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Product Mindset w/ Jessica Hall (Part 2)

Summary

In this second part of the interview, Jessica Hall delves deeper into the practical application of the product mindset for developers. She outlines the three core principles that underpin this approach: minimizing time to value, solving for need, and accelerating change. The discussion emphasizes shifting focus from mere code output to delivering tangible business outcomes and customer value.

Jessica explains that minimizing time to value is about delivering the smallest possible piece of a feature that solves a customer problem, rather than waiting for a ‘complete’ product. This approach reduces waste, increases learning, and can even generate early revenue. She contrasts this with the ‘completeness’ mindset often ingrained through formal education.

The conversation then explores the principle of ‘solving for need,’ which involves deeply understanding the customer’s pain points. Jessica references Steve Blank’s definition of a need: a problem that is felt, actively being worked around, and that the customer is willing to invest in solving. She encourages developers to connect with customer research and data to build this understanding.

Finally, the principle of ‘accelerating change’ is discussed, which encompasses both technological enablement (like DevOps practices) and organizational adaptability. Jessica argues that changing priorities are not inherently bad but are often a necessary response to a shifting market. The episode concludes with advice for developers to ask more questions to understand the ‘why’ behind their work, fostering better collaboration and outcomes.

Recommendations

Books

  • The Product Mindset — Jessica Hall’s book, which is the central topic of the interview. It details the product mindset framework and its three core principles for building successful products.
  • Accelerate — Referenced by Jessica as a data-heavy book on the science of DevOps. It makes a rigorous case for investing in tooling and processes to enable faster, more frequent releases.
  • The Black Swan — Referenced by Jonathan. A book by Nassim Taleb that discusses the concept of unpredictable, high-impact events (outliers) and the limitations of data in forecasting them.

People

  • Steve Blank — Referenced by Jessica as the authority on defining a customer ‘need’. She uses his framework to explain what constitutes a problem worth solving.
  • Nassim Taleb — Referenced by Jonathan as the author of ‘The Black Swan’, which discusses the philosophy of unpredictable outlier events and risk.

Websites

  • productmindset.com — The website for Jessica Hall’s book and related research on the product mindset framework.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:01:05 — Introduction to the three principles of the product mindset — Jessica Hall is asked to explain how developers can practically adopt a product mindset. She introduces the three underlying principles: building for outcomes, minimizing time to value, and solving for need. The core idea is that developers are not just building code but enabling businesses to serve customers and create value.
  • 00:01:48 — Deep dive into minimizing time to value — Jessica elaborates on the first principle: minimizing time to value. She explains that value exists only when a customer can interact with a feature. The goal is to reject the notion of ‘completeness’ and instead deliver the smallest possible slice of functionality that solves a problem. This allows for faster learning, reduced waste, and early value generation.
  • 00:04:44 — The principle of solving for customer need — The discussion moves to the second principle: solving for need. Jessica defines a true customer need using Steve Blank’s framework: a known problem that causes pain, that people are actively trying to hack around, and that they are willing to invest in solving. She advises developers to engage with customer research, data, and interviews to build this understanding.
  • 00:06:47 — Accelerating change in technology and decision-making — Jessica introduces the third principle: accelerate change. This involves investing in tooling and processes (like DevOps) to release more frequently, as supported by data in books like ‘Accelerate’. It also means embracing necessary priority shifts in response to market changes, rather than viewing them as organizational failure. The key is to question the source of change.
  • 00:11:06 — The challenge of avoiding complacency and embracing change — The conversation explores the difficulty of avoiding complacency in successful organizations. Jessica uses the example of Pixar bringing in Brad Bird to challenge their processes, leading to ‘The Incredibles’. She notes the rapid turnover in the Fortune 100 as evidence that change is constant and companies must evolve their skills, people, and culture to survive.
  • 00:17:07 — Balancing data-driven decisions with intuition and outliers — Jonathan and Jessica discuss the tension between making decisions based on data versus intuition. Jonathan references Nassim Taleb’s ‘Black Swan’ concept, noting that data cannot predict extraordinary outliers. They agree that while most successful businesses simply listen and respond well to customers, there is a place for intuition to spark innovation that creates new data.
  • 00:23:31 — Final advice: The importance of asking questions — In the concluding segment, Jessica offers her key advice to developers: ask questions. She urges developers to take time to understand the ‘why’ behind a task—what problem it solves and what it aims to achieve. This not only leads to better solutions but also makes the whole team smarter. She asserts that good product managers and designers actively want these clarifying questions.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2019-09-16T09:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:32:21

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Yeah, I think people are way too attached to languages. Languages come and go every, you know, three to four years, people are re-architecting and making changes. A lot of people are committing their organizations to a path without knowing how hard it’s going to be to change.

