Start with the problem, not the solution

Spend more time on the problem than the solution.

I think that the heart of good product is really getting comfortable in the problem space or the opportunity space, really taking the time to frame a problem well, and to really get into what's needed before we jump to solutions.

Working backwards is all about the problem and starting there and obsessing about the problem and being guided by it to then go into the solution.

We are not going to think at all about the thing that you want to build, but instead we're going to be focused on users and people in the real world and their problems.

I think something that is really hard to untrain, but I think every human does it, is you jump to solutions. And so one of the biggest things I see, not just in my course, but also just as a PM and some of the mistakes that you make as a PM is the idea of you get really attached to a solution.

The biggest mistakes that teams make is they become very passionate about a solution to a problem they're trying to solve as opposed to do everything they can to develop empathy for the customer that's suffering the problem.

When teams that do it wrong is they don't do that. They don't work backwards. They have something they want to build... And so you're adding the problem after the solution. You're retrofitting the problem, retrofitting the customer.

"Working backwards" is Amazon's product development methodology where teams start by writing a press release and FAQ for the desired customer outcome before building anything.

The most common thing that I see that tips me off is when they talk about something, there's different pieces in the pantry and we have these ingredients, we could put them together... But that's not really working backwards.

I can tell you that opportunity is an unmet need pain point or desire, and that's great. But I can tell you that 98% of people that write opportunities write them as solutions.