内部视角:Miro 如何打造产品 | Varun Parmar(Miro 首席产品官(CPO))
An inside look at how Miro builds product | Varun Parmar (CPO of Miro)
Inside Miro’s Product Culture and Practices
Varun Parmar: Every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and you’re releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you’re making the product worse, but the products never remain same. So with every release that your competitor is making and every release that you’re making, you are either making chess points, moves against them, positive points, or you’re going negative. I think that framework, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you’re doing and what the impact is going to be.
Impact of Cross-Cultural Global Teams
Lenny: Welcome to Lenny’s Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today’s most successful products. Today my guest is Varun Parmar. Varun is chief product Officer at Miro, and prior to Miro, he was senior vice president and chief product officer at Box. As I share with Varun at the start of our chat, I’ve always been really curious about the product culture at Miro, partly because everyone I’ve ever met from Miro has been super interesting and super smart, and partly because they’ve been able to grow as a business and a product in an incredibly competitive market.
In our conversation, we get really deep into the product values and principles at Miro, their product development process, how Varun approaches competitive threats, how a bimonthly company-wide product demo ritual led to saving months of engineering work on a feature, plus insights into how Miro got started, how they grow today, and what their product team has learned about working with a large sales org. Varun is amazing, I learned a lot, and I hope you find it as interesting as I did. With that, I bring you Varun Parmar after a short word from our sponsors.
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Varun Parmar: Thank you, Lenny. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Empathy-Driven Product Development Practices
Lenny: I’m really excited to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to having a chance to dig into Miro’s product culture and the way Miro works for a while. We’ve actually had a few guests, ex-Miro… Mironeers, is that what you call yourselves?
Varun Parmar: Yes, Mironeers.
Navigating Competition and Sustaining Innovation
Lenny: Okay. Mironeers. So we had Elena Verna on the podcast, who’s amazing, and Barbara who I think worked in marketing and everyone I’ve always met from Miro has been just really smart and really interesting and it just feels like you guys have a really interesting product culture that I haven’t felt like has been shared a lot, and so I have a bunch of stuff I want to dig into there. One question I have at the bat, you guys have a really interesting history and specifically the way your company’s structured, which is that you’re collocated in Amsterdam and San Francisco. First of all, is that correct?
Varun Parmar: The company is a global company, so we’ve got 12 different hubs. We have multiple offices in US, four different offices, and then multiple hubs in Europe as well, and presence in AsiaPac as well. I think by now we have a global footprint, yeah.
Product Team Organizational Structure
Lenny: Got it. A question I wanted to ask off the bat is just how has that cross-cultural approach to product teams impacted the way that you guys built product and the way the company operates?
Cross-Functional Collaboration and Product Consistency
Varun Parmar: The one thing that’s really interesting, Lenny, around the way Miro is set up is that our product organization is actually based in Europe and our go-to-market organization is worldwide. Our product management team, our designers, our engineers are located across three different hubs in Europe. What that sort of leads to is a couple of practices that we have as part of our culture. The first one is practicing empathy to gain insights. It’s not just practicing empathy in terms of customers and figuring out what customer pain points and problems we can solve, but given our distributed nature in terms of having a global footprint and a lot of our go to market teams, folks in sales and marketing and customer success are in different continents or geographies, we have to make sure that we actually practice that internally. When we are interacting with folks, let’s say in San Francisco, and those folks are out there meeting some of our large customers and stuff, how do we, in the product organization, understand their perspective, and bring that perspective into how we design, prioritize and build products? I think that’s one thing that’s unique.
I would say the other thing that’s less to do with the location, but I think is sort of the core cultural value or philosophy that Andre, who’s the founder and CEO has instilled in all of us, is practicing teamwork, how do we actually come together as a team, and bring down the silos that might exist across functions? I’ll talk a little bit around how we are structured in the product organization so that it’s a cross-functional perspective we bring to everything that we’re doing because we believe the best work happens when we bring different diverse perspectives to the problem and then co-create the outcome that the customer is looking for.
AMPED Framework and Marketing Integration
Lenny: I want to pull on these threads actually real quick. You talked about this value of empathy and the importance of having empathy across… because you guys are located in different locations and have different cultures, and also this idea of teamwork. What’s something that you’ve done that helps you do that, either build empathy and maintain empathy across teams or make sure that people work in teams and not like, “Hey, there’s this other team over there doing something else”?
Varun Parmar: One of the most powerful things that I’ve seen work is the questions that you ask, the questions that you ask when you’re going through product review or you are going to sit down and talk to someone and trying to understand why did they prioritize something over the other and was it something that was done through interactions they’ve had with folks internally or externally? I think it’s the set of questions to ask in terms of how did they get to where they are today and was it informed by understanding of the insights that collectively the organization has? Was it informed by their understanding of where the market is evolving, where the competition is going.
Was it informed through the series of insights they have, either through inbound feedback that’s coming through our different channels where customers are giving feedback or some outbound interactions that they’ve had? I think just trying to double click and getting to the details in terms of what insight led them to recommend certain things or make a left turn or a right turn is where I think is the most powerful way to make sure that those things are informed through practicing empathy internally and externally.
How Competitors Decisively Impact Growth
Lenny: Got it. There’s this kind of cultural value of just assuming good intention and asking questions to understand where someone came from. I don’t know if you’ll have something off the top of your head, but is there a story or an example of that comes to mind where that was done well or not done well, I don’t know, in something you recently were building?
Varun Parmar: Maybe there are certain things, for example, anytime we’re trying to build a new experience, one of the approach we want to take is very quickly validate that our original hypothesis, is that sound or not. We are big fans of the Design Sprint framework, what Jake Knapp has done I think is really amazing. In a short five-day window, you can get a small set of people to quickly mock up a concept, convert it into some sort of a prototype and then go out there and get some sort of a validation. Oftentimes when we are working on some of these new things, we have our product teams that are focused on zero to one initiatives, run this five-day initiative, and at the end of it we say, “Oh, this is great. Who did you get insight from?” There’s a capability that we recently released, it’s called Miro Talktrack, which essentially allows you to asynchronously do asynchronous collaboration by recording audio video on top of a Miro board.
We had two fundamental choices we could make. One, we could go down the path of what everyone’s doing where you could do a screen recording and then spit out a series of videos, like pixels being captured. Or what we did was we actually went down a different path and the path that we went down was we basically synchronized the movement of the board. Let’s say Lenny’s presenting a board, some template he’s created in terms of best practices for PMs, but he wants to have some sort of a talk track on top of it, an audio video feed. What we are doing is we’re actually capturing the movement of the board that Lenny’s going through along with the video talk track that’s on top. The reason why we did that was because we had an insight that came through some of our interviews.
What our users want to do is they want to use Miro for collaboration. While communication is an important aspect of how teams come together, where we believe our sweet spot is that we want people to use Miro for collaboration. By making sure that they could actually use a video recording and while the video recording is playing, they could add in a sticky note, they could add in a comment, they could actually give a reaction. We were able to develop this insight by practicing empathy as part of the Design Sprint framework when we went and started to show our original concept and we walled and built on top of that.
Differentiation and Positioning Amidst Competition
Lenny: That is a really cool story. That came out of this Sprint framework, these five-day sprint approach.
Speed and Direction of Product Iteration
Varun Parmar: Yes, that’s right. Yeah.
Building Team Urgency
Lenny: That is cool. I got to have that guy on this podcast. Jake Knapp, you said, right?
Building a Fast Delivery Culture
Varun Parmar: Yes, yes, yes. I can text him right now and I can make the introductions, yes.
Lenny: Let’s pull him right into this podcast live, tell us how the Sprint process works. That is awesome. This connects a little bit to another question I wanted to ask around the top is, you guys are in a really competitive space and it feels like Miro was very early in online collaborative whiteboarding space and then I think during COVID it just became huge, with the remote work exploding. Like, “Holy shit, everyone needs this immediately.” Over the years, many companies have come into the space that you are all in and it feels like Miro continues to do extremely well. I remember when Figma launched FigJam, there was a lot of just like, “Miro’s dead. Figma’s getting into the space, they’re juggernaut, game over.” Clearly that’s not been the case and it just feels like, I don’t know what it is internally that you all do that continues to allow you to compete and continue to innovate in the space. I’m curious just like is there something to how Miro approaches competition and also just, I don’t know, the way they approach these sorts of challenges that is unique or interesting that you can share?
Measuring and Benchmarking Speed
Varun Parmar: If you look at the mission for Miro, we empower teams to create the next big thing and our focus is to enable teams that are innovating, and generally innovation happens at the intersection of a bunch of cross-functional folks coming together. Like we discussed, folks in product management or design or engineering or analytics or product marketing or research. What we find, Lenny, is that there are a lot of tools out there and those tools are generally sort of focused on a particular persona and maybe they’re trying to solve the needs of a designer and a designer has a workflow that they’re trying to do and they’re using a specific tool and they sit at the adjacency of extending that core use case. The fundamental value that Miro provides is that we enable teams. I think what’s unique about our product, and we can talk about the capabilities and roadmaps and use cases that we are investing in and we already have as part of the product, is that we take a team-centric lens.
So we’re not saying, “Hey, we’re building a tool that just works for designers,” or “Hey, we’re building a tool that just works for engineers.” Because we fundamentally believe that innovation happens when cross-functional teams come together. When you look at the problem through that lens, you realize that you have to actually architect your solution. You have to think about the use cases and you have to go and prioritize certain experiences that are different and our customers see value in that, right? I think that’s probably one sort of big macro aspect of how we think about our capabilities and products and why our customers think of us differently. I’d say that’s say one point.
I think the second thing is Miro is actually used obviously by teams that are creating these innovative products and we actually have broad applicability across industries and verticals. While some tools might be hyper-focused on digital experiences and Miro’s has great offerings there in terms of core capabilities, what we find is that Miro is used equally by companies in manufacturing, by companies in healthcare, by companies in architecture and engineering and construction functions, by companies that are in aerospace, governmental agencies and medical agencies and so on and so forth. I think the platform is actually much more agnostic in terms of its capabilities and what we offer that actually makes it more accessible and appealing to organizations that want to go beyond just digital experiences.
Then I would say finally there are capabilities that are available very, very uniquely to Miro that are valued by our users. That again is a big reason people come to Miro. For example, if Lenny’s trying to conduct a big workshop with a bunch of product folks and he wants to facilitate that workshop and wants to have certain folks focus on one part of the board and while others focus on the other part, then there are some advanced capabilities that enable certain use cases like workshops. Or if you want to use Miro for some team rituals or from some agile practices, there are core set of capabilities that you could use the product for that are missing in some of the other capabilities. I would say a combination of all of those three things continue to drive differentiation. I would say on top of that, we are a big fan of our community and we believe that community love is what drives us. That’s the fuel that keeps us going every single day.
Product Development Process and Roadmapping
Lenny: Awesome. Just to summarize and I was taking notes as you’re chatting, just thinking about what allows you all to continue to do well in the market, considering all the competition constantly coming at you. One, as you mentioned, just there’s kind of like a innate multi-functional architecture which is hard for someone to copy if they weren’t built from that without the start. Two, it sounds like you are focusing on a wide spectrum of personas and it’s not just tech employees basically. Also, just there’s specific features that end up being really important that maybe people have a hard time building and then this last piece of the community. Awesome.
Annual Strategy and Team Autonomy
Varun Parmar: Yep.
Lenny: Let’s dig into the product team a little bit and understand how you all build product and structure product team. How many PMs are there at Miro? Then just broadly, how many employees, just to give people a set of, little bit of context?
The Miro Connect Ritual
Varun Parmar: Give or take about 1,800 employees at Miro globally across all of the 12 hubs, and specifically in terms of the number of product managers, there are over 450 PMs in the team.
Format of Miro Connect
Lenny: Then how’s the product team structured? Is it like outcome oriented? Is it product area oriented? Is it user persona oriented? Is it something else? How do you think about the structure of the product team?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, so I would say it’s maybe a hybrid structure that we have, but the foundation of the team setup is around persona. We have what we refer to as streams, some companies refer to as domains, but essentially it’s a set of individuals that are focused on solving the problems for a key persona. Just to give you an example, we have a stream that’s focused on enterprise, and in enterprise we are looking at the IT admin persona, we’re looking at the security persona or the compliance persona. There are a set of folks who are creating a roadmap and innovating for that audience. There’s another stream which is called platform where we are going after the developer install base, folks that want to use Miro as a platform and build apps that they can actually make available either on the marketplace for everyone to use or they could be developers that are inside of a large organization and they’re trying to integrate Miro with their specific use cases and workflows and business systems. That’s another sort of stream that’s focused on that, and there are a couple of other streams like that.