[00:00:18] As opposed to saying, this is what we’re solving for today with tomorrow in mind. We think we know that things might shift and change over time, because everybody has had to re-architect. And in many cases, multiple times.

[00:00:37] That was the voice of Jessica Hall, the co-author of the book, The Product Mindset. Today is the second part of my interview with Jessica. If you didn’t listen to the first part, I encourage you to go back and listen.

[00:00:48] to that before you dive into today’s episode. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and you’re listening to Developer Tea. And my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in your careers. Let’s get straight into part two of my interview with Jessica Hall.

[00:01:05] I’d love for you to kind of explain further about how I might, you know, more practically, dive into a product mindset. What are some ways, some things that I do today that

[00:01:18] make me a better developer?

[00:01:18] Maybe I’m not going to do in two or three years. And instead, I’m going to be doing something else. What are those things that you see more developers kind of participating in in the future?

[00:01:28] Yeah, so the product mindset has three principles that kind of underlie all the things. It starts with fundamentally, before you can get into principles, building for outcomes. That we’re not just here to build code, we’re here to build businesses, to help businesses serve customers.

[00:01:48] And to grow and to continue to innovate. That it’s not just about the code we write, but what does that code create? What does that code enable? What value does it deliver? And the first principle is minimized type value, which is the idea that, you know, when you’re working in your IDE, when you’re writing things in Jira, when you’re in planning meetings, when you’re doing sticky notes and drawings,

[00:02:18] diagrams. That’s activity. Value exists in the hands of your customers. Value exists when they

[00:02:25] can work with a prototype or use a feature in production or in staging. That’s where value

[00:02:32] exists, in their hands, where they can do something. So how do you, as fast as possible,

[00:02:38] put something to their hands? How do you reject the notion that it has to be complete,

[00:02:42] has to be fully implemented, it has to have every bell and whistle, it has to have feature parity

[00:02:47] plus everything else? What is the smallest set of things that you can do that solves a problem

[00:02:52] for somebody and you could put it in their hands? How do you slice across and say, I’m going to

[00:02:58] deliver the ability for you to look at this, for you to manipulate it, and for you to get some sort

[00:03:03] of result on just this thin stripe of things? And from there, I can see people are like, gosh,

[00:03:09] it’d be really great. I really want to be able to do this thing. Great, let me build that thing.

[00:03:13] You know, it doesn’t account for this thing. Awesome. I’ll get on that next.

[00:03:17] But that first principle is really the idea that we have to deliver that small sliver,

[00:03:23] that small piece of the feature, not everything. And I think it goes back to school where you have

[00:03:29] this notion of completeness. And I don’t want an incomplete. That’s like an F. That’s bad.

[00:03:34] I can’t simplify these things down. I can’t cut it down, just take a piece. But taking a piece

[00:03:39] allows you to reduce waste, to increase learning, to start generating interest, perhaps generating

[00:03:47] revenue.

[00:03:47] So the question you need to ask yourselves is, are we minimizing time to value? When you go to

[00:03:52] plan your releases, are you thinking about in every release, in every sprint, or whatever

[00:03:57] methodology you use, how fast are we delivering value to our customers? Are we waiting too long

[00:04:04] before we’re giving them things? Do we have things that are clogging up the pipeline that if we could

[00:04:09] streamline them, we could get things out faster, which means we could learn faster? How do I,

[00:04:15] as a junior developer,

[00:04:17] think about implementing something that might get it done a little bit quicker, a little bit

[00:04:21] simpler, as opposed to something that maybe has great ability to scale, but honey, we ain’t scaling

[00:04:29] yet. We don’t even have 10 customers. Or when the team goes to do release planning to say,

[00:04:34] okay, let’s break this down and make sure we have something that we can release, that we can deliver

[00:04:39] a value to, to our customers, and that we can learn. And we’re open and we evaluate that learning.

