At Status Hero, we regularly share and watch product development talks as a team. They help us expand our approaches and challenge ourselves to do better. Here are 16 of our team’s favorites on product management, jobs-to-be-done, lean, and discovery.

Product Management

In this 2014 talk from Intercom’s Head of Strategy, Des Traynor reveals his philosophies and approaches to building and prioritizing product investment. This is a must watch for anyone new to product management.

Marty Cagan, author of Inspired (v1 and v2) outlines the reasons why so many products are failures. Are you guilty of any? Watch the video to learn what to avoid and how to embrace continuous discovery and delivery so you can ensure your product is successful.

Google Ventures partner and product manager Ken Norton gives an engaging talk on how you can push yourself to find the 10x results instead of playing it safe and going for 10%. A great video for when you need some inspiration.

One of the more challenging aspects of Product Management can be managing stakeholders - especially executives. Getting their buy-in is critical- do it early in a project to avoid disruptions later. Rosemary King explains why and how to involve stakeholders, starting with research to ensure alignment and avoid problems down the line.

Prioritization is one of the most critical aspects of Product Management. Hiten Shah knows a thing or two about prioritization, having founded Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Draftsend, to name just a few. In this talk, he outlines 7 habits that will help you effectively prioritize the work that you focus on.

How do you build a “badass” user? Keep them engaged by minimizing cognitive drain. In this entertaining talk, Kathy Sierra explains what cognitive leaks are, how to identify them, and how to fix them.

The Kano model is a simple tool that you can use to map out and prioritize features and customer satisfaction. In this talk from Jared Spool, you’ll learn what the Kano model is and how to leverage it to deliver delightful experiences to your users.

Jobs-to-be-Done

For anyone that has heard about “milkshakes” in product development but doesn’t understand why - here is the source. In this 5 minute talk from Clayton Christensen, you’ll get a quick understanding of the concept of jobs-to-be-done through the story of a business trying to sell more milkshakes.

If you’re looking for a more in-depth understanding of jobs-to-be-done, this is a great video to watch. Not only do you get a detailed overview, Bob Moesta & Chris Spiek perform a jobs-to-be-done interview live so you can see how it’s actually done.

Sian Townsend, Director of Research at Intercom, gives her perspective on using jobs-to-be-done to design products. Learn how it’s being used through case studies and examples from its application at Intercom.

Tony Ulwick, one of the fathers of jobs-to-be-done, explains why it’s important to focus on the job. Learn his disciplined and quantitative approach for defining a market around a job and then uncovering the unmet needs. Once you know the unmet needs of a market, you can build a product that gets the job done better.

Lean

In this great talk from Melissa Perri, she explains the core tenets of lean product management: focusing on customer problems, running experiments to validate ideas, working closely with stakeholders, and sharing out data. Check it out and learn to make sure you focus on solving problems and building what customers want.

In this talk, author and speaker Jeff Gothelf outlines what he’s learned in his time working in lean UX. He stresses the need to focus on effective product discovery. This is done by collaborative teams testing and validating hypotheses with experiments. It’s a great video for anyone that’s looking for ways to adopt lean methodology in their work.

Focus on outcomes, not output. Don’t get stuck in the “trap” of building feature after feature instead of driving meaningful outcomes for your customers and business. In this insightful talk, Melissa Perri shows how to identify whether you are in the “build trap” and how to escape it.

Discovery

Teresa Torres is a Product coach focused on helping teams leverage discovery to learn if they’re building the right product, and how to pivot if they aren’t. If you’re new to the concept of product discovery, this is a great talk to gain a solid foundation.

Expanding on her previous talk, Teresa presents a case study of how one organization is adopting continuous product discovery practices in the enterprise. Through the case study, learn practical approaches for implementing continuous discovery and potential pitfalls to watch out for.