Then finally there are some just horizontal sort of streams, if you will. We have a big focus given that we are a PLG-led company around growth and self-serve business. We’ve got a stream that’s actually focused on our core internal infrastructure. We’ve got a stream that’s actually focused on data science that’s doing all of the magic that we started to release in terms of Miro AI, et cetera, et cetera. I would say it’s a combination of those. At the heart of it is we are focused on personas and we are sort of aligning people around solving problems and creating value for that persona.
The OKR Cadence
Lenny: That is really interesting. One of the downsides of a persona-based approach I imagine is that features keep getting added that solve that user’s pain points. What have you learned about keeping the product consistent and having a holistic perspective on the experience? How do you address Those challenges?
Varun Parmar: Architecturally, there are two sort of things that we have done that allow us to not pigeonhole ourselves into that specific way of working. I completely agree with you, you could lead to that. The first one is actually when we think about the product org, we call our org, it’s called AMPED, A-M-P-E-D. This is actually going back to our earlier point, Lenny, we had around what’s unique about the product culture, what’s unique about Miro, and we talked about teams coming together, removing barriers or silos cross-functionally. AMPED stands for analytics, marketing, product, engineering and design. And everything that we do in the product org, when we say the product org, we actually don’t meet product managers. We actually don’t mean product managers, designers and engineers. What we mean by product org in Miro is this AMPED function. By having this cross-functional representation where product marketing team is deeply, deeply embedded inside of each of these streams, what we do is that we have different perspectives that come in where they say, “Oh, wait a second, did you think about the end user experience?”
If you think about the end user experience, you know have someone on the team that says, “Wait a second, did you actually think about the enterprise requirements or what’s needed in the largest corporation?” I think the unique setup of bringing these cross-functional folks allows us to sort of course correct. The second thing is the ways of working that we have. We have these product reviews that happen. We generally classify anything that we are doing in terms of its complexity around a small, medium or high complexity, and anything that’s being worked on is actually being shared with the entire organization. If it’s something that’s small to medium, it’s actually shared with the entire product org. In fact, if you are non-product, you can actually subscribe to that Slack channel as well. Everybody sees what the product org is working on, everybody sees what the core hypothesis is, “What is the solution for that, what is the proposed design for it, how are we thinking about the capabilities?”
Then anything that’s big actually goes through a formal process like a product review where there’s a meeting and a bunch of us are in there and it’s up to us, including the product leaders, to basically make sure that we are connecting the dots in terms of having a much more holistic perspective. I would say lastly, as Miro has sort of scaled the spectrum of companies all the way from a team that might have two or three people and might be taking out their credit card and using Miro for their own team all the way to a large corporation that might have 50,000, 80,000 employees, all of them are using Miro. We’ve come to realize that at some point the deep enterprise requirements need to be encapsulated in a set of requirements or best practices and we need to make sure that those get democratized across all of the feature teams.
When I’m thinking about building a new feature, I have a checklist in front of me where I can say, “Here are the 10 things that I need to think of that I need to incorporate early on in my thinking in the architecture, in the definition of the process, so that it doesn’t come downstream.” I would say that’s an area where we’re still working on and more recently we put more focus and energy and there’s a product manager who’s now leading that particular charter.
The Product Team Tech Stack
Lenny: I love all these details. This AMPED structure, I love that. There’s analytics, you said product marketing, analyst marketing and then product engineering design. It’s rare that you see marketing as a part of teams, as a leadership, kind of part of the leadership group. Do you have a sense of what impact adding that had on the team or where that came from? Or is that just historically been something Miro has prioritized, marketing and product marketing?
Varun Parmar: This was done before I got here and I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. I think this was the result of an observation, which is quite similar to what you’re saying, which is while we might be developing a lot of the features and PMs or thinking bottoms-up in terms of what we are building, we might find that what we have built might not be able to capture the imagination of what we originally thought it would. A big part of that is how are you going to think about positioning, how are you going to think about competitive differentiation? How are you going to package it up so that the sellers that are out there are able to position it in a way that the customer, in this case the buyer, might be an IT professional, might a line business leader, can basically see the full vision of where we are going? I think by having product marketing as part of AMPED, we now bring that unique perspective that may be missing in certain teams.
PMs are more acting as product owners or more focused on core problem and solution but not thinking about positioning, because that’s so important, especially when you’re thinking about a market that we are increasingly in that there is competition there. That’s one of the first things we started off with and that’s top of mind for you as well, is that everything that we are doing has to be looked through that lens. One of the core philosophies that I have, Lenny, is that the success of a company is a direct relation of what the competition allows you to do. I feel like not many people talk about that, but in many cases in my professional career, and I’ve been at it for close to 24, 25 years, is that every single instance when I looked at a company accelerated their growth or there was a deceleration of growth, it was a direct relation to what the competition allowed you to do. Obviously, you have to do everything that you should be doing, but competition is the biggest variable that allows you to figure that out.
Balancing Innovation and Maintenance Investments
Lenny: I want to hear more about your core product philosophies, but let me dig into the one you just shared. What you find is that the way you grow or stop growing is often a direct result of your competition. Is there an example of that that comes to mind? I’m guessing maybe Box versus Dropbox is an experience you had there, or if not, what’s an example of that that you’ve experienced, to make it a little more concrete even?
Product Leadership Philosophy
Varun Parmar: For those of us who’ve been in the collaboration space, and I’ve been doing collaboration and productivity apps for over 20 years, over two decades, at some point, you have companies like Microsoft that get really attracted to a space and you can see the trajectory of a business that’s growing at a certain clip and then all of a sudden there’s a competitive product that enters that has the might of distribution and the might of pricing, and that’s just a direct example. I think I’ve seen that multiple times, first at Adobe where I was part of the document cloud business, clearly saw that at Box as well.
I think you can, in general, sort of look at every single category and you can say that there was a category leader and they were growing at a certain clip or a certain pace and all of a sudden there were a bunch of entrants that get in and what happens to your growth rate? It’s all dependent on how strong is the competitor in terms of providing a good enough solution? That’s one. The second is how strong is the competition in terms of their distribution outreach? Then the third thing is how strong is the competition in terms of the pricing and packaging?
Miro’s Early Growth
Lenny: I really like this discussion, especially because often the advice is, “Don’t worry about the competition, just focus on the customer, it’s going to be fine.” Which what you’re saying is that’s not right, and I agree. What do you do with that in mind? How does that impact the way you build product or strategy? Is there some you could share that maybe tactically someone could leverage to how they’re approaching their product strategy?
Miroverse and Templates for Customer Acquisition
Varun Parmar: It depends on who the competition is and what is their unfair advantage here. We talked about one specific competitor and I have a lot of respect for them, by the way, and I learn a lot from them every single day in terms of how they make bets and how they enter markets and stuff. At some point I’m going to write a book on them, I feel.
Growth Channel Composition
Lenny: Ooh. We’ll have to come back to talk about that.
Varun Parmar: That’s right, yeah. I think it sort of comes down to how do you think about your unique place relative to all of these players, and in your customer’s mind are they able to clearly understand what is the unique value that you deliver relative to everything else? Part of that is the unique capabilities you provide. Part of that is how you’re packaging those unique capabilities to them, and making sure that they in their mind can see how you coexist in this overall sort of tech ecosystem that they might be investing in, to enable their employees or to enable them to operate. So I think it’s sort of looking at that from that lens, yeah.
Product and Sales Team Synergy
Lenny: Got it. So what I’m hearing is be very clear about your differentiator and continue to invest there and then make sure your positioning is clear around why you’re… just identifying, “Here’s why we’re different and we’re not just a better or worse version of this thing” or “Here’s why we’re different” and making sure that’s really clear.
Varun Parmar: Exactly. I think the other thing I would say, there’s another core philosophy I have, which is products either get better over a period of time or they get worse. Products never remain the same. I think you can take that philosophy to a bunch of things in life, but I’m going to take the lens of products, which is my core philosophy is every single day, every single time somebody is pushing your code to production and you’re releasing a feature or an enhancement, you are making the product better or you’re making the product worse, but the products never remain same. The lens for this, Lenny, is actually from a customer’s perspective, from the end user perspective. The thing is that if you are a player where there’s no one else in the market, that’s one thing, so that’s great. Kudos to you for actually identifying a blue ocean strategy and sort of executing to that. But most markets, most products, actually have either direct or indirect competitors that are available.
From the customer’s mind, you’re doing something, the competitor is doing something, so in their mind they’re looking at these products and they’re looking at these companies and they’re saying, “Which is better versus not?” So with every release that your competitor is making and every release that you’re making, you’re either making chess points, moves against them, positive points, or you’re going negative. I think that framework, if you have in mind, it actually drives an insane amount of clarity in terms of what you’re doing and what the impact is going to be. Because every single move that you’re making, the customer has that sort of in their mind, if not explicitly, implicitly that they’re actually comparing these things. I think it brings a level of focus in terms of where you need to invest and why you need to invest and why this is going to make those decisions.
I think it allows at least for product leaders to make some high quality decisions around the bets that they’re making and how they’re going to play out in terms of eventual once the dust settles and the market at large is going to say, “I’m going to standardize on something and now I feel I need to go get it for everyone.” Or “This is the tool that I want to use for this particular use case.” That all of these decisions that you are making ladder up to that final sort of play that you have to do in terms of the market consolidation that eventually happens.
Future Product Features
Lenny: This is so interesting. Essentially what you’re saying is that you find that being very close to and understanding the competition really well is really essential, versus this kind of the other end of the spectrum almost from just like, “Don’t worry about the competition, don’t pay attention.” I like this point, metaphor of just like, “Are we moving ahead or further behind?” Is that where you operationalize that to track that? Then also just how do you not over-obsess with, “Let’s just catch up, get more features,” that kind of thing? How do you find that balance?
Varun Parmar: I’ll be honest, I don’t think we’ve figured it out. We haven’t cracked the nut in terms of how to operationalize this, but I know you are way smarter than me on some of these things, so maybe we can-
Lightning Round Q&A
Lenny: Unlikely.
Wrap-Up and Contact Info
Varun Parmar: … partner on this and come up with something.
Lenny: All right, that’ll be something we work on. Any other product philosophies that you want to share? That was awesome.
Varun Parmar: This is all sort of related to it. It’s like a string of pearls. I think there’s maybe one more pearl we can actually thread into the needle right here.
Lenny: Let’s do it.
Varun Parmar: Which is we talked about how do you ladder this up and stuff, and then the question is, okay, how do you know that everything that you’re doing, is that in the right direction or not? Should you move slow and be much more mindful about the things that you’re doing or should you move fast and make certain bets and then decide certain things and stuff? I think there are two views that are out there. My personal perspective on this is that what you want to do is that you want to be the first one to hit the brick wall. This is particularly true when you are in a market that is competitive. The reason for that is that if you consider yourself as an innovation-centric company and you believe that you are building experiences that fundamentally don’t exist anywhere else and you’re sort of paving the way for the rest of the folks to basically get inspired with how you are building these experiences, speed is the single biggest determinant, in my experience, in terms of who ends up being more successful versus not.
I don’t know, maybe this is a little bit controversial where people say, Go slow to actually go fast.” I think I have a lot of respect for that and there’s certain areas you should do that, but when you are trying to figure out new experiences and stuff and you don’t know if it’s going to resonate or not, speed is something that you should accelerate for the organization. I think Frank Slootman talks about this a lot in his book and how can you accelerate? I think for me from a product perspective, the fundamental concept is can you be the first one to hit the brick wall where you have the learning faster than anyone else in the market so that you can decide, “Oh my god, the path that I was going was not the right path. I need to do 10 degrees west or I need to do 30 degrees east.” I think as long as you’re one or two or three steps ahead of everyone else in terms of uncovering or discovering those insights, then I think you can continue to be ahead of the pack in terms of building your product in business.
