good but not always necessary.
    • example: Adding a guided First User Experience will increase visitor signup from 10% to 20%
    • example: Moving the “password reset” link will reduce the number of customer support emails we get
  • Add when and how you will measure whether or not that improvement was realized.

and then tasks will move across 3 to-do lists:

That way, tasks don’t languish on a to-do list for ages – but they also don’t get marked as “done” until we are sure that they did – or didn’t – achieve what they were supposed to achieve.

(Ideas inspired by our team’s conversation with Eric Ries yesterday – it was a great nudge from him to move this knowledge from our heads to an actual, trackable system.)

Popularity: 2% [?]


Popularity: 2% [?]
  • Malav

    is it possible that if you focus on validating each feature at a time, you tend to miss the big picture. Its like focusing on the trees and not the forest. One of the most successful companies in the last 10 years (and maybe all time too), Apple, does not focus on each goal individually. They build what conforms to their vision and promote their vision.

  • Dave C

    Hi Cindy,

    To clarify – are you NOT deploying features until previous ones have been validated? Or just making sure you eventually validate everything that's deployed?

    I think those are two pretty different models – the first suggests that you'd want to then remove the feature if it fails validation, while that would be harder to do in the second model (assuming there's a large backlog of “to be validated” features).

    Of course, if you really followed the first model, it would probably have a side effect of making it preferable to deploy minor enhancements that were easy to measure the impact of, versus shiny new features that might take a while to validate. Not sure if that's good or bad.

  • http://www.cindyalvarez.com cindyalvarez

    The latter – tasks/code are pushed to production as they're ready, but they stay in the “to be validated” list until they are validated.

    In our current state, some tasks may only take 2 hours to code, but they'd have to be in production for a week before we had the data necessary to validate. Now, as Eric Ries told us, a hardcore kanban methodology would block an engineer from writing more code until the feature was validated – the idea being that the engineer should want to devote effort to increasing validation speed, not just cranking out more feature code. But that's not where we are (at least not now).

    Also, I think the focus on validation is not so much that we'd remove a feature that didn't increase the desired metric (though we might). It's more that I'd want to spend time understanding WHY our hypothesis was wrong: Did we solve the wrong problem? Was our solution flawed from a usability perspective? Were our assumptions about the expected customer type incorrect? (and based on that, look at the other items in the product backlog to see if our findings apply to any of them.)

  • http://gordonmattey.com/ gordonmattey

    I totally agree too, in my value stream, “Gathering Feedback” is the last stage before done.

    This could be quantitative or qualitative, so your example of metrics could be interviews with users.

  • http://twitter.com/cindyalvarez cindyalvarez

    When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/wkmyrhang wkmyrhang

    RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/ericries ericries

    Sounds smart: RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/garrido garrido

    RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/byosko byosko

    RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/meatinthesky meatinthesky

    You should be religious about the hypothesis>build>evaluate loop: RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done?: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/mattgratt mattgratt

    RT @ericries: Sounds smart: RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9 …

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/hnshah hnshah

    RT @ericries: Sounds smart: RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9 …

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/hybrid_group hybrid_group

    RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/deadprogram deadprogram

    RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/RandomSociety RandomSociety

    RT @deadprogram RT @cindyalvarez When is done done hint not when D code is written. New blog post http://bit.ly/bYQ1To #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/alexview alexview

    RT @cindyalvarez When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/alexpozin alexpozin

    Useful. RT @cindyalvarez: When is “done” done? (hint: not when the code is written). New blog post: http://bit.ly/9CZ6kc #prodmgmt

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/spatially spatially

    when is “done”? http://www.cindyalvarez.com/gtd/when-is-done-done

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/spatially spatially

    when is “done” done? http://www.cindyalvarez.com/gtd/when-is-done-done via @cindyalvarez

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/joshua_d joshua_d

    validate! RT @spatially: when is “done” done? http://www.cindyalvarez.com/gtd/when-is-done-done via @cindyalvarez

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/dzishn dzishn

    #prodmgmt “done” isn’t same as the agile “done” http://bit.ly/aCHjb2

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/LaurynBennett LaurynBennett

    good reminder beyond PM: start & end w metric-driven goals RT @dzishn: #prodmgmt “done” isn’t same as the agile “done” http://bit.ly/aCHjb2

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/stephen_konig stephen_konig

    RT @dzishn: #prodmgmt “done” isn’t same as the agile “done” http://bit.ly/aCHjb2

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

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