A Kill the HiPPO review; and deleting features
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Hello! A solid review of Kill the HiPPO appeared on LinkedIn yesterday: “Kill The HiPPO is not a how-to guide per se; rather, it's a collection of relatable startup stories to inspire your own feature prioritization system. Co-authors Steve and Siew Ann waste no time in fleshing out each chapter. The solutions, insights, and writing all keep this book fresh and engaging.” The reviewer nailed our findings about the ICE and RICE prioritisation frameworks in her first paragraph too. The comments on the review were revealing. It turns out a lot of people haven’t heard of the “HiPPO” acronym for “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion”: I had never heard of a HiPPO and after reading your review, felt really glad I hadn't. That seems like a much worse option than, like, listening to what customers want. Perhaps our book title is too clever? On book marketingThere’s a clear connection between getting some publicity and getting some book sales. It sounds obvious, of course, but the connection is stronger than I expected. I write a guest post for a product management blog; I get some sales. I’m a guest on a podcast; I get some sales. I do nothing; I don’t get sales. On the one hand, I’m frustrated by the amount of time-consuming work it takes to get each sale. But on the other hand, it is nice to see an immediate result from marketing effort. It is a pleasant change from running Feature Upvote, my B2B SaaS, where there is no obvious and immediate connection between our marketing effort and our sales. It takes courage to delete featuresIn Chapter 6: Add a Button; Remove a Button of Kill the HiPPO, we talked about the power and importance of deleting features to make way for new features. On a similar theme, Liam Nugent writes about how thankless yet important it is to delete things: Ask a team what they shipped this year and you’ll get a list. Ask what they killed and the room goes quiet. That’s from The most important product decision is what you don’t build. Worth the read. Until next time, keep making great software. Steve McLeod PS: If you’ve bought Kill the HiPPO, have you written a review yet? |