Lenny: You’re talking about urgency. I’ve never met a founder or a product leader who doesn’t want their team to move faster. They’re always encouraging their team, “How do we move faster?” I’m curious if there’s something you’ve learned tactically about helping your team move more quickly. You mentioned Frank Slootman’s book. Amp It Up is what it’s called, by the way, in case folks want to check it out and he’s big on just like creating a sense of urgency, constant urgency, and we’ll link to that and share notes. But yeah, what have you found helps create urgency and generally helps your teams move faster other than just like, “Move faster, everyone”?
Varun Parmar: My fundamental belief here, Lenny, is that every product manager… I can talk to product managers because there is reason certain ones, someone wants to be a product manager, because in my view it’s one of the most thankless jobs, like you get to do a lot of [inaudible 00:35:10] and it’s like, “Why you have to do this?” But it attracts a certain personality and that personality is driven by challenge and that personality wants to prove that they can solve this challenge and do something amazing. I think fundamentally the product persona actually wants to move fast. I think the reason why in some cases we are not able to move fast is because of roadblocks that we run into and those roadblocks can manifest themselves into technical challenges, they can manifest them in cells of organizational challenges, they could be priority challenges and so on and so forth.
My fundamental approach to solving that is to ensure that the product leads who are working on these capabilities can instantly raise their hand and call out that there are challenges that they are running into. Then the job of the leadership team, the product management team, is to essentially go and quickly resolve those issues. I think if you are able to resolve those issues, then what it does is it actually starts a virtuous cycle where you can actually start to see those wins. Once you see those wins, you actually create that courage to do more things. Maybe because you’ve seen how that specific roadblock was solved and you have a pattern matching that you’ve developed now, you can solve a lot of those things on your own and it’s the next level of challenge that you now going to raise your hand.
What that does is it starts to build this organizational competency in terms of how you can figure out what to build. We all find these people in our organizations where there’s someone somehow is able to do certain things in one-tenth the time that it would take a normal person. It’s not that they are 10 times faster, it’s just that in my observation that they’ve figured out which part of the core base they should build in versus not, who should be part of their team and who should not be, how they need to define that from a scope perspective, what does success look like, and it’s the architecture of bringing all of these things together that actually brings that magic formula line in terms of “Hey, we are able to deliver faster.”
Lenny: I really like this topic. What I’m hearing is one of the biggest roots of slowdown in a company and product development is blockers not being unblocked, and I always feel the same thing. I feel like a PM’s number one job is to unblock their team because their job is basically make the most out of their team that they’re marshaling towards some outcome. The way you do that is just figure out what’s slowing them down. You just talked about this idea of a PM raises their hand to leadership, “Hey, we’re blocked by this thing.” Is there a process you’ve come up with there that helps you do that, it’s connected to-
Varun Parmar: Yeah, I would say we are trying to sort of systematically ingrain this in the culture of the organization. We have a motto in the product org, it’s very simple, single sentence, deliver customer value faster with high quality. That’s it. Everything that we do, and when I say everything, everything, Lenny, from performance and reward system and measurements, everything is based on this one single statement and it has three attributes. The first one is deliver customer value, and we believe customer value is only delivered when customers use it. Anytime as a PM at Miro, when you ship something, we are looking at, “Well, what was the metric you were going to move and how much did it move?” We have some original targets that we can go back to. That’s the first aspect of what we’re doing, deliver customer value.
The second one is move faster, and there are certain cycle times that we are measuring across the organization. From the time you came up with the idea to the time that you actually pitched a solution to the time you actually shipped it, to the time we actually moved the metric, it’s information that has been collected and is being made available to the organization. You can say, “Hey, if it was a small, medium or large, what’s the average? What’s the medium, what’s the variance?” And you can say, “Hey, looking at this data, what can be improved?” That’s on the faster aspect of it. Then the last one is around high quality, which is we want to build best in class collaboration experiences, so we are always getting inspired by what we find in applications and experiences that we see around us and we are saying, “Hey, when it comes to designing, sharing flows, we believe that these are the three apps that have best in class sharing flows when it comes to designing some synchronous capabilities like this. These are the best in class apps that we should look at.”
We are always trying to make sure that we are benchmarking ourselves against that and we have our design team. On a regular basis, like when we ship stuff on a monthly basis, our design leadership team does a triage of everything that got shipped into high quality or not high quality. It’s just like a binary function, and we’re doing that and we’re saying, “Hey, the reason why we believe it’s not high quality is because A, B, C, D, E and we’re making it available to other designers so they can actually start to build that telemetry in terms of some things are more subjective.” But you can start to see some patent matching and say like, “Hey, this is what great looks like.”
Lenny:
Okay, so every month or so the design team looks at everything that’s shipped and puts things into a bucket. Either this is… It’s like a binary thing, high quality or not high quality.
Varun Parmar: Yes.
Lenny: Wow, that is so cool. Then, one, what do they do with that? Do they send it out to the product team? Then two, is this just like FYI or is it like, “We need to fix all these low quality things going back”? Or is it more just like, “For the future, please be aware these are not high quality”?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, so it’s actually both. Generally what happens is that the design leadership team is doing this and there’s one particular design leader who’s the designated person to make sure that this is happening on a regular basis. Right now the way we’re using it is that we are actually using it to calibrate and align around the design leadership around what we mean by high quality. Because it’s one of those things, it’s like if you’ve never seen colors and I ask you, “Lenny, describe pink and compare that to red,” and if you haven’t seen colors, how do you describe colors? You can’t. But if I show you and I say, “Lenny, these are three examples of what pink is and these are three examples of red is,” then you’re like, “Oh, I get pink and I get red.” There are certain things that you just like when you write it’s very, very hard to describe it, but if you show specific examples, it’s very clear, “Oh, I get it. I get how pink is different than red.” But if I try to describe it, it’s going to be very hard.
So we got into these endless conversations at some point about a year ago where we were saying, “We need high quality, we need high quality.” And people are like, “Let’s just go and define this thing.” We had a bunch of our leaders go and write documents, really long documents in terms of what are the attributes and how do we define those attributes and how do we measure those attributes and how do we enable people to do that? It felt like it’s a good thing because we are trying to codify it, but it also felt like it was a very heavy way of solving that problem. Then we just came up with this approach, which is like, “What’s great versus not great” and just start classifying it. As you know, it’s like modern AI systems are classification systems and we [inaudible 00:43:12]-
Lenny: Yeah, I was going to say, sounds like reinforcement learning approach here.
Varun Parmar: Exactly.
Lenny: Defining cost.
Varun Parmar: That’s right. That’s right. I think it’s worked decently well. I would say with most things we need to operationalize it and we need to make sure that now we are democratizing it and everybody has access to it and so on and so forth. But I think it’s been a good start and now we are sharing this more openly with others in the org.
Lenny: When I said that, I imagined you… From the outside, you have a very unique culture and approach your product. That’s a great example of that. I’ve never heard of a process like this. What I’m hearing is essentially you’re trying to build the muscle within the organization of what is quality. It’s like this continued heuristic of, “Okay, I get it.” So PMs on the team start to understand in their head what that means.
Varun Parmar: Right.
Lenny: Super cool. You also talked about, in the middle part of that sentence, of moving faster and that you track and measure that somehow. Can you talk more about that? Because that’s something every product team is always trying to understand. “How do we know if we’re going faster, if we’re going as fast as we could?” How do you actually do that? How do you measure these things?
Varun Parmar: The core philosophy there is velocity is more like the game of golf where you’re just playing against yourself. It’s not like if Lenny and Varun are out at the golf course, it doesn’t matter. I’m not competing against you, I’m just competing against myself because that’s the only… I’m going to just hit the ball, so it’s like how much better can we get? I think our core philosophies around that and what we’re trying to do is that on all the product teams, the feature teams that we have, we’re just collecting all the information and we are making it available to everyone so that they can actually see what the cycle times are. What we are interested in is from the time that you have an insight, from the time you believe “I can do something unique for my user, for my persona,” how long does it take for you to actually deliver that value?
We have a product process that we follow, which starts with a P-strat, which is a strategy, and then we go into P0, which is definition of the problem, then we go into P1, which is definition of the solution, and then we go into P2, which is once the solution is shipped, are we hitting the metrics that we originally had defined upfront before we decided to work on this. You have all of these stage gates and then we basically classify everything that we are doing in small, medium, large. You can go in and you can say, “Hey, I thought this was a small thing,” and small thing is something you can get it done in less than a month, and so on and so forth. There are 50 other product teams that are shipping these features, and what’s the average, what’s the variance, what’s the median?
“Oh, wait a second, actually it seems like I took way more time in the problem definition stage. Let me actually try to go talk to this other product team that actually did it much faster,” or “Oh, I actually did it really, really fast, and the reason why I did it fast was because of this. Let me go share this out with the broader team.” Usually the product ops function, we call it product excellence internal, sort of product excellence function, is recording some of these things. I would say getting reliable data, and then because we have some things that are going through meetings and there are some things that are going through Slack, we could do better on some of those dimensions, but all of this data is available and we provided it openly and folks can benchmark themselves against that.
Lenny: So cool. Okay, so you have this P-strat, you called it, document which is kind an initial concept and then it’s interesting you use the P0, P1, which is often for bugs, but it’s cool that you use it for defining your products. So P-strat is just an idea pitch. P0 is a spec, basically, like a one-pager for the product, and then P1 and P2 are basically getting to “Here’s the actual product we’re building.” And you basically track time per step and map it to, “Here’s how large this project should be.” Over time you track per person, it sounds like, just like are you matching the benchmarks of how long a small project should take across each step?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, exactly.
Lenny: Wow, that is extremely cool. Whatever templates you can share, these things that we can include in the show notes would be awesome.
Varun Parmar: Yes.
Lenny: Because people are always looking for just like, “Ah, I want do some of this stuff.” If they can just plug and play, the more, the merrier.
Varun Parmar: Yes.
Lenny: Shifting a little bit, it sounds like you guys are doing Scrum in some form. Can you just talk about just broadly the product development process? How long you or your sprints, how long do you plan for in the future, in detail specifically just like high level, how does the product development process work?
Varun Parmar: There are certain things that I learned at Box and that inspired some things that we do at Miro, and there are certain things that we’ve evolved. One of the things that we’ve instituted is our roadmap process, so that’s sort of the first thing around how the different teams are looking at the things that they’re going to work on. We have a rolling six month roadmap, it seems large, but we’ve got, like I mentioned, a number of enterprise customers. If I’ve learned one thing that large enterprises is asking for a roadmap review. That tends to be my favorite meeting of sitting down with the enterprise leaders and walking through what we are working on. What we’ve done is we’ve tried to architect something which actually allows our customers to get what they’re looking for, but at the same time does not remove the agility that is so important for us to deliver value faster.
What we do is we have a rolling six month roadmap that gets updated every three months and the first three months of that roadmap, we have a 80% position level, which means that 80% of the things that we claim to be on the roadmap will get done. That’s the target. For the next three months, because it’s six months, so the first three months is 80%, the next three months is 50%, so we have a much lower level of resolution in the next three months after that. What that allows the product teams to do is actually have flexibility, which is based on what the customers are asking for and based on what the competitive moves are, based on some technology breakthroughs that happen around large language models, they can pivot and they can pivot and move towards that and they won’t get penalized either by the customer or internally in terms of doing that. That’s what we do and that’s all at on the backdrop of an annual strategy that we publish.
Every year we publish a strategy white paper that it gets published internally available to every single Mironeer across all functions that clearly articulates the key bets that we want to make. Why do we want to make those bets? What is the expected outcome and how does that ladder up into the overall business outcomes that we are trying to drive from an OKR perspective as well as the overall business strategy that we have. So people take that product strategy, white paper or artifact, and then against that they’re building their roadmaps which get updated every three months. Then inside of the teams, we enable teams to be quite autonomous in terms of some of the rituals that they’re doing. We want them to obviously embrace best practices. We’ve got a team of agile coaches that share best practices or are available to help if there’s certain specific needs that teams have.
