What's Inside
Ten stages from vision to outcome, plus foundational context and advanced guidance.
Front Matter
The Evidence Gap
Why 42% of startups fail from poor product-market fit, the assumption stack that causes it, and what this book will teach you.
How to Use This Playbook
The ten stages, the tools you will need, and the StatusTraq running example that ties everything together.
The Ten Stages
Define the Destination
Write a one-page product vision with a North Star metric and strategic guardrails.
Know the Terrain
Build your market model: sizing, competitors, ICPs, personas, trends, and a positioning hypothesis.
Conduct Discovery
Interview customers using Mom Test discipline. Recruit, listen, and capture evidence.
Map the Evidence
Organize raw evidence into story maps, baseline metrics, affinity themes, Jobs to Be Done analysis, and refined personas.
Frame the Opportunity
Define desired outcomes, build the Opportunity Solution Tree, score and prioritize opportunities, and map assumptions.
Prove It or Kill It
Generate solution concepts, identify the riskiest assumptions, and test them with the cheapest method that answers the question.
Chart the Path
Map the future-state workflow, write acceptance criteria, identify dependencies, and force-rank the delivery backlog.
Tell the Story
Finalize positioning, craft messaging in customer language, set pricing, define the go-to-market motion, and recruit a launch cohort.
Lock It Down
Ensure the technical foundation exists, secure stakeholder buy-in with your evidence chain, and write the requirement package.
Measure What Matters
Track outcomes, instrument analytics, monitor customer health, run A/B tests, and feed everything back into discovery.
Going Further
Making It Real
Practical guidance for adopting evidence-based practices: organize your product plan, start small, sell to leadership, scale across teams, and build the habit.
The Evolving Product Manager
How AI, technical fluency, and role convergence are reshaping the product management discipline.