[00:04:44] The next principle is solve for need.

[00:04:47] So the idea is that a product needs to solve a need. What is that need? Why does this thing

[00:04:55] exist? What do we do for people? Can you explain when you’re at a bar with somebody you just met,

[00:05:03] why your product matters? And what is the need? Needs are best defined by Steve Blank. I can’t

[00:05:12] do any better than him, so I’m going to have to use his stuff. You know it’s a need. You know

[00:05:17] it’s a problem.

[00:05:17] Like, you know that doing laundry is a pain in the butt, and you probably don’t enjoy doing

[00:05:24] laundry. That’s, you know, number two, I know that that, I know the extent to that need. It

[00:05:30] takes time. It takes effort. If I don’t do, you know, if I don’t get it done, then I won’t be

[00:05:35] aware. And so you, you can, you can put a price on that pain that you’re trying to fix. You’re

[00:05:47] hacking something together, your laundry schedule, or I don’t know, you’re, you’re trying different

[00:05:53] services and things, and nothing’s quite working. And you’re, and the last piece is you’re willing

[00:05:57] to invest in a solution. That’s a need. That’s something I can, I can, I know I have it. If

[00:06:04] someone has a problem, and they don’t identify it, they don’t feel it, they don’t connect with it,

[00:06:10] they haven’t figured that out yet. Good luck trying to sell them something. I kind of have

[00:06:14] to admit that it exists.

[00:06:17] They know it’s a problem. They know it hurts. They’re trying stuff, and they’re not finding

[00:06:20] the right thing. They’re willing to make an investment in the new thing. That’s where you

[00:06:26] want to play. And so that’s kind of where helping understand the customer and having, you know,

[00:06:31] spend some time. No one’s asking you to do detailed research, but maybe read some of the

[00:06:35] research that your team has put together. Maybe look at some of the data, maybe listen to an

[00:06:41] interview. There’s something really powerful about connecting with other humans.

[00:06:47] The last one is accelerate change. So that comes in a couple different ways. You know,

[00:06:53] back in the day, you used to only be able to release once a month. Now we have good, better

[00:06:58] tooling, better processes, better ways to be able to deploy more often, being willing to invest in

[00:07:06] that. I’m reading this book called Accelerate about the science of DevOps. It is not an easy read

[00:07:11] by any stretch. Like I can only go do a couple pages at a time because it’s so dense, but it’s

[00:07:17] so fantastic in making the case through a very rigorous and data heavy process of why to make

[00:07:24] that investment. But it’s not just the technology piece of that and getting your organization to

[00:07:29] invest in technology, but also the decision making. You know, a lot of people complain that

[00:07:34] priorities change. And my answer is, well, yeah, they should. Because everything around them, you

[00:07:41] know, people change, companies change, markets change, regulations change. So why shouldn’t

[00:07:46] priorities change? Why shouldn’t they change? Why shouldn’t they change? Why shouldn’t they

[00:07:47] change? Why shouldn’t they change? Why shouldn’t they change? Why shouldn’t they change? Why shouldn’t

[00:07:47] priorities change? Priorities changing is such a sign of like an organization who doesn’t know

[00:07:52] what they’re doing. And if they’re changing without a reason, if they’re changing because

[00:07:58] they haven’t been measured, if they’re changing because, you know, somebody has a shiny object

[00:08:05] syndrome, that’s bad. And usually people call me because somebody’s got shiny object syndrome.

[00:08:11] That’s not an uncommon thing. But if they’re changing because there is something has changed in

[00:08:16] the world, and we need to respond to it, that’s a good, thank goodness, right? Yeah, thank goodness

[00:08:23] that we’re changing. Because if we don’t, somebody else will get there first. And we may not be here.

[00:08:29] So changing priorities isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I need people to kind of think that

[00:08:33] when priorities are changing, question where that’s coming from, rather than say, Oh, my gosh,

[00:08:39] product doesn’t know what’s going on. Oh, our leadership team doesn’t know what’s going on.

