138 / The Science Behind Building Better Products, with Holly Hester-Reilly

Product Momentum Podcast

As Holly Hester-Reilly explains, “Intuition isn’t magic. People who have good product intuition know this, because they’ve worked hard over time through lots of hard practice to build it up – and build better products in the process.” Holly is the founder and CEO of H2R Product Science (and a good friend of Product Momentum). We jumped at the chance to catch up with Holly right after her talk at the New York Product Conference.

3 Pillars of the Product Science Strategy

The product managers who develop this intuition have learned real, tangible skills, benefitting from an evidence-based scientific approach to get there. In her keynote, Holly touched on the three pillars of her product science strategy:

• Evidence-based product strategy. A plan for how you will win in the marketplace.
• Continuous Discovery + Delivery. Gathering evidence and new learnings with every build.
• Empowered teams. Aligned on outcomes, trained and supported with context and tools.

Product managers, regardless of experience or seniority, can develop their own product intuition by applying the methods embedded in this strategy to learn more about their customers, their market, and their product. Evidenced-based decisionmaking helps validate our assumptions, test ideas, and measure outcomes.

Holly’s Key Takeaways

We’ve only summarized them here, so you’ll want to watch or listen to catch every nugget:

1. Not every outcome is equally important or equally uncertain. You need to prioritize the outcomes that matter most to your customers and your business, and assess their risks.
2. It is not enough to be right; you also have to be persuasive. Evidence strengthens your hand as you seek buy-in from stakeholders and team members.
3. Practice the Built-Learned-Planning demo. “Planning” is another way of saying what you ‘intend to learn.’

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Check out our conversation with Holly Hester-Reilly on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!.

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