Then I think on top of that, there are certain key, I would say, rituals that we do that maybe are unique. For example, we have something called as Miro Connect, which happens every other Friday. Every other Friday, for example, in our Amsterdam office, you can go in there and at 4:00 in the afternoon, 4:00 to 7:00 or 8:00, and sometimes it goes really late, you’ve got a bunch of product teams sitting around tables and it feels like, “Oh, it’s like a pitch or something.” And people are coming in, they’re having a good time, you’ve got a drink in your hand, there’s maybe some light music playing in the background and you’re going from table to table and you have teams that are actually showing all the amazing work that… If done right, it happens once in a while, but if done right, it’s magical in terms of the outcomes that you can get.
I’ll tell you, there was a team that actually was presenting at our Berlin hub and they were saying, “We’re working on this feature, and there’s an engineer who walks over to that desk and says, ‘What are you working on?’” The team describes it, “Oh, we are trying to do something like this.” And this engineer had actually worked on that particular problem in their prior life, literally they had implemented this. So he says, “So how are you going to implement this?” And the team, the engineer that’s sitting there, says, “This is the approach I’m going to take and it’s going to take me three months.” He’s like, “Oh, would you mind if I go and help you with this?” They’re like, “Sure, more the merrier. Go ahead.” So this person puts down their beer and says, “Okay, I’m having a good time. Let me just head back to my home.” And in the next three or four hours goes and codes the entire thing, makes a poll request.
Next day in the morning one of the engineers from this core team that was exhibiting at Miro Connect looks at the poll request, reviews the code and says, “Yes, something that would have taken three months for this core team because they didn’t have the expertise literally got done in three hours because there was another engineer that ran into them and said, “I know how this is done. I can actually help you here,” and went ahead and did the right thing. We are trying to create these magic moments. It happens once in a while, but we have one success story and I like to tell that in every opportunity that I get. But that’s another sort of unique thing that we’ve done in terms of book-ending things around how we operate here.
Lenny: That story is like a dream for any PM. Just imagine saving months of work with one conversation. I imagine people were like, “How do we replicate this often?” I love that. With these meetings, just to understand, if their team is in Berlin, let’s say, there’s a screen there in front of a table and they’re talking through a screen, like a video conference?
Varun Parmar: Yeah. I mean, right now what we’ve figured out is that it is really hard to do these events over audio-video conferencing and stuff. So generally what happens is that you have an audio-video bridge that’s playing, but mostly it’s people walking up to the respective teams and then having a live conversation. That’s usually how these things are operated. Yeah.
Lenny: Got it. Okay, so you have six month rolling roadmaps. You have a yearly vision strategy for the company, two week sprints. Is there also a quarterly OKR sort of process or is it-
Varun Parmar: Yeah.
Lenny: … those or not? There is, okay.
Varun Parmar: There is, yeah.
Lenny: Can you just talk a little bit about how that works?
Varun Parmar: Yes, yes, yes. At Miro, we practice OKRs and it starts off at the company level, and then those company level OKRs are taken by the AMPED organization. Like we describe, it’s the AMPED organization, and then we break it up and I would say we have refined it over the period of time, the two years that I’ve been at Miro. Early on we were doing OKRs on a quarterly basis, and I would say more recently we’ve actually evolved to six month KRs. What we found was that six month was the right cadence in terms of giving enough time for teams to basically push forward in executing these KRS and minimizing the “overhead” of doing replan every single quarter. We found that it was much more effective and efficient for the entire organization to do it on a six-month basis. However, we are doing traction on a monthly basis. So every four weeks, as AMPED, we are looking at our KRS for the AMPED organization on a monthly basis doing traction. However, the planning, the targets, are done on a six-month basis.
Lenny: I love how OKRs could just be anything, could be every six months, could have objectives, could have key results. It’s just such a term that just applies to anything that people do with goals, basically.
Varun Parmar: That’s true.
Lenny: And it works. It’s great.
Varun Parmar: That is so true.
Lenny: Again, if there’s any templates that your team could share of the way you do that stuff, that would be amazing, and we’ll include that in the show notes.
Varun Parmar: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think, as you would expect, we run Miro on Miro, so there’s a lot of things that we could share as templates in terms of how we are running things on Miro, not just as OKRs, but in terms of product reviews. We have ways of how we are doing asynchronous reviews combined with synchronous reviews and there’s this blended experiences that we have, and so we can definitely share out with the community how we do some of these things.
Lenny: Awesome. That’s a great segue to another question I was going to ask is just what other tools, what’s in the stack of the product team’s workflow? So Miro, obviously. Maybe talk about what use Miro for, but then what else is in there? What do you use for task management, bug tracking, things like that? Design?
Varun Parmar: Starting from the bottom-up infrastructure view, so all of our tickets are handled in Jira and we are using some of the newer capabilities in Jira in terms of coming up with roadmaps and coming up with the priorities and stuff. On top of that, all of the specs generally get recorded in Confluence. Having said that, we’re actually a big fan of tools like Google Docs as well as Coda that allows us to track our KRs in a pretty effective way. On top of that, obviously we use Miro a lot, I would say for a lot of our things, especially on the product and design side of the team. Generally all of our insights get captured inside of Miro board, so when we are going and conducting user experience interviews and stuff, we will record those and then those recordings get added to a Miro board, so Miro access the content hub or a team hub for a particular project.
Once you capture all of those insights, then generally all of the brainstorming and team ideation happens on the Miro board as well, so Miro’s actually also used as a tool to facilitate meetings and workshops. Once all of that is synthesized into a set of recommendations and outcomes, so when we go into these product reviews that we were talking about, Lenny, the same Miro board then gets manifested into a set of presentations, so we use Miro for presentations. We’ve actually made some really amazing updates in terms of our capabilities there and if folks haven’t checked them out, I would strongly encourage them. There’s a capability called Showtime that basically abstracts out the UI and lets people focus on the content, but do it in a way that it’s interactive so everyone that’s on the call can have reactions, can share their comments and leave comments while the presentation is happening without actually disrupting any of the flow for the user, so we use that a lot for presentations as well.
I would say more recently what we’ve started to do is that we’ve started to move some of our synchronous meetings into asynchro view. I talked about this Talktrack feature that we have, and a lot of teams, what they would do is that they would actually send you five minute, 10 minute Talktrack in advance and it’s just a link to a Miro board, you click on it and then you just sit back and relax. Then you have this magical experience where you’re sitting back and the Miro board is automatically moving because Lenny was recording it like that. Then you have the video play and then you can pause it anytime, you can add in your comments and stuff so that the next time when you meet, instead of actually providing context to everyone, those synchronous sessions are lot more deliberate and focused on driving outcomes or achieving consensus, so people are just focusing on the comments that were added as part of a async product review so that when they meet synchronously they can use that. Miro boards are used for that as well.
I would say now a lot of our dashboarding shows up in Miro boards now. We recently released data visualization capabilities around most popular VI tools. At Miro we use Google Looker a lot, so a lot of our dashboards are in Looker, and what you would typically find is that our analyst team and product teams will just grab a link to a Looker dashboard, put it on a Miro board, and it unfolds into a full visualization. Unlike a screen grab, you never have to go update it because right there on the Miro board, it’s always updated and you can refresh that, so you basically have this experience where Miro acts as that single source of truth for a lot of the teams across the entire journey of product development where a single Miro board is meeting the needs of multiple use cases there.
Lenny: Then for the road-mapping, is that in Miro, each team’s roadmap, or do you use something like Jira?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, so I think we’ve got a couple of tools for road-mapping, and our observation is that while those tools are great for the unique needs that they’re solving, we haven’t found a universal solution for road-mapping. So there are some teams that use Miro for road-mapping and they would use the Kanban widget in Miro for that. What are they working on? What’s coming next? What’s in the backlog? But I would say it is a problem that is not completely solved in terms of how do we actually bring these artifacts together at scale.
What we are starting to see, and this is actually a unique use case of Miro, is that we actually enable our entire field organization using Talktracks. What happens is that we have our entire roadmap published out as a Miro board for enablement purposes, so that that’s a artifact that is approved to be shown to a customer. What you will see is that you’ll see five or six recordings in there, and the leader for enterprise has done a five-minute recording on everything they’re working on. The leader for platform has done that. The leader for end user experience has done that. The person who’s driving some of our AI experience has done that. So you can go in and you can just click on that video and you can meet your needs by using Miro and this capability that we have.
Lenny: That’s awesome. It sounds like each team can basically choose the tools they want to use. There’s no standardized, everyone needs to use Jira or Miro for their roadmap. I like that. I like how teams do that often. Maybe one last question around the product org, and then I want to shift a little bit to growth and how Miro grows and things you have learned about growing. Question I always try to get to is how do you think about balancing new bets and innovation with maintenance and just general incremental work? Do you have some sort of philosophy as a product leader broadly, and then maybe at Miro specifically, of just how to balance investments in these two buckets and maybe three buckets, bugs, incremental work, and then just big bet? How do you think about that?
Varun Parmar: We have some rule of thumbs in terms of how we want to allocate our investments across these buckets. I would say a lot of it, Lenny, actually depends on the state of the team. There are certain teams that have more tech debt than others. There are certain teams that are actually working on some really big zero to one features than other teams, and so I think there is a variance. The standard deviation actually is dependent on which part of the spectrum that you’re in, which is are you a team that we believe needs to create the next generation experience on the platform and hence we have to prioritize innovative work or are you the team that’s actually so critical to actually meeting our objective around better board performance or any of the other things that we believe are important and hence we need to invest in those critical areas?
But I would say in general innovation versus not, varies on a spectrum of anywhere from 60 to 80%. I would say about 20 to 40% of the available capacity at any given time is either getting allocated to architectural initiatives. There’s a technology roadmap that our CTO is driving that we believe is extremely important as the platform scales, and now as we have over 50 million people on the platform, so we continuously have to invest in making sure that the platform can scale. There are certain teams that probably have 40 to 50% of their allocation towards that because they’re a critical part of the component. There are other teams that are maybe more end user focused and are more UI focused where that allocation is lower. But I think general rule of thumb is 20% is always a given, but it can go as high as 40 to 50%.
Lenny: On bigger bets and longer-term thinking?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, 20 to 40% goes on the technology-related initiatives and maintenance and stuff.
Lenny: Oh, got it. Infrastructure, maintenance, making sure everything’s there. Got it.
Varun Parmar: [inaudible 01:03:44] Exactly, yeah.
Lenny: Then what about just big, long-term bets that you’re not expecting to pay off anytime soon? Do you have a heuristic of just what percentage of, say, total resources you put there?
Varun Parmar: You’ve probably seen this, the framework of three horizon, it’s quite popular in McKinsey and Harvard [inaudible 01:04:01] school and so on and so forth, is horizon one business, which is the thing that’s delivering food on the table. Generally there’s about a 70% allocation of resources that we have, give or take. Then there is horizon two, which is an adjacent thing. With the next 12 to 36 months we believe it’s material. Usually that tends to be around 20% of the allocation. Then there’s horizon three, which is three years out, three to five years, next generation things, and that’s about 10% of the ratio. So it’s like 70/20/10 across horizon one, two, and three.
Lenny: Awesome. Any other thoughts along the lines of just how you think about product before we shift? I only have a few questions around the growth story of Miro and what you’ve learned about growing.
Varun Parmar: In terms of product leadership and what we believe is the way we want product leaders to be developed and I think it’s more of a people philosophy. We have our product leadership which constitutes of all of the folks who are running all of these streams, and I always tell them that you have two personas that you have to think about. Everyone who’s on the product leadership team is a product leadership team member. The fundamental thing that you have to do is drive accountability. The number one thing that a product leader on the product leadership team needs to do is drive accountability with others in the product leadership team. The other persona that they have is that they are a stream leader. They’re actually responsible for delivering value for the respective persona and respective customers and stuff. So when you put on the persona hat of a stream leader, which is different than the persona or of a product leader, your number one metric, the number one goal that you have, is drive improvement.
When you go back and you work with your team, always have the lens are you improving things and whatever you want to improve, but you always have to ask yourself, “Today compared to yesterday, tomorrow compared to today, have I improved things? That’s the yardstick you should think about. When you go sit in the product leadership team every Monday afternoon at 1:00 in the afternoon when we meet together, your number one goal is actually to drive accountability around this and are you making sure that we as leaders in the organization are doing the right thing for the company?” I think that’s a philosophical construct that I always remind people in terms of what they should be doing. As an example, tomorrow we have calibrations, we have our annual review cycle happening in the company.