[00:08:43] Don’t blindly execute yourself to the bottom of the ocean.

[00:08:46] Yeah, this is a problem, right? Because if you look at what do you mean when you say change,

[00:08:57] there’s multiple things going on. You are in your environment, and you may be doing something in

[00:09:04] that environment. But if the environment changes around you, then it’s essentially indistinguishable

[00:09:10] whether you changed or the environment changed, right? In other words, you can keep on doing the

[00:09:16] same thing. You can keep on doing the same thing. You can keep on doing the same thing. You can

[00:09:16] keep on doing the same thing. But that doesn’t mean that doing the same thing is going to result

[00:09:23] in the same outcome. This is very, it’s obviously true, right? Because you can say, Okay, well,

[00:09:30] let’s take a silly example. This is unrealistic. Let’s say that I’m awake now, I might as well

[00:09:36] just continue staying awake. And I’m not going to sleep when the night falls, because I’m awake,

[00:09:44] and I don’t want to change.

[00:09:46] That’s crazy, right? Because we’re talking about a different scale of changing. And

[00:09:51] to maintain homeostasis for your body, you need to sleep, right? So in a way, if you don’t want

[00:09:58] to change, you should sleep, right? So let’s say that the other scale that we’re measuring on is

[00:10:06] growth. A company is growing. Let’s say they’re growing their revenue year over year at 100%,

[00:10:14] I don’t know, some unrealistic number.

[00:10:16] And they don’t want to change. Well, what is it that they don’t want to change? Do they want to

[00:10:21] continue growing their revenue? Or do they not want to change something else and allow their

[00:10:27] revenue to sink? So I think we want to maintain our behaviors, but we forget that our behaviors

[00:10:35] are not the entire story, that the environment is changing around us. And so you’re not the

[00:10:41] same person that you were before. You’re not the same company that you were before. And certainly,

[00:10:46] things that you did before are not going to have the same effect as they had previously.

[00:10:51] Yeah, ain’t that a pain in the butt?

[00:10:55] It makes it hard, right? How do you know what to do?

[00:10:57] Oh, gosh, yeah. It’s really hard. I’m reminded of Pixar, string of hits. Not to say that they

[00:11:06] very deliberately brought in Brad Bird, who’d gotten fired by a bunch of studios, and said,

[00:11:14] we believe you will challenge…

[00:11:16] You will shake it up. You will not allow us to go into complacency with Toy Story 17 or something.

[00:11:23] And so he was the person to shake it up. And he took everybody who wanted to shake things up in

[00:11:29] the whole company and put them on one team, and they made the Incredibles. And so it’s hard to

[00:11:35] do that. And it’s rough. You want to continue to see those numbers go up, and you want to continue

[00:11:42] doing something that makes you feel safe and secure, that you know, you’re going to be able to

[00:11:46] do and that… But when it all feels like it’s smooth, something is coming. I mean, I hate to be

[00:11:53] the doomsday device, but something is on the horizon. We’ve never… I don’t think, and I’m

[00:12:00] going to get this wrong, but I think the number is that 57 or 75% of Fortune 100 will turn over

[00:12:06] the next two years. That didn’t happen 20 years ago, but it happens today.

[00:12:13] Yeah.

[00:12:14] Yeah.

[00:12:16] And you’ve got choices to make. Somebody is going to come for you, or you come for yourself. You

[00:12:22] try to keep pushing it forward. And that’s scary, and that’s hard. And as your company evolves,

[00:12:29] maybe some of the same people, they aren’t right for it anymore. You need different skills,

[00:12:35] you need different people, you need different culture, you need a different way of working.

[00:12:43] And that’s, I think, the idea of excelling.

[00:12:46] Change. And we very deliberately put the word excel when we were developing that. We didn’t

[00:12:50] say, like, be okay with change. Don’t fight back for change. And that doesn’t mean you change for

[00:12:57] everything. Sometimes it’s knowing when to hold. When to be like, you know what?

[00:13:02] Right.

[00:13:03] Nah, we’re good. Bitcoin, nah. Blockchain, eh. I’m going to keep an eye on it. I’m not going

[00:13:12] to close it down forever. But it doesn’t feel aligned.

