Interview: How to Prevent Product Waste

UserTesting's Mike Mace interviewed me for The Center for Human Insight and produced this long-form post. We covered a lot of ground, including:

• The volume of product waste caused by bad product decisions (which I guesstimate at half of all projects)
• Roadmap amnesia, the process by which executives forget their priorities when presented with shiny new ideas and opportunities
• The critical need for product people to speak the language of business: They must explain and defend their priorities in terms of revenue and profit. Nothing else reliably moves the other execs.
• The central role of product management in making those business arguments
• How you can use small measurable wins and business coalitions to reduce the problem

Transcript is here: about 6800 words, and some rambling bits from me since this was live discussion rather than carefully edited writing.