Lenny: Good times. Always a blast.
Varun Parmar: Yes, exactly, always fun and so critical as a leader, because it sets the tone for everything that you’re going to do. In my opening remarks, the only thing I’m going to remind everyone in the room is that “Your number one goal here is to be a product leader and accountability is what you have to write. That’s it. Just hold each other as accountable, including myself in terms of making sure that as we go in, that’s the key thing.” I think once people understand the duality of how they need to operate across those two specific goals, it actually leads to really high-performing teams and teams that actually are able to create somewhat of a magic if they are open and there is trust that has been built in the team.
Lenny: When you say accountability, what does that look like? Is it pointing out, “Hey, you didn’t achieve this thing we were trying to achieve” or “You didn’t do a great job leading this meeting”? Is it just direct feedback often or is there some other way you see that manifested, and what do you like to see?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, I think it’s basically practicing feedback in a very open and constructive way and focusing on what is important for the business and not shying away from having some of those observations and conversations, not shying away from them. But it’s all in the lens of what is the right thing to do for the business, and if you feel that that one or more members of the leadership team are not living up to what needs to be done, then just voicing it. It’s not like you’re complaining or anything, it’s just like, “I have this perspective. Is this the right perspective or not?” Because actually it ties very well with the overall cultural values that we have.
If you do things with the lens that you are being empathetic, then you pose it as a question as opposed to a statement. I think that’s one of the things that we practice a lot at Miro is that I believe that I am seeing there are certain things that are happening that it could be just me that I’m not seeing the other things. “But what is it? Can you help me understand? Can you help me figure out that why certain things are happening? Because I might just be missing the perspective.” But because you bring it up, and that’s part of practicing accountability in an empathetic way, it actually gets the entire team in the right mindset in terms of how they operate.
Lenny: Has anyone given you some sort of direct feedback recently or pointed out something you didn’t do well that held you accountable that you can share?
Varun Parmar: All the time. Yeah, all the time. When we do our offsites, this is actually a fun thing, is that every offsite that I do with my leadership team, usually there is a one to two hour session where it is feedback to Varun, and I actually do it openly. I will have about eight to 10 people in the room and I will force people to be very honest and I want to show my vulnerabilities to everyone, that I am not perfect and I have lots of areas to improve. Every time people do it, it’s interesting that they open up in very amazing ways and I think I love it because it helps me become better. It helps me identify my blind spots. But what it does is, because I do it in an open way, it brings a lot of trust. It brings trust that I do it openly and I’m an open book and they can share whatever they want, not just with me but openly in front of everyone.
Lenny: Are you willing to share one thing they suggested that they pointed out that they wish you did differently or better?
Varun Parmar: Yeah, I think in general, finding time with me tends to be a bit of a hard thing, and generally there’s always this feedback, which is need more time, maybe more responsiveness over email or Slack or something like that. That’s an area that I’m constantly working on and improving, so yeah.
Lenny: That feels like a cop out. That doesn’t feel too painful to hear. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t have a lot of time. I’m sorry.” But I get it, and that comes back to your point about blockers and how important it’s to unblock teams because that leads to a lot faster progress.
Varun Parmar: That’s true, that’s true.
Lenny: Okay, so let me shift a little bit to Miro’s growth and I only have a few questions here. I know it’s getting late on your side so I don’t want to keep you too long.
Varun Parmar: Sure.
Lenny: The first is something I’m on this constant quest to understand how companies got their first users, and I haven’t actually heard the story of how Miro got its first thousand users or customers. I know you weren’t there in the early days, but you happen to know how Miro initially grew and got their first thousand users and customers?
Varun Parmar: I think the fundamental thing there is that we always had user first approach and reaching out to certain communities that were relevant to what was a key part of lighting the fire, if you will, the proverbial way people start to talk about the product. Given the collaborative nature of the product, some of the early adopters invited people who were also early adopters and the flywheel started to work. I’ve heard that we did a fair amount of content marketing and listing the product on sites like Capterra sort of helped. There was some early investments in terms of SEO and organic growth, so there was a focus there, which was the main source of driving traffic. The top of the funnel came through that.
The product teams were very intensely focused on building vital loops as a key mechanism of driving growth, once the traffic came in. Every interaction that actually introduced barrier, they looked at it and they looked at the data and they said, “Let’s reduce this barrier. Let’s remove this thing so that the product could be effectively embraced.” It was an evolution over a period of time. There was also the fact that early on in the journey, some of the features were presented on a trial basis and then later on the model was evolved from a trial basis, time limited to a premium model that further accelerated the growth for the business. I would say those were some of the approaches that were taken to get to the first thousand users or so.
Lenny: You talked about how Miro grows, where it has this magical loop of “I use Miro to for myself, then I share it with my team in whatever way I’m using it.” They’re like, “Oh, Miro, this is cool.” Then they start using it and then they share it with people that they want to work with, and it creates this loop of growth.” I imagine that’s how Miro mostly grew initially and continues to grow. Is there anything surprising or unintuitive about how Miro grows that is beyond that? I imagine sales is a part of it and we can talk about that, but is there anything else that is interesting that is worth mentioning?
Varun Parmar: No, I think that’s the key of the growth. I think there are specific use cases where they are uniquely sort of geared towards inviting a lot of new people. For example, Miro is loved as a workshopping tool, and so generally one person is using Miro, but they invite 10, 15, 20, 50, 200, 300 people to that workshop. There are specific use cases where people get introduced to the product and then go and sign up for it and then start to use it for that use case or other use cases. I think the other accelerant in all of this is the templates that we have, in particular the role that Miroverse plays in all of this.
Just to give you an example here, there was a template which was created around FIFA World Cup, so there was a FIFA World Cup diagram. Cornelius, he’s the founder and managing director of a Canadian strategic service design consultancy firm. He created this Miroverse template and it had over 100,000 views and about 15,000 copies were made of the single template. Given the popularity of all of this, it actually got indexed by Google. When you went in the search, you actually saw the Miroverse FIFA template show up when you were trying to search for FIFA World Cup, and that was another sort of acquisition channel top of funnel that actually drew a lot of users to it. So I think I would say the Miroverse is also a key accelerant to this.
Lenny: If you had to think about the pie chart of how Miro grows, what percentage roughly would you say is word of mouth, organic, versus what you just described, which is essentially a CO versus sales, outbound sales? How do you think about that? Is there a way to model that simply?
Varun Parmar: Without getting into specific numbers and stuff, I would say fundamentally Miro is a product-led growth company and product channels are one of the highest contributors for growth of users. As the business has evolved to serve the needs of some of the largest corporations in the world, the enterprise segment and the enterprise persona when they’re trying to provision Miro for tens of thousands of users who then go conduct hundreds of thousands of workshops on Miro that invite millions of users on the platform, is a key part of the flywheel that we are seeing. I would say product channels are probably very strong and increasingly enterprise is a key part of that acceleration.
Lenny: A great segue to our final question, which is the idea that you started a product growth, sounds like clearly it’s a big part of growth today, but as every product growth company does eventually you have a large sales team, I imagine, what have you learned as a product leader working with sales, especially at a product growth company about how to make that relationship work and have a product work effectively with a sales org?
Varun Parmar: There are a few learnings and I would say maybe this is one area where we are working on how we could be doing better in terms of bringing ourselves closer to our high-touch and bringing high-touch closer to self-serve, in terms of how we operate overall. It’s a lot of hard work, I would say first of all, basically, to bring both of these organizations together and you have to be very deliberate around the points of intersection and you have to make sure that these organizations don’t consider themselves as competition. It’s one product, one company, just two channels of how we are serving our customers. There’s some things that we’ve done which is have the product marketing team that basically works across both of these functions and make sure that they are bridging what we are hearing from the sales organization in terms of what directly customers need on the enterprise side, and then what do we need on the self-serve side.
There’s a full process in terms of how the handoff happens across the maturity of the account. It can start as a self-serve, it drives adoption, and once there’s adoption, there’s a hand raiser that happens and then there’s a sales rep that gets engaged and you go through the qualification process and then you have an opportunity to expand the account. We’ve over the years sort of architected and built the entire funnel and what the process is, and that’s also sort of a key part of how all of this operates. But like I said, I think there are a few areas where we could further streamline how we operate and think of it as one single unit.
Lenny: I imagine that is true for every company out there.
Varun Parmar: Yes.
Lenny: One maybe final question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. What are some features that people could look forward to that are coming with Miro?
Varun Parmar: We recently, about a month ago, announced Miro AI, the backdrop of all the amazing work that’s happening around generative AI and large language models and stuff. I think it was really, really exciting to see all of the community enthusiasm around the use cases that we launch. So we’re going to be taking it across the finish line and doing a general availability in the coming weeks and months. I think that’s one big thing and we’ll be adding more capabilities there. Just today we actually announced a bunch of really deep enhancements and updates around how Miro can be used for team rituals and agile practices. Now you can actually do retrospectives in Miro where you can have a private mode where while Lenny’s typing his feedback during retrospective, nobody else can see it and then one click you can reveal it. I just saw some of the results of the feedback and it was rated as the number one feature people saw.
There’s also some deeper integrations in terms of bringing an entire program board from Jira to start to do dependency mapping inside of Miro in a fun and collaborative way, to use this dependency mapping along with program board to start to do program increment planning, which is essentially scrum of scrums or big room planning that’s happening. There’s some really amazing capabilities that we’ve added there, which is on the backdrop of some of the updates we’ve made in terms of estimation of sprint story points and so on and so forth. Now there’s a whole plethora of capabilities and apps that are available as part of the platform that allow you to have your entire team conduct your team rituals in Miro and you can automate certain things, you can streamline things, you can do certain things in async and then do the rest in synchronous ways, so I think that’s been a big update as well.
Lenny: Amazing. With that, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round. I’ve got six questions for you. Are you ready?
Varun Parmar: Yes.
Lenny: All right, let’s do it. What are two or three books that you have recommended most to other people?
Varun Parmar: One is, I love this, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It’s one of those really emotional books that at the end of it, you might have tears in your eyes, but really, really amazing. We talked about Frank Slootman’s Amp It Up, and then Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh. I think philosophically some of the things that we talked about today are inspirations that I found in some of these books.
Lenny: What’s a recent favorite movie or TV show?
Varun Parmar: Ted Lasso. I don’t know if it’s a recent one or not, but something-
Lenny: It’s a new season.
Varun Parmar: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed a lot. I think it’s a very positive and uplifting message. I think the performance is huge. It’s humorous, the characters are well-developed, so I think overall it’s a treat, at least for, me to watch.
Lenny: What’s a favorite interview question you like to ask?
Varun Parmar: I actually ask a math problem. For those of you who interviewed with me, I have this math problem, which is based on how Adobe created its first Creative Suite bundle. I was actually part of the team that came up with the pricing and packaging for the first Creative Suite post-acquisition of Macromedia. It’s a math problem that allows you very quickly to figure out people in terms of their problem-solving skills. Usually I give that problem to people. I’ve given it to, I don’t know, 700, 800 people, so I now have a very, very well established standard distribution of how long it takes for people, where do they get stuck and where they’ve gotten stuck, for those people I’ve hired, what evidence do I have in terms of using that as a framework in terms of them being able to solve things? So that’s my favorite question.
Lenny: So you’re saying you’ve mapped back people that have done a certain way on the problem with their success and you’ve kind of found that it’s a good signal of their performance?
Varun Parmar: Yes. Not directly, but yes, correlation and stuff.
Lenny: That’s amazing. That’s one of the biggest problems with interviewing. You think you’re asking all these amazing questions and it’s such a good signal, you have no idea. No one goes back and is like, “Oh, this person sucked. This person didn’t… ” That’s really cool to get that much data on that one question. Two more questions for you. What’s something relatively minor that you’ve changed in how you do product development that has had a tremendous impact on your team’s ability to execute?
Varun Parmar: We talked about some of that, sort of removing the roadblocks. I think having this motto of great customer value faster with high quality, just the simplicity of that and it’s actually part of our evaluation rubric, it’s part of how we measure ourselves and stuff. So I think just coming up with these simple concepts that you can rally the organization around, and I think it’s still a work in progress, but something that I believe is leading to positive outcomes.
