Lean Product Playbook

Working the product-market fit pyramid from the bottom up: target customer, underserved needs, value proposition, MVP, and the loop that tests them. Adapted from Dan Olsen's The Lean Product Playbook.

2 topics
11 lessons
1 hr 23 min
Start the course
Topic 1

Core concepts

  1. What product-market fit actually means

    The definition leaves out revenue and acquisition on purpose: creating value comes before capturing it

    8 min
  2. The product-market fit pyramid

    Target customer at the bottom, user experience at the top, and why the break is usually lower

    9 min
  3. Problem space and solution space

    Customers react to designs better than they describe needs, so treat every prototype as a question

    7 min
Topic 2

Customers and problems

  1. Finding your target customer

    Your product is the bait; when the wrong sort of person bites, that is data, not noise

    8 min
  2. Personas that earn their keep

    One page, hypothesised before you have any customers, that lets the team settle arguments without you

    9 min
  3. Customer benefit hypotheses

    Write each need as a user story, then find the gap between importance and satisfaction

    8 min
  4. Measuring importance and satisfaction

    Five points for importance, seven for satisfaction, and always about what they do today

    8 min
  5. A sample size of zero is fine

    Quant on qual: a clear pattern beats significance when the decision is not close

    7 min
  6. Testing in waves

    Five to eight per round, revised in between; twenty identical sessions is one session repeated

    6 min
  7. Screening for the right people

    Decide who is disqualified before you meet anyone, or every answer looks close enough

    6 min
  8. Finding people to talk to

    Going to them and bringing them to you — cold outreach, landing pages, meetups and teaching

    7 min