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Hey, I’m Ed co-founder and CEO of Tadaa. To iterate on the problem we’re tackling with our collaborative playbook, we carried out 200 interviews with successful product teams. They shared two 2 key elements: how they work (e.g. processes, tools…) and the pain points they endured daily.
Here’s my takeaway on how to carry interviews to refine your product/market fit, enjoy!
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Often you will interview people on Zoom you’ve never met. They have absolutely no reason to trust you. Why would they? If you want to collect valuable insights, you’re going to need them to talk, a lot. To start, explain your initiative, reassure your audience they’re not the only one you’re interviewing, etc. Enjoy as this will be the last time you’ll talk during this meeting.
People love talking about their work. So quickly get them to speak with wide-open questions. This will help you deep dive later (see below), and help you stay silent. Yep, you got that right: stay silent. If you talk, you can turn an insightful conversation into a useless session. The worst thing that can happen is you miss vital information.
Check the following conversation with a product designer:
Okay so tell me how you build products in your company.
[Basic open question, allowing your audience to decide where to start]
Well every 2 weeks, we receive a new set of ideas from our CEO that we need to focus on…
[Insight 1: they start their sprint at the idea stage]
Ok so wait, you don’t do any research prior to working on an idea?
[Please don't interrupt the interviewee and also restrain from suggesting that they’re doing something wrong]
Yes, we do research sometimes when we get feedback from users.
[Now that’s an information you should be cautious about. The designer might have answered this because they know it’s the right thing to say, even though they might not be carrying out any research. You’re blocked here, so either dig in and it could damage your insights, or work your way back to the first answer]
The best way is to let your audience speak. Once they are done with their story, ask questions to clarify the points you want to deep dive on. Bear in mind that your questions must be as simple as possible, and remove any hint that could orientate their answer (like in the example above). The last thing you want to have is confirmation bias in the insights you collect.
Also, if you want to know whether you’ve asked a bad question, look at how your audience responds. If the answer is Yes/No, then you’re failing at generating a spontaneous conversation with the interviewee. The goal of this exercise is to get them to speak for as long as possible. Because the more they talk, the more honest and detailed the answers will be. And the more valuable it will be for you.
Also, if you want to know whether you’ve asked a bad question, look at how your audience responds. If the answer is Yes/No, then you’re failing at generating a spontaneous conversation with the interviewee. The goal of this exercise is to get them to speak for as long as possible. Because the more they talk, the more honest and detailed the answers will be. And the more valuable it will be for you.
Remember those job interviews you did where you would get bombarded with random questions every 30 seconds? Yeah well, that’s what your audience is about to suffer with that question list. Instead, show that you’re listening and interested in the knowledge being shared.
Before the interview don’t write down a one-size-fits-all question list you will end up reading like a bad actor going through a script. Instead, write down the titles of the topics you want to discuss. This cheat sheet will help you bounce back if you’ve reached the end of a topic, formulate more naturally the beginning of a new one, and drive the conversation.Also during the session, take a pen and paper and write down the points that raised your interest, and would like to come back to. That’s the best way to deep dive into relevant topics and have a meaningful conversation (see below).
Don’t worry, if you’re listening carefully to your audience, you will never be short of questions. And if that becomes the case, it means you’ve asked everything and you’ve collected the information you were looking for. Congrats!
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Deep dive into each problem to understand where the problem really comes from. I would suggest using a lean approach when you carry out such discussions.
For example, a Product Manager might addmit that some tickets never get resolved, because of time constraints.
Why do these particular tickets get left behind?
[You realize that 2/3 of those tickets require copywriting skills from external teams (e.g. marketing]
Why doesn’t the marketing team have the bandwidth for your tasks?
[They operate differently than the product squads and their goals are not aligned with the same KPIs as the Product squad.]
Why are the goals not aligned?
[Because they work exclusively on the campaign roadmap that is already planned for the whole year.]
And there you go! Instead of thinking that time is the reason why they have a major problem in addressing all tickets, you’ve uncovered a lot more: now you know that there are different ways of working between the teams in the company (which is very common). However, this is seriously damaging collaboration across departments, and creating friction points. One quick fix could be to include some time for the product squad in the marketing roadmap.
Don’t dive into the solution during the interview, but this is a quick example to show the treasure you can unlock by simply asking “Why?” until you get to the bottom of the problem.
Tadaa! These were the 3 main takeaways from the +100 hours I spent listening to very interesting stories and collecting new insights into how product teams work. Believe me, there are no two similar squads I have talked to. Even though companies are currently undergoing Agile and Lean surgery, I still found a common pattern of pain points they suffer from. This will be my next article, coming soon!
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