Lenny: Final question. What’s your favorite Miro template?
Varun Parmar: It’s the FIFA World Cup actually. I am so fascinated with what was done. Yeah, it’s the latest one, but I think there’s a bunch of them in terms of retros as well, and I think… like your template as well.
Lenny: Amazing. We will link to all of those. Varun, this was amazing. Everything I expected and more, your team is as interesting and unique as I thought, and I am excited for people to learn from you and we’re going to share a lot of links alongside this episode in the show notes. Two final questions, where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and learn more, and how can listeners be useful to you?
Varun Parmar: Thank you, Lenny. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed our interaction. You folks can find me online on LinkedIn. I think that’s probably the best way to connect with me. I think in terms of one or two things I can ask everyone is that, one is if you are an existing Miro user and you use the product for something interesting, I highly encourage you to contribute it as a template as part of Miroverse. There’s a lot of folks who use that and we would love for you to contribute there. The second thing is, I know a lot of product development teams, PMs and designers are big fans of you, Lenny, so those are also the users that use Miro. If there’s anything we could do to make the product better, if there’s things that you feel like we can expand the platform into, we would love to hear from you and just reach out to me directly over LinkedIn, direct message or connect with me there and yeah, and let us know. We’re here to serve.
Lenny: Amazing. Varun, thank you again for being here.
Varun Parmar: Thanks, Lenny. Awesome.
Lenny: Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| AMPED | AMPED |
| Andre | Andre |
| Barbara | Barbara |
| Cornelius | Cornelius |
| Creative Suite | Creative Suite |
| Design Sprint | 设计冲刺(Design Sprint) |
| domains | domains |
| Elena Verna | Elena Verna |
| FigJam | FigJam |
| Figma | Figma |
| Frank Slootman | Frank Slootman |
| general availability | 正式发布(general availability) |
| high-touch | 高接触(high-touch) |
| Jake Knapp | Jake Knapp |
| Lenny | Lenny |
| Macromedia | Macromedia |
| Miro Talktrack | Miro Talktrack |
| Mironeers | Mironeers |
| Miroverse | Miroverse |
| Paul Kalanithi | Paul Kalanithi |
| PLG | PLG |
| pull request | 拉取请求 |
| Satya Nadella | Satya Nadella |
| Slack | Slack |
| streams | streams |
| three horizon | 三层面框架(three horizon) |
| traction | 牵引 |
| Varun Parmar | Varun Parmar |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
在竞争激烈的市场中,产品每一次迭代都如同棋局落子,不进则退。本文源自对Miro首席产品官Varun Parmar的深度访谈,揭开了该公司独特的产品文化面纱。面对全球分布的团队结构,Miro将“同理心”与“团队合作”作为破局核心。文章指出,真正的同理心不仅指向终端用户,更指向内部跨区域的业务团队,其落地关键在于深究每一个产品决策背后的“洞察源头”。通过引入设计冲刺等实践,Miro能快速验证假设并做出差异化选择,如Talktrack功能摒弃常规录屏而实现白板同步移动。本文将带读者一窥Miro如何将抽象的文化价值观转化为具体的产品开发节奏,在动态博弈中持续构建竞争优势。
内部视角:Miro 如何打造产品 | Varun Parmar(Miro 首席产品官(CPO))
Varun Parmar: 每一天,每一次有人将代码推送到生产环境,你发布一个功能或一项增强时,你要么让产品变得更好,要么让产品变得更糟,但产品绝不会一成不变。因此,随着竞争对手的每一次发布,以及你的每一次发布,你要么像下棋一样走出针对他们的妙招,获得正分,要么就在失分。我认为这个框架实际上在极大程度上厘清了你的所作所为及其将要产生的影响。
Lenny: 欢迎来到 Lenny’s Podcast,在这里我会采访世界级的产品领袖和增长专家,从他们打造和增长当今最成功产品所积累的宝贵经验中学习。今天的嘉宾是 Varun Parmar。Varun 是 Miro 的首席产品官,在加入 Miro 之前,他曾担任 Box 的高级副总裁兼首席产品官。正如我在聊天开始时向 Varun 坦露的那样,我一直对 Miro 的产品文化非常好奇,部分原因是我遇到的每一位 Miro 员工都非常有趣且极其聪明,部分原因是他们能够在竞争极其激烈的市场中实现业务和产品的双重增长。
深入 Miro 的产品文化与实践
在我们的对话中,我们深入探讨了 Miro 的产品价值观和原则、他们的产品开发流程、Varun 如何应对竞争威胁,以及一个每两月一次的全公司产品演示惯例如何为某个功能节省了数月的工程工作量。此外,还包含了对 Miro 如何起步、如今如何增长,以及其产品团队在与大型销售组织合作方面所学到的见解。Varun 非常出色,我学到了很多,希望你们也会觉得和我觉得一样有趣。言归正传,下面有请 Varun Parmar。Varun,欢迎来到播客。
Varun Parmar: 谢谢你,Lenny。非常激动能来到这里。感谢你的邀请。
Lenny: 非常高兴你能来。我一直期待能有机会深入挖掘 Miro 的产品文化以及 Miro 的运作方式。我们其实请过几位嘉宾,前 Miro 员工……你们管自己叫 Mironeers 对吗?
Varun Parmar: 是的,Mironeers。
Lenny: 好的,Mironeers。我们请过 Elena Verna 做客播客,她非常棒,还有 Barbara,我想她之前在市场部工作,我一直遇到的 Miro 员工都非常聪明、非常有趣,感觉你们有着一种非常有趣的产品文化,但我感觉这种文化并没有被广泛分享过,所以我在这里有很多东西想深入挖掘。我一开始就有的一个问题是,你们有着非常有趣的历史,特别是公司的架构方式,即你们在阿姆斯特丹和旧金山都有集中办公点。首先,这准确吗?
Varun Parmar: 公司是一家全球化公司,所以我们有 12 个不同的中心。我们在美国有多个办公室,四个不同的办公地点,在欧洲也有多个中心,在亚太地区也有布局。我想到目前为止我们已经有了全球化的版图,是的。
跨文化与全球化的团队影响
Lenny: 了解。我想一开始问的问题是,这种针对产品团队的跨文化方式,是如何影响你们打造产品的方式和公司运营方式的?
Varun Parmar: Lenny,关于 Miro 的组建方式,有一点非常有趣,那就是我们的产品组织实际上扎根于欧洲,而我们的走向市场组织则是全球化的。我们的产品管理团队、设计师、工程师分布在欧洲的三个不同中心。这引出了我们作为文化一部分的几种实践。第一项是通过践行同理心来获取洞察。这不仅是指对客户践行同理心,弄清楚我们可以解决哪些客户痛点问题,而且鉴于我们具有全球足迹的分布式特性,我们许多走向市场团队的成员,即销售、营销和客户成功人员,都身处不同的大洲或地理区域,我们必须确保在内部真正践行这一点。当我们在与,比如说旧金山的同事互动时,这些人正在外面会见我们的一些大客户之类,我们在产品组织内部如何理解他们的视角,并将这种视角带入我们设计、优先级排序和打造产品的方式中?我认为这是独特的一点。
我想说的另一点与地理位置关系不大,但我认为这是创始人兼首席执行官 Andre 灌输给我们所有人的核心文化价值观或哲学,即践行团队合作,我们如何真正作为一个团队团结在一起,并打破可能存在于各职能之间的孤岛?我将稍微谈谈我们在产品组织中的结构安排,以便我们将跨职能的视角带入我们所做的每一件事中,因为我们相信,当我们将不同且多元的视角带入问题中,然后共同创造出客户期望的结果时,就能产生最出色的工作成果。
Lenny: 我想先顺着这些线索深入聊聊。你提到了同理心这一价值观,以及因为你们分布在不同地点、拥有不同文化,所以在跨团队间保持同理心的重要性,还有团队合作的理念。你们采取了哪些具体做法来帮助实现这一点?无论是在跨团队间建立并维持同理心,还是确保人们是在团队中协作,而不是觉得“嘿,那边有另一个团队在做别的事”?
Varun Parmar: 我所见过的最有效的方法之一,就是你所提出的问题。当你在进行产品评审,或是坐下来与人交谈,试图理解他们为什么将某件事的优先级排在另一件事之上时,你所提出的问题。这种优先级排序是通过与内部或外部人员的互动得出的吗?我认为关键在于提出这样一组问题:他们是如何走到今天的这一步的?这是否建立在对整个组织所获洞察的理解之上?这是否源于他们对市场演进方向、竞争对手走向的理解。这是否源于他们通过一系列洞察所获得的信息,无论是通过我们各个渠道收集到的客户反馈,还是他们主动发起的外部互动?我认为,试着深入挖掘并关注细节,弄清楚究竟是什么洞察促使他们推荐某些做法,或者促使他们做出某种转向,这是确保这些决策建立在对内对外践行同理心基础之上的最有效途径。
同理心驱动的产品开发实践
Lenny: 了解。这就像是一种假定对方出于善意并提问以理解其出发点的文化价值观。我不知道你脑海中是否有现成的例子,但在你们最近构建的产品中,有没有一个体现了这种做法做得好或做得不好的故事?
Varun Parmar: 也许有一些这样的事情,例如,每当我们试图构建一种新体验时,我们想采取的方法之一就是非常快速地验证我们最初的假设是否成立。我们是设计冲刺(Design Sprint)框架的超级粉丝,我认为 Jake Knapp 所做的工作真的很棒。在短短五天的时间里,你可以让一小群人快速制作出一个概念模型,将其转化为某种原型,然后走出去获得某种验证。通常,当我们在处理这些新事物时,我们会让专注于从零到一倡议的产品团队运行这个为期五天的项目,在结束时我们会问:“哦,这太棒了。你们是从谁那里获得的洞察?”我们最近发布了一项功能,叫做 Miro Talktrack,它本质上允许你通过在 Miro 白板上录制音视频来进行异步协作。
我们有两个根本性的选择。一是我们可以走每个人都在走的路,进行屏幕录制然后输出一系列视频,就像捕获像素一样。或者像我们实际做的那样,我们走了一条不同的路,我们走过的这条路基本上是同步白板的移动。假设 Lenny 正在演示一个白板,这是他创建的关于产品经理最佳实践的模板,但他想在上面加上某种讲解音轨,即音视频流。我们实际在做的是捕获 Lenny 正在浏览的白板移动过程,以及叠加在上面的视频讲解音轨。我们这样做的原因是,我们在一些访谈中获得了一项洞察。我们的用户想要做的是使用 Miro 进行协作。虽然沟通是团队凝聚在一起的重要方面,但我们认为我们的最佳切入点是让人们使用 Miro 进行协作。通过确保他们实际上可以使用视频录制,并且在视频播放时,他们可以添加便签,可以添加评论,实际上还可以做出反应。当我们在设计冲刺框架中走出去并开始展示我们的最初概念时,我们通过践行同理心得出了这一洞察,随后我们在此基础上进行了构建。
Lenny: 这真是一个非常棒的故事。这出自设计冲刺框架,这种为期五天的冲刺方法。
Varun Parmar: 是的,没错。
Lenny: 太酷了。我得把那个人请到这个播客上来。你是说 Jake Knapp,对吧?
Varun Parmar: 是的,是的,是的。我现在就可以给他发短信,我来做引荐。
应对竞争与保持创新的策略
Lenny: 我们直接把他拉进这个播客直播吧,告诉我们冲刺流程是如何运作的。这太棒了。这稍微引出了我想在开头问的另一个问题,你们处于一个竞争非常激烈的领域,感觉 Miro 在线协作白板领域入场很早,然后我想在新冠疫情期间它变得非常庞大,随着远程工作的爆发。就像,“天哪,每个人立刻都需要这个。”这些年来,许多公司进入了你们所在的领域,感觉 Miro 依然做得极其出色。我记得当 Figma 推出 FigJam 时,有很多诸如“Miro 死定了。Figma 进入了这个领域,他们是巨头,游戏结束了”的声音。显然情况并非如此,我只是不知道你们内部到底做了什么,让你们能够继续在这个领域竞争并持续创新。我很好奇,Miro 应对竞争的方式是否有什么特别之处,或者他们应对这类挑战的方式是否有独特或有趣的地方可以分享?
