Cross-Functional #67: This week: Product metrics, why OKRs aren't a strategy and the ins and outs of diary studies.

8 December 2021

This week we look at product metrics, why OKRs aren't a strategy and the ins and outs of diary studies.

Enabling the Team

Cross-Team Communication: Avoid Dependencies by Fran Ortiz

Defining your team interaction modes is as important as team design. Fran shares how they approached the problem at Audiense.

Stop Letting OKRs Masquerade as Strategy by Roger Martin

OKRs are good for giving teams goals while giving them flexibility on how to deliver but you still need to define where to play and how you'll win.

Product Vision

A Primer on Product Metrics by Alex Reeve

Outputs, North Stars, Signposts, Guardrails. A great overview of the different types of metrics that you need to consider as a product manager.

A Look at the Discovery Tech Stack at 99designs by Teresa Torres

A case study review of the tech stack used at 99designs including opportunity solution trees, Miro, Calendly, SurveyMonkey and more.

Continuous Research

Quant Diary Studies: An Introduction by Cata Torre

Quant diary studies show how people act in the real world and how they change over time. But you need to know how to run it properly for the best effect.

UX Guide: Password Reset User Flow by Masha S

It's all about the details. Learn how adding small enhancements in your password reset flow can allow for a more positive user experience.

Ideate & Design

How Design Debt Can Hurt Your Product by Amber Jabeen

Going through the 5 common reasons for design debt, Amber and her team at Talabat offers some actions to tackle the challenge of design debt.

The Dangers of Remote Design Sprints (and the Framework That Makes Them Exceptional) by Justin Mertes

Tools should be based on the context of your sprint. You want people focused on the problem space and not learning new tools.

Architect & Build

Modern Practices for Documenting Architectures by Navdeep Singh

Big designs don't work. But neither does no documentation. Continuously document architecture, capture all decisions and automate where possible.

Where Software Architecture Meets Ownership by Hila Fox

Hila shares the constraints, domain boundaries and language considerations that influenced the final architecture for a new feature for an existing service.

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