[00:13:16] We’re doing. Doesn’t feel like it’s where our customers are headed. I’m going to keep my eyes

[00:13:22] open and my ears open. But I’m going to hold. I’m going to commit to some other things that I think

[00:13:31] I’ve seen. I’m seeing more evidence that my customers need now.

[00:13:34] Yeah, I think that’s the critical word is evidence. And we have the ability now

[00:13:40] to gather more evidence than we’ve ever been able to gather before about behavior,

[00:13:46] and not in a spying, you know, creepy kind of way, but about our customers’ behaviors and the

[00:13:52] things that they care about. We have more opportunity to gather that information in

[00:13:57] more effective ways and to evaluate the information in more effective ways than ever before. And so

[00:14:03] now we don’t have to just say, hey, you know what? I don’t feel like this is the right direction. We

[00:14:09] can say the evidence supports that this is not the right direction. Or the more interesting,

[00:14:16] I think, is the evidence is telling me something that I had no clue was the case before.

[00:14:24] And now I have a new thing to reckon with. I have a new input to reckon with that is outside of my

[00:14:31] sphere of perception, right? I can’t just imagine what the evidence is going to say,

[00:14:38] but I can look at what it says. I can actually observe it and evaluate it. And I think that’s

[00:14:44] a really critical factor. And in all of this, I think that’s a really critical factor. And

[00:14:45] I think that’s a really critical factor. And I think that’s a really critical factor. And in all

[00:14:46] of this, because that’s really, you know, every good product development firm that I’ve seen

[00:14:52] is heavily invested in focusing on what pieces of evidence support our decisions.

[00:15:00] I’ve seen that evolution really come through in the last several years where it has shifted that

[00:15:06] way. And I think we’re seeing, I think initially it shifted. And sorry, you can’t see my air quotes.

[00:15:12] It’s like we said that, but we’re not really.

[00:15:16] And now I think it’s becoming more meaningful, almost to the point where when does that become

[00:15:22] too much? When do you lose artistry? When do you lose spark? When does everything become too

[00:15:33] A, B, multivariated to death? I don’t know.

[00:15:38] Yeah, I don’t know either. Yeah.

[00:15:39] It’s like there’s this pendulum where it swings one too far, where it’s like

[00:15:42] genius is doing amazing things that nobody cares about or can use.

[00:15:46] All the way towards where is the spark? Where is the thing that challenges us, that takes us

[00:15:54] to a different place that pushes us into another thing? And everybody, it’s so funny because

[00:15:59] everyone thinks that they’re that person and they’re so not. You’re not Steve Jobs.

[00:16:04] Right.

[00:16:05] It’s when they quote Henry Ford at me, because he said, if I’d asked them what they wanted,

[00:16:11] they would have said a faster horse. Fun fact, no evidence to suggest he actually said that.

[00:16:16] Right.

[00:16:17] And if you actually look at the history of Ford, the Model T was the right car for the right time.

[00:16:23] It was affordable. It was simple. It was reliable. It was cheap enough so that if you were a worker,

[00:16:29] you could afford one and then you could go off and explore and have a good time.

[00:16:34] But then installment payments came. And when now all of a sudden you didn’t have to pay cash for

[00:16:40] it, but you could pay for it over time, then you had options. Then you can have colors. But

[00:16:44] Model T was still…

[00:16:46] It was still in black. It didn’t evolve with the times. And then they lost a bunch of money.

[00:16:50] And so you can go, you see these patterns throughout history

[00:16:53] where it plays out. And I’ll be totally honest, I just went way off the topic, but hopefully it’s

[00:17:00] okay.

[00:17:01] That’s totally fair. No, I think it’s relevant because I think when you talk about making

[00:17:07] decisions for a product based on intuition versus based on data, who is right in that call?

[00:17:16] It’s really hard to say because it is absolutely possible that the intuitive thing turns out to

[00:17:25] create a new set of previously unavailable data. So a great book on this subject, or really just

[00:17:33] a series of books, The Black Swan and a couple others by Nassim Taleb, he talks about the idea

[00:17:45] that…

[00:17:46] Before an extraordinary event occurs, the data would predict that an extraordinary event will

[00:17:53] not occur. And that’s the paradox, that when an outlier occurs that is beyond all other outliers,

[00:18:04] we don’t have a way of expecting that outlier to occur.