Varun Parmar: 如果你看看 Miro 的使命,我们赋能团队创造下一个伟大事物,我们的重点是赋能那些正在创新的团队,而创新通常发生在一群跨职能人员聚集在一起的交叉点上。正如我们讨论过的,产品管理、设计、工程、分析、产品营销或研究人员。我们发现,Lenny,市面上有很多工具,这些工具通常专注于特定的角色,也许它们试图解决设计师的需求,设计师有一个他们想要完成的工作流,他们使用特定的工具,它们处于扩展该核心用例的相邻位置。Miro 提供的根本价值是我们赋能团队。我认为我们产品的独特之处,我们可以讨论我们正在投资以及已经作为产品一部分拥有的能力、路线图和用例,在于我们采取的是以团队为中心的视角。所以我们不是说,“嘿,我们正在构建一个只适用于设计师的工具”,或者“嘿,我们正在构建一个只适用于工程师的工具”。因为我们从根本上相信,创新发生在跨职能团队聚集在一起的时候。当你通过那个视角来看待问题时,你会意识到你必须真正去构建你的解决方案。你必须考虑用例,你必须去优先考虑那些不同的体验,而我们的客户在其中看到了价值,对吧?我认为这可能是我们如何思考我们的能力和产品,以及为什么我们的客户对我们的看法与众不同的一大宏观方面。我想说这是其中一点。
Varun Parmar: 我认为第二点是,Miro 显然被那些创造创新产品的团队所使用,并且我们在各个行业和垂直领域都具有广泛的适用性。虽然一些工具可能高度专注于数字体验,而 Miro 在核心能力方面也有很好的表现,但我们发现,Miro 同样被制造业、医疗保健、建筑与工程以及施工领域、航空航天、政府机构和医疗机构等公司平等地使用。我认为该平台在能力及我们提供的服务方面实际上更加不局限于特定领域,这使得那些希望超越纯数字体验的组织更容易接受并对其产生吸引力。
最后,Miro 拥有一些非常独特的能力,深受用户重视,这也是人们选择 Miro 的一个重要原因。例如,如果 Lenny 打算与一群产品人员举办一场大型工作坊,他希望引导该工作坊,并让某些人专注于白板的某个部分,而其他人专注于另一部分,那么我们有一些高级能力可以支持像工作坊这样的特定用例。或者如果你想将 Miro 用于某些团队惯例或敏捷实践,有一套核心能力可以让你用来使用该产品,而这些能力在其他一些工具中是缺失的。我想说这三者的结合继续驱动着我们的差异化。除此之外,我们非常看重我们的社区,我们相信社区的热爱是驱动我们的动力,这是让我们每天保持前行的燃料。
Lenny: 太棒了。总结一下,在你聊天的时候我记了笔记,就在想是什么让你们在面对不断袭来的竞争时,依然能在市场上表现出色。第一,正如你所提到的,有一种内在的多职能架构,如果竞争对手不是从一开始就这么构建,就很难复制。第二,听起来你们专注于广泛的角色群体,基本上不仅仅是科技员工。另外,就是有一些最终变得非常重要的特定功能,可能其他人很难构建,然后还有社区的这最后一部分。太棒了。
Varun Parmar: 没错。
产品团队的组织架构
Lenny: 让我们深入了解一下产品团队,看看你们是如何构建产品以及如何构建产品团队结构的。Miro 有多少产品经理?然后从整体上看有多少员工,只是为了给大家提供一点背景信息?
Varun Parmar: Miro 在全球所有的 12 个枢纽大约有 1800 名员工,具体到产品经理的数量,团队中有超过 450 名产品经理。
Lenny: 那么产品团队是如何架构的?是面向结果的吗?是面向产品领域的吗?是面向用户角色的吗?还是其他什么方式?你如何看待产品团队的结构?
Varun Parmar: 是的,我想说我们采用的是一种混合结构,但团队组建的基础是围绕角色。我们有所谓的 streams,一些公司称之为 domains,但本质上它是一群专注于为关键角色解决问题的人。举个例子,我们有一个专注于企业的 stream,在企业内部我们关注 IT 管理员角色、安全角色或合规角色。有一群人在为该受众制定路线图并进行创新。还有一个 stream 被称为平台,我们在那里面向开发者用户群,那些希望将 Miro 作为平台并构建应用的人,这些应用实际上可以发布在市场上供所有人使用,或者他们可能是大型组织内部试图将 Miro 与他们特定的用例、工作流和业务系统进行集成的开发者。这是另一种专注于该领域的 stream,还有其他几个类似的 stream。
最后还有一些横向的 stream。鉴于我们是一家 PLG 驱动的公司,我们非常关注增长和自助服务业务。我们有一个专注于核心内部基础设施的 stream。我们还有一个专注于数据科学的 stream,正在创造我们开始发布的关于 Miro AI 等等方面的神奇效果。我想说是这些的结合。其核心是我们专注于角色,并让人们围绕解决该角色的问题和为其创造价值而协同工作。
Lenny: 这真的很有趣。我想象中,基于角色方法的一个缺点是,功能会不断地被添加进来以解决该用户的痛点。在保持产品一致性以及对体验拥有整体视角方面,你们学到了什么?你们如何应对这些挑战?
跨职能协作与产品一致性
Varun Parmar: 在架构层面,我们做了两件事使我们不至于将自己局限在这种特定的工作方式中。我完全同意你的看法,这确实可能导致那种情况。第一件事是,当我们思考产品组织时,我们称我们的组织为 AMPED。这实际上回到了我们早先的观点,Lenny,关于产品文化的独特之处,Miro 的独特之处,我们谈到团队聚集在一起,消除跨职能的障碍或孤岛。AMPED 代表分析、营销、产品、工程和设计。我们在产品组织中所做的一切,当说到产品组织时,实际上指的并不只是产品经理。我们实际上指的并不只是产品经理、设计师和工程师。在 Miro,我们所说的产品组织是这个 AMPED 职能。通过拥有这种跨职能代表,产品营销团队深深地嵌入到这些 stream 的每一个中,我们引入了不同的视角,他们会说:“哦,等一下,你有没有考虑到最终用户体验?”
如果你考虑最终用户体验,团队中就会有人问:“等一下,你有没有真正考虑过企业需求或在最大型公司中需要什么?”我认为将跨职能人员聚集在一起的独特设置使我们能够进行纠偏。第二件事是我们的工作方式。我们会进行产品评审。我们通常根据复杂性将所做的工作分为小、中、高三个级别,任何正在推进的工作实际上都会与全公司共享。如果是中小型项目,实际上会与整个产品组织共享。事实上,即使你不是产品团队的人,也可以订阅那个 Slack 频道。每个人都能看到产品组织在做什么,每个人都能看到核心假设是什么:“解决方案是什么,提议的设计是什么,我们是如何思考这些能力的?”
然后任何大型项目实际上都要经过正式的流程,比如产品评审,大家会开会,我们一群人聚在一起,基本上由我们,包括产品负责人,来确保我们能够以更加全局的视角串联各个节点。我想说的最后一点是,随着 Miro 的客户群体不断扩展,从可能只有两三个人、直接掏出信用卡为自己的团队使用 Miro 的团队,一直到可能拥有五万、八万名员工的大型公司,所有人都在使用 Miro。我们逐渐意识到,在某个阶段,深层的企业需求需要被封装成一套需求或最佳实践,我们需要确保这些在所有功能团队中实现民主化。当我在思考构建一个新功能时,我面前有一个清单,可以说:“这里有 10 件事是我需要考虑的,需要在早期的架构思考、流程定义中就纳入进来,这样才不会在下游才暴露出来。”我想说这是我们仍在努力的领域,最近我们投入了更多的精力和关注,现在有一位产品经理正在负责这项特定任务。
AMPED 架构与营销的融入
Lenny: 我很喜欢这些细节。这个 AMPED 结构,我很喜欢。有分析,你说了产品营销、分析师营销,然后是产品、工程和设计。很少能看到营销作为团队的一部分,作为领导层,算是领导群体的一部分。你是否感觉到加入营销对团队产生了什么影响,或者这种做法源自哪里?还是说这在历史上就是 Miro 所优先考虑的,即营销和产品营销?
Varun Parmar: 这是在我来之前就已经有的,我很希望能把功劳归于自己,但我不能。我认为这是观察的结果,与你说的非常相似,也就是说,虽然我们可能开发了很多功能,产品经理在思考我们在构建什么时是自下而上的,但我们可能会发现,我们构建的东西可能无法像我们最初想象的那样激发想象力。这其中很大一部分在于,你将如何思考定位,如何思考竞争差异化?你将如何把它打包,使得外部的销售人员能够以一种客户,在这种情况下也就是买家,可能是业务线负责人,能够基本看清我们前进方向全貌的方式进行定位?我认为通过将产品营销作为 AMPED 的一部分,我们现在带来了在某些团队中可能缺失的独特视角。产品经理更多是充当产品负责人,或者更专注于核心问题和解决方案,而不会去思考定位,因为这非常重要,特别是当你考虑到我们正处在一个竞争日益激烈的市场中时。这是我们最初开始做的事情之一,也是你首先想到的,即我们所做的一切都必须透过这个视角来看待。
竞争对手对增长的决定性影响
我的核心理念之一是,Lenny,公司的成功与竞争对手允许你做的事情直接相关。我觉得没有多少人谈论这个,但在我的职业生涯中,我已经做了差不多 24、25 年,在很多情况下,每当我看到一家公司加速增长或增长放缓时,这都与竞争对手允许你做的事情直接相关。显然,你必须做你应该做的一切,但竞争是让你弄清楚这一点的最大变量。
Lenny: 我想听听更多关于你的核心产品理念,但让我先深挖一下你刚才分享的这一点。你发现,你增长或停止增长的方式通常是竞争的直接结果。你脑海中有没有这样的例子?我猜也许 Box 对阵 Dropbox 是你在那里的一段经历,如果没有,你经历过的一个例子是什么,让它更具体一点?
Varun Parmar: 对于我们这些在协作领域的人来说,我已经做了 20 多年的协作和生产力应用,在某些时候,你会看到像微软这样的公司对某个领域产生极大的兴趣,你可以看到一家以某种速度增长的业务轨迹,然后突然有一个竞争产品进入,它拥有分发渠道的威力,拥有定价的威力,这就是一个直接的例子。我想我已经多次看到这种情况,首先是在 Adobe,我是文档云业务的一部分,然后在 Box 也清楚地看到了这一点。总的来说,你可以看看每一个品类,你可以说那里有一个品类领导者,他们以某种速度或步伐增长,然后突然有一批进入者涌入,你的增长率会怎样?这完全取决于竞争对手在提供足够好的解决方案方面有多强大?这是其一。第二是竞争对手在分发触达方面有多强大?第三件事是竞争对手在定价和打包方面有多强大?
Lenny: 我真的很喜欢这个讨论,特别是因为通常的建议是,“不要担心竞争对手,只关注客户,一切都会好的。”而你说这是不对的,我同意。考虑到这一点你会怎么做?这如何影响你构建产品或战略的方式?你能否分享一些也许在战术上别人可以借鉴来制定产品策略的东西?
