Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 240 | John Cutler - Making Value
John Cutler is keenly focused on user experience and evidence-driven product development. He mixes and matches various methodologies — jobs-to-be-done, Lean UX, Lean Startup, customer development, and design thinking — to help teams deliver lasting outcomes for their customers. John is currently Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. As a former UX researcher at AppFolio, a product manager at Pendo.io, AdKeeper and RichFX, a startup founder, and a product team coach, John has a perspective that spans individual roles, domains, and products. His viral enthusiasm has been heard through speaking engagements at Agile 2015, Heart of Agile Philadelphia (2016), and various ProductCamps (Vancouver, Los Angeles, Raleigh NC) and MeetUps (Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, New York). Mixing in some less-than-typical experiences — driving rickshaws in NYC, and touring the US with “five other weird creative people in a van playing music” — John blogs prolifically about collaboration, product development, diversity, UX research, lean startup, and user experience. Some notable posts include The Evolving Product Manager Role, Persona(s) Non Grata, 12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory, and Stop Setting Up Product Roadmaps To Fail.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and John Cutler
- - The things that "light John up" about creation and product development
- - John's background and history and experience with writing code
- - The role of the product manager
- - John's motivations for blogging and the resulting human connections
- - Product and engineering collaborating to chart a course and guiding architecture - also, the virtue of craftsmanship
- - The role of technical people in understanding the value produced by the organization and improving the culture and the product
- - Organizational structure, cost accounting, time tracking, and taking orders
- - John's deep interest in enabling makers to make
- - John's story of failure - being too attached to his own thing, focusing on the wrong thing, falling short on empathy
- - Applying systems thinking to organizations
- - Testing the operation of the team and test-driven product management
- - How John stays current with what he needs to know and the challenge of career development for product management
- - John's top 3 tips for delivering more value
Resources:
John's book recommendation:
John's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Figure out a way to pick up the phone and call the customer directly - get direct feedback
- Think about a world where you're not an order taker - where you are the value maker
- Resist premature optimization in terms of process and routine - be flexible and resilient