[00:18:09] So we end up having these systems that predict, for example, an earthquake, right? And we build,

[00:18:16] all of our earthquake preparations around these prediction algorithms but all of the data that

[00:18:22] we fed into those prediction algorithms would not be able to to imagine right like humans can

[00:18:28] that something larger than has ever occurred before may happen in the future and that’s

[00:18:34] actually what earthquake preparedness is about it’s about the outlier so if we’re trying to

[00:18:42] become an outlier in a business then perhaps we should consider those those realities as well

[00:18:48] but i think what you’re saying here is actually more important and that is that while it’s true

[00:18:54] that an outlier may not necessarily be easy to predict it’s also true that most people

[00:19:01] even most very successful people are not necessarily outliers in fact most really

[00:19:09] successful businesses are just

[00:19:11] you

[00:19:12] listening to their customers and responding well would you agree that with with that kind

[00:19:17] of summation of how product development uh should likely occur in the average scenario

[00:19:22] i will have to go look at his book um that’s what i like about doing podcasts i’m like oh i didn’t

[00:19:27] know about this podcast oh i didn’t know about this idea this is fantastic and i don’t have to

[00:19:31] get dressed in any fancy clothes been wonderful um i think for the most people from yeah for most

[00:19:38] companies there’s some terrific companies you’ve never heard of them

[00:19:41] i haven’t heard about them until i start to work with them and that’s what they’re doing

[00:19:45] they’re solving problems for people every day they’re making their customers lives better

[00:19:51] what i like about working in the b2b realm is that i get to help businesses

[00:20:00] and when i help a business everyone who’s touched by that business gets help too

[00:20:06] when we help an organization listen to their customers and improve their business

[00:20:11] product or get it to market faster or help their organization they get better they’re serving

[00:20:18] their customers better they’re they’re seeing better financial results which creates opportunities

[00:20:22] for everyone who works there and everyone that they serve and that’s a pretty you know what i

[00:20:29] can tell my daughters that’s why i’m leaving them at daycare today because i help companies and i

[00:20:34] help their customers and they’re making improvements and maybe i i’m not steve jobs and i’m okay with

[00:20:39] that but there’s a lot of great things

[00:20:41] you can do in the world by just listening being flexible being adaptable uh and again taking some

[00:20:51] chances you know i’m saying you know there’s something to indicate this let’s go for it you

[00:20:57] know what and if it doesn’t work we just uh turn it off it’ll be fine right yeah it’ll be fine you

[00:21:01] know what and people will say hey we went for it and your customers will be like yeah no but we

[00:21:06] still like you so we’ll be back tomorrow if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to

[00:21:11] work on a team that has the ambition the projects and the resources necessary to be innovative and

[00:21:19] to invest in learning barclays may have a role for you barclays is the global bank that has

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[00:21:55] it is an interesting thing you know when when you have a company that doesn’t have a a you know

[00:22:09] it is that abstraction layer right and it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s

[00:22:11] where the thing that you do is helping other people do the thing that they do

[00:22:15] and in a way it’s kind of like the manager role right the manager’s role is as typically to

[00:22:23] help other people do their jobs and that kind of stack of of personnel and empowering other

[00:22:31] people it can be really intoxicating in a lot of ways but it also can have profound

[00:22:36] impact on the way that you build that business the way that you build that role

[00:22:41] if you can understand those people thoroughly and again going back to the theme of this episode

[00:22:45] i think developers have a huge growth opportunity if you can think about your work in terms of

[00:22:54] empowering empowering other people right not just empowering through the product mindset but also

[00:23:00] just empowering your co-workers that’s a different way of thinking that goes beyond

[00:23:04] just this basic skill set it creates this this human value in you where you understand what

[00:23:10] other people need and what other people don’t need and what other people don’t need and what other

[00:23:11] people don’t need you’re working from a place of empathy rather than purely a place of you know

