How to stop wasting developers' time

And why most product features are never used

There is a simple reason for all those unused features - your customers are lying to you.

And it is YOUR fault! Yes, you, the software engineer!

In some companies, engineers never deal with customers, only PMs. If that’s your case, and you are ok with it - this article is not for you.

In my opinion, product management is broken. The future is product-engineers - software developers who care about the product they develop, talk to customers and influence decision-making.

Ian Vanagas

wrote the great ‘Engineer’s Guide to Talking to Users’, covering multiple aspects.

Today’s article is aimed at engineers who can influence the product decisions in their startups, or consider creating something of their own. I’m going to cover the main insights from ‘The Mom Test’, one of the best books I’ve read in a while!

Some parts of the article are direct quotes from the book, all the credit goes to Rob Fitzpatrick.

What do most people do wrong?

The 3 deadly mistakes:

1. Fishing for compliments

   • “We are working on a new daily report, what do you think about it?”

   • “I’m thinking of starting a business... Do you think it will work?”

   • “I had an awesome idea for an app - do you like it?”

2. Exposing your ego

   • “Our product and design teams have been working on this for a couple of months, how does it look in your opinion?”

   • “So here’s that top-secret project I quit my job for... what do you think?”

   • “I can take it - be honest and tell me what you really think!”

3. Being pitchy

   • “No no, I don’t think you get it...”

   • “Yes, but it also does this!”

If you’ve mentioned your idea, people will try to protect your feelings.

It boils down to this: you aren’t allowed to tell them what their problem is, and in return, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, you own the solution.

So what is the Mom Test?

The name comes from the fact that if you ask your mom about your ideas, she’ll always say (a variation of): ‘That’s a great idea darling!’.

To truly understand whether your ideas are good, you need to ask the right questions. “Is this a good idea?” is one of the worst.

If you just avoid mentioning your idea, you automatically start asking better questions. Doing this is the easiest (and biggest) improvement you can make to your customer conversations.

Here are 3 simple rules, which are collectively called ‘The Mom Test’:

1. Talk about their life instead of your idea

Let’s say you want to create an app to help people manage their book backlog. Instead of showing them a demo, or asking what they think about your features, start with:

“So what’s your relationship with books? How often do you read?”

The same holds for adding a feature to your existing product - DON’T talk about the feature, talk about what their day-to-day looks like, and steer them towards the problem you are trying to solve.

2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future

You should NEVER ask “Would you use it?” if you want an honest answer. Much better to ask about the past. Continuing with the books app example, you can follow up with:

“So how do you decide which books to read? Where do you store all the books you’ve read?”

The past behavior will teach you much more than a vague promise about the future.

3. Talk less and listen more

Simple to understand, hard to follow.

So that's it?

Yep, that’s it. The book goes deeper into each of the three rules, I chose a few of the best examples.

Did they look for a solution?

I was checking out an idea with a potential customer and they excitedly said: "Oh man, that happens all the time! I would definitely pay for something that solved that problem."

To dig further, I asked: "Can you talk me through how you tried to fix it?"

He looked at me blankly, so I nudged him further: “Did you google around for any other ways to solve it?”

He seemed a little bit like he’d been caught stealing from the cookie jar and said: “No… I didn’t really think to. It’s something I’m used to dealing with, you know?”

In the abstract, it’s something he would “definitely” pay to solve. Once we got specific, he didn't even care enough to search for a solution (which do exist, incidentally).

The world’s most deadly fluff is: “I would definitely buy that.”

If they haven't looked for ways of solving it already, they're not going to look for (or buy) yours.

Is it really a problem for them?

Some problems have big, costly implications. Others exist but don’t actually matter.

I once had someone keep describing the workflow we were fixing with emotionally loaded terms like “DISASTER”, accompanied by much yelling and arm waving. But when I asked him what the implications were, he sort of shrugged and said “Oh, we just ended up throwing a bunch of interns at the problem—it’s actually working pretty well.”

This distinguishes between I-will-pay-to-solve-that problems and thats-kind-of-annoying-but-I-can-deal-with-it “problems”.

Some problems don’t actually matter to your customers.

Final Words

If you enjoyed this topic, you’ll enjoy our most popular article:

Why asking your customers what they want doesn't work

I’ll wrap up with this great analogy by Fitzpatrick:

Trying to learn from customer conversations is like excavating a delicate archaeological site. The truth is down there somewhere, but it’s fragile.

While each blow with your shovel gets you closer to the truth, you’re liable to smash it into a million little pieces if you use too blunt an instrument. I see a lot of teams using a bulldozer and crate of dynamite for their excavation.

They are, in one way or another, forcing people to say something nice about their business. They use heavy-handed questions like “do you think it’s a good idea” and shatter their prize.

At the other end of the spectrum, some founders are using a toothbrush to unearth a city, flinching away from digging deep and finding out whether anything of value is actually buried down there.

We want to find the truth of how to make our business succeed. We need to dig for it—and dig deep—but every question we ask carries the very real possibility of biasing the person we’re talking to and rendering the whole exercise pointless.

It happens more than you’d ever imagine. The truth is our goal and questions are our tools. But we must learn to wield them. It’s delicate work. And well worth learning. There’s treasure below.

Additional books you’ll enjoy

If building things is something you relate to, you’ll enjoy the following 5 books too!

For easy access, I recreated the list on BookWiz for you:

What we enjoyed reading this week

1. A bulletproof way to acquire more customers: ‘Brute Force Marketing’ by

   Tom Orbach
   - this one is super useful for aspiring entrepreneurs!

2. 11 Public Speaking Techniques from the World’s Greatest Speakers by

   Polina Pompliano
   . Another very deep-researched article, a must-read for people who need to talk in front of other people! (Which is everyone…)

3. 3 questions to ask yourself as a leader by

   Akash Mukherjee
   . Great questions that will help you do some introspection.