[00:23:16] mechanical output so i i definitely encourage that yeah i think you said it better than me

[00:23:22] jess thank you so much for for joining me on the show i have two quick questions i know we’re over

[00:23:31] time here but i have two quick questions to ask you uh that i like to ask all of my guests if you

[00:23:36] have a moment of course the first question uh that i like to ask you is do you have a moment to

[00:23:41] ask all my guests is what do you wish more people would ask you about what topic do you wish you

[00:23:46] could talk about more often oh wow oh that’s a great question um i wish people would ask me more

[00:23:59] about here’s a weird one planning uh planning figuring out what you’re going to do now what

[00:24:10] you’re doing? What are you going to do next? What’s going to be the next thing? Nobody asked

[00:24:14] me about planning. Everybody asked me about what rituals should we be doing? What tools should we

[00:24:22] be using? Who should we be talking to? What should we be talking about? People don’t really

[00:24:28] aren’t interested in talking about like, how do we make decisions as an organization?

[00:24:33] What should we do next? How do we think about taking this idea and break it down to pieces

[00:24:37] and decide what we’re not going to do? Because everybody wants to talk about what new thing

[00:24:43] they’re doing. And all I want to talk about is what are you not going to do? Because if you don’t

[00:24:47] create space, there will be no space for all of your new stuff, where that’s going to go.

[00:24:54] You got to kill some stuff and you got to get rid of some stuff, which will enable all the other

[00:24:59] things that you want to do. And until you do that, you really probably don’t have any capacity and

[00:25:05] it’s not going to work.

[00:25:07] Yeah, that’s a very good point. When you think about all of the way that you do the work,

[00:25:16] rather than deciding what work to do in the first place, I think that’s the productivity trap.

[00:25:24] We make the assumption that we know what’s important. And then we try to work on getting

[00:25:31] those things done as fast as we possibly can. We get addicted to the concept that

[00:25:37] what we really need is more effective working processes. And most of the time,

[00:25:45] that’s actually probably a thing that you’re relatively good at. The working process,

[00:25:52] people tend to work that out because it’s the thing that we’re doing most often.

[00:25:56] But the decision-making process and the prioritization process, those are the harder

[00:26:01] things. And I totally agree. I think that in that consultant space, especially,

[00:26:07] and people should be seeking better decision-making tools, better decision-making

[00:26:12] processes, and then allowing those kind of common work habits to prevail over trying to experiment

[00:26:21] and iterate all the time on the working habits. Instead, focus on finding better priority. I

[00:26:26] think that’s a fantastic way to think about it. Okay, Jess, and the last question I have for you,

[00:26:31] if you can give developers just 30 seconds of advice,

[00:26:35] no matter what their background,

[00:26:37] what would you tell them? Ask.

[00:26:39] Well, that was less than one second. That’s great.

[00:26:45] Ask the question. Take a minute to, when you’re trying to go through your planning

[00:26:52] or you’re presented with this ticket, try to figure out, what are we trying to do here?

[00:27:00] What is this about? Where did this come from? What are we trying to achieve with it?

[00:27:05] Take the minute to think about it. And if you don’t,

[00:27:07] know, ask. Because that one little piece of information will help you come up with a better

[00:27:13] solution. That will make you and everybody around you a little bit smarter, have a little bit more

[00:27:21] context, have a little bit more understanding. And I guarantee you, somebody else is thinking,

[00:27:25] and they’re not asking. And so that one little extra question, that one little extra thing to

[00:27:32] say, what’s this for? What are we doing? Help me understand.

[00:27:37] And most people, most product leaders, the good ones, especially, they don’t shut up about stuff

[00:27:43] like that. In fact, that’s how I judge you when I first meet you. So what are you guys working on?

[00:27:48] And if they just go on and they have this really nice tight script, let me tell you,

[00:27:54] I know they’re good. But if they can’t, you know, I have an hour long conversation. They’ve never

[00:27:57] told, they haven’t told me what they’re doing yet. Like I somehow suspect good things are not

[00:28:03] happening where you are. Yeah. It can be really tough. It can be really tough to know.

[00:28:07] Um, you know, what, what level of information should I be sharing in a given moment? But

[00:28:13] if, if someone is asking me a question and I can’t answer it about the fundamental things

[00:28:18] that I’m doing, uh, that, that feels like maybe I have some work to do. Right. Um, but beyond that,

[00:28:24] I think there’s so much that goes on in our heads, uh, and in our coworkers heads that

[00:28:30] is incredibly valuable, but unfortunately never brought to the surface. And so what you said is,

[00:28:37] is, uh, incredibly true and can affect people’s lives greatly that other people probably have

[00:28:43] the same questions that you have. And so when you ask them, you’re not doing it for yourself

[00:28:50] only, right? It’s something that maybe it’s going to help you, but you’re also doing it for the

[00:28:54] benefit of the people around you. When you ask a question, go ahead. Oh, no, I was going to say,

[00:28:59] I just thought of something you, you phrased that so nicely. It triggered a thought

[00:29:03] your product manager wants you to ask. Yes, absolutely.

[00:29:07] They do. Your UX designer wants you to ask

[00:29:10] because they much rather clarify in that moment and make sure everybody knows what’s going on

[00:29:16] then for 24 hours to go by and then for it to come back up. And we’ve missed the time

[00:29:21] like they’re doing. And like, you know, for the most part, it’s always a good idea to assume

[00:29:27] good intent and to say like, they’re trying to do something. They’re trying to explain it to you in

[00:29:31] the best way they have. So if you’re not getting it asked, because I guarantee you they’ll be,

[00:29:35] they much happier right in the moment. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

[00:29:37] To explain it and make sure you’re clear then to wait 24 hours, two days, three days into the next,

[00:29:45] the, you know, sprint review or whatever. And for that not to have gone wrong.

[00:29:49] Right. Right.

[00:29:50] They want you to ask because if they are not, they’re trying, but they may not be

[00:29:55] succeeding in being clear. And if they’re not, you’re just, you know, there’s a, there’s a way

[00:30:01] to ask that in a really obnoxious way that perhaps is not the best idea, but like for the most part,

[00:30:06] if you’re, if you’re open and honestly trying to make sure you really understand it,

[00:30:11] they’re going to be so grateful that you took the time and you’ll, everything just got cleared up in

[00:30:16] the moment so that we’re not wasting time and effort. Right. Yep. Absolutely. And the only way

[00:30:22] that you begin the process of that collaboration is by starting a discussion. Um, you know,

[00:30:30] discussing something with another person and that’s, you know, you start to clarify your mental

[00:30:35] model on both sides of the equation. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me on today’s

[00:30:40] episode of Developer Tea. It’s been wonderful having you.

[00:30:43] Thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation and I have a lot of things to look up now.

[00:30:47] Yeah. I look for that. And can, can you share, um, with the listeners when your book is going

[00:30:54] to be available and how they can find it? Thank you for asking. The book is available

[00:30:58] on September 17th and you can find it on Amazon. I can also find some other research we did at

[00:31:04] productmindset.com.

[00:31:06] Perfect. Productmindset.com. Thank you, Jessica, for joining me on Developer Tea.

[00:31:10] Thanks so much.

[00:31:12] A huge thank you to Jessica Hall for joining me on today’s episode and the last episode of

[00:31:18] Developer Tea. I really enjoyed our interview and I think that this mindset that Jessica talks about

[00:31:24] in her book isn’t just a fad or a bunch of buzzwords. It’s actually a fundamental concept

[00:31:29] that you as a developer, you can grow from it. So I encourage you to go and check out the book

[00:31:34] when it comes out.

[00:31:35] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. We wouldn’t be able to do this without

[00:31:39] our wonderful sponsors. Today’s episode was sponsored by Barclays. Barclays has a bunch

[00:31:44] of developer roles that are open in pretty much any language that you probably already use and

[00:31:49] know. Go and check it out. Home.Barclays. That’s home.B-A-R-C-L-A-Y-S slash developers.

[00:31:57] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. If you don’t want to miss out on the

[00:32:01] future episodes of this show, I encourage you to go ahead and subscribe. Before the end of the show,

[00:32:05] before the show ends, thank you again for listening to this podcast. We wouldn’t be

[00:32:10] able to do it without you. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

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