Varun Parmar: 这取决于竞争对手是谁,以及他们在这里的不公平优势是什么。我们谈论了一个特定的竞争对手,顺便说一下,我非常尊重他们,我每天都能从他们身上学到很多东西,比如他们如何下注,如何进入市场等等。我觉得在某个时候我会写一本关于他们的书。
Lenny: 哦。我们得回头再聊聊这个。
Varun Parmar: 没错,是的。我认为这归结于你如何思考相对于所有这些参与者的独特位置,以及在客户心中,他们是否能清楚地理解相对于其他一切,你所提供的独特价值是什么?其中一部分是你提供的独特能力。另一部分是你如何将这些独特能力打包给他们,并确保在他们心中能看到,在他们可能投资以赋能员工或支持其运营的整体技术生态系统中,你是如何共存的。所以我认为就是透过这个视角来看待问题,是的。
竞争格局下的差异化与定位
Lenny: 明白了。所以我听到的是,要非常清楚你的差异化因素,并继续在那里投资,然后确保你的定位清楚地说明了为什么你……只是去明确,“这就是我们不同的原因,我们不仅仅是这个东西的更好或更差的版本”或者“这就是我们不同的原因”,并确保这真的非常清晰。
完全正确。我想说的另一件事是,我还有另一个核心理念,那就是产品要么随着时间推移变得更好,要么变得更糟。产品永远不会保持不变。我认为你可以把这个理念应用到生活中的很多事情上,但我打算从产品的视角来看,我的核心理念是,每一天,每一次有人将你的代码推送到生产环境,你发布一个功能或一项增强时,你要么是在让产品变得更好,要么是在让产品变得更糟,但产品永远不会保持不变。这个视角,Lenny,实际上是从客户的视角,从最终用户的视角出发的。关键在于,如果你是一个市场上没有其他人的玩家,那是一回事,那太好了,祝贺你真正识别出了一个蓝海战略并付诸执行。但大多数市场、大多数产品,实际上都有直接或间接的竞争对手存在。
在客户的心目中,你在做某事,竞争对手也在做某事,所以他们在脑海中审视这些产品、审视这些公司,并会说:“哪个更好,哪个不如?”因此,随着你的竞争对手发布的每一次版本,以及你发布的每一次版本,你要么是在获得国际象棋的积分,针对他们的积极举措,要么就是在失分。我认为,如果你在脑海中保持这个框架,它实际上会带来极其清晰的认知,关于你正在做什么以及它将产生什么影响。因为你做出的每一个举动,客户在脑海中,即使不是明确地,也是隐性地在比较这些东西。我认为它带来了一种专注度,关于你需要在何处投资,为什么需要投资,以及为什么这将促成那些决策。
我认为这至少使得产品负责人能够围绕他们所下的赌注做出一些高质量的决策,以及这些赌注在尘埃落定后最终将如何发挥作用——广大市场将会说:“我要将某个东西标准化,现在我觉得需要为所有人配备它。”或者“这是我想用于这个特定用例的工具。”你做出的所有这些决策,都向上归结到你最终必须进行的、关于最终发生的市场整合的那一步棋。
Lenny: 这太有意思了。本质上你是在说,你发现非常贴近并深刻理解竞争实际上是至关重要的,而不是几乎处于光谱另一端的“不用担心竞争,别去理会”。我很喜欢这一点,就像这个隐喻:“我们是在向前迈进,还是落后得更远?”这就是你将其落地以进行追踪的方式吗?另外,你如何才能不过度沉迷于“让我们迎头赶上,增加更多功能”之类的事情?你是如何找到这种平衡的?
Varun Parmar: 老实说,我认为我们还没弄清楚。在如何将其落地执行方面,我们还没有攻克这个难题,但我知道在这些事情上你比我聪明得多,所以也许我们可以——
Lenny: 不太可能。
Varun Parmar: ……合作一下,想出点什么办法。
Lenny: 好吧,这会是我们接下来要研究的事情。你还有其他想要分享的产品理念吗?刚才那段太棒了。
产品迭代的速度与方向
Varun Parmar: 这些都与它有些关联。就像一串珍珠。我想也许我们还能在这里穿上另一颗珍珠。
Lenny: 来吧。
Varun Parmar: 也就是我们谈到了如何将这些东西向上归结,然后问题来了,好吧,你怎么知道你正在做的一切方向是对的还是错的?你应该慢下来,对你正在做的事情更加深思熟虑,还是你应该快速行动,下某些赌注,然后再决定某些事情?我认为外界存在两种观点。我个人对此的看法是,你想做的是成为第一个撞上砖墙的人。当你身处一个竞争激烈的市场时,这一点尤为正确。原因在于,如果你将自己视为一家以创新为中心的公司,并且你相信你正在构建根本上不存在于其他任何地方的经验,并且你正在为其他人铺设道路,让他们基本上从你构建这些经验的方式中获得灵感,那么根据我的经验,速度是决定谁最终能更加成功的最大单一因素。
我不知道,也许这有点争议,因为人们会说“慢下来是为了真正快起来”。我对这一点非常尊重,在某些领域你也应该这样做,但是当你试图摸索新经验之类的东西,而你又不知道它是否能引起共鸣时,速度是你应该为组织加速的东西。我认为 Frank Slootman 在他的书里谈到了很多关于如何加速的内容。我想对我来说,从产品的角度来看,基本概念是你能否成为第一个撞上砖墙的人,从而比市场上任何人都更快地获得学习,这样你就可以决定:“天哪,我走的路不是正确的路。我需要向西偏10度,或者我需要向东偏30度。”我认为,只要你在揭示或发现这些洞察方面领先其他人一步、两步或三步,那么我认为在构建产品和业务方面你就可以继续走在前列。
打造团队的紧迫感
Lenny: 你在谈论紧迫感。我从未遇到过不希望团队行动更快的创始人或产品负责人。他们总是在鼓励他们的团队,“我们怎样才能走得更快?”我很好奇,在帮助你的团队更快行动方面,你是否学到了一些战术上的东西。顺便说一下,你提到了 Frank Slootman 的书,它叫《Amp It Up》,以防大家想去看一下,他非常强调创造一种紧迫感,一种持续的紧迫感,我们会附上链接并分享笔记。但是,除了仅仅说“大家快点”之外,你发现还有什么有助于创造紧迫感并普遍帮助你的团队走得更快?
Varun Parmar: Lenny,我在这里的一个基本信念是,每个产品经理……我可以和产品经理谈谈,因为有原因让某些人,有人想成为产品经理,因为在我看来这是最吃力不讨好的工作之一,就像你得做很多[听不清],然后就想,“为什么我必须做这个?”但它吸引了某种性格,这种性格是被挑战所驱动的,这种性格想要证明他们能够解决这个挑战并做出令人惊叹的事情。我认为产品经理这个角色从根本上其实是想走得快的。我认为在某些情况下我们无法走得快的原因,是因为我们遇到了障碍,而这些障碍可能表现为技术挑战,可能表现为组织挑战的单元格,也可能是优先级挑战等等。
Varun Parmar: 解决这个问题的基本方法是,确保负责这些能力的产品负责人能立刻举手指出他们遇到的挑战。然后领导团队、产品管理团队的工作,基本上就是去迅速解决这些问题。我认为如果你能解决这些问题,实际上就会开启一个良性循环,你真正开始看到那些胜利。一旦你看到了这些胜利,你就真正创造了去做更多事情的勇气。也许是因为你看到了那个特定的路障是如何被解决的,而且你现在已经发展出了一种模式匹配能力,你可以自己解决很多这类问题,而你现在会举手去应对的是下一个级别的挑战。
这样做开始建立一种组织能力,关于你如何弄清楚该构建什么。我们在组织中都会发现这样的人,有某人总能以普通人所需十分之一的时间完成某些事情。并不是他们快了十倍,只是根据我的观察,他们弄清楚了核心基础中哪些部分应该构建,哪些不应该,谁应该是他们团队的一部分,谁不应该,他们需要如何从范围的角度来定义它,成功是什么样的,正是将所有这些结合在一起的架构,真正带来了那种神奇配方,即“嘿,我们能够交付得更快。”
Lenny: 我非常喜欢这个话题。我听到的是,公司和产品开发减速的最大根源之一就是阻碍没有被清除,我总是有同样的感觉。我觉得产品经理的第一要务就是清除团队的障碍,因为他们的工作基本上就是最大限度地发挥他们调集去实现某个结果的团队的潜力。做到这一点的方法就是弄清楚是什么拖慢了他们。你刚才谈到了产品经理向领导层举手这个想法,“嘿,我们被这个东西卡住了。”你有没有想出什么流程来帮助做到这一点,它联系到——
建立快速交付的组织文化
Varun Parmar: 是的,我想说我们正试图将这种做法系统地植入组织文化中。我们在产品组织有一句座右铭,非常简单,单句:“以更快的速度和更高的质量交付客户价值。”就是这样。我们所做的一切,当我说一切时,真的是一切,Lenny,从绩效和奖励系统到衡量指标,一切都是基于这唯一的一句话,它有三个属性。第一个是交付客户价值,我们认为只有当客户使用时,客户价值才被交付。在 Miro 作为产品经理,任何时候当你发布某个东西时,我们都会看,“好吧,你要移动的指标是什么,它移动了多少?”我们有一些原始目标可以回溯。这就是我们正在做的第一个方面,交付客户价值。
第二个是走得更快,我们在整个组织中衡量着某些周期时间。从你提出想法,到你实际提出解决方案,到你实际发布它,到我们实际移动了指标,这些信息都被收集并提供给组织。你可以说,“嘿,如果是小、中或大型,平均值是多少?中位数是多少,方差是多少?”然后你可以说,“嘿,看着这些数据,有什么可以改进的?”这是关于更快方面的部分。然后最后一个围绕高质量,也就是我们想构建同类最佳的协作体验,所以我们总是从我们在周围看到的应用程序和体验中获得灵感,我们会说,“嘿,在设计、分享流方面,我们相信这三个应用程序拥有同类最佳的分享流,在设计像这样的某些同步能力时。这些是我们应该关注的同类最佳应用程序。”
我们总是试图确保我们在以此对标自己,而且我们有我们的设计团队。定期地,比如当我们按月发布东西时,我们的设计领导团队会对所有发布的东西进行分类定级,归为高质量或非高质量。这就像一个二元函数,我们这么做并说,“嘿,我们认为它不是高质量的原因是A、B、C、D、E,我们将其提供给其他设计师,以便他们实际上可以开始建立那种遥测数据,因为有些事情更主观。”但你可以开始看到一些模式匹配并说,“嘿,这就是优秀的样子。”
Lenny: 好的,所以设计团队大约每个月会看所有发布的东西,然后把它们分到不同的桶里。要么这是……这就像一个二元的东西,高质量或非高质量。
Varun Parmar: 是的。
Lenny: 哇,这太酷了。那么,第一,他们拿这个做什么?会发给产品团队吗?第二,这只是个供参考(FYI)的东西,还是说,“我们需要回头修复所有这些低质量的东西”?或者更多只是,“为了将来,请注意这些不是高质量的”?
Varun Parmar: 是的,所以实际上两者都有。通常情况是设计领导团队在做这件事,并且有一位特定的设计领导者是指定负责人,以确保这定期发生。现在我们使用它的方式是,我们实际上用它来校准并围绕设计领导层对高质量的含义达成一致。因为这是那种事情之一,就像如果你从未见过颜色,我问你,“Lenny,描述一下粉色并把它和红色比较一下”,如果你没见过颜色,你怎么描述颜色?你不能。但如果我展示给你看并说,“Lenny,这些是粉色的三个例子,这些是红色的三个例子”,你就会说,“哦,我懂粉色了,我也懂红色了。”有些事情就像你写下来一样,非常非常难描述,但如果你展示具体的例子,就会非常清楚,“哦,我明白了。我懂粉色和红色有什么不同了。”但如果我试图描述它,那会非常困难。
速度的衡量与对标
Varun Parmar: 所以大约一年前的某个时候,我们陷入了无休止的讨论,大家都在说“我们需要高质量”。于是有人说“我们去定义一下这个东西吧”。我们让一些领导者去写文档,写了非常长的文档来界定属性是什么,如何定义、衡量这些属性,以及如何赋能大家做到这些。感觉这是一件好事,因为我们在试图将其规范化,但这也感觉像是一种非常沉重的解决该问题的方式。后来我们想出了这个方法,就是“什么是好的,什么是不好的”,然后开始对其进行分类。如你所知,现代人工智能系统就是分类系统,我们——
Lenny: 对,我正想说,这听起来像是强化学习的方法。
Varun Parmar: 完全正确。
Lenny: 定义成本。
Varun Parmar: 没错,没错。我觉得这效果还不错。我想说,对于大多数事情,我们需要将其落地运作,并且需要确保现在我们正在普及它,让每个人都能接触到它等等。但我认为这是一个好的开始,现在我们正在组织内更开放地分享这些。
Lenny: 说那话时,我脑补了一下你……从外部来看,你们有着非常独特的文化和产品打造方式。这就是一个很好的例子。我从未听说过这样的流程。我听到的本质上是你们正试图在组织内部建立一种关于“什么是质量”的肌肉记忆。这就像是一种持续的经验法则,“哦,我懂了”。这样团队里的产品经理(PM)就开始在脑海中理解这到底意味着什么。
Varun Parmar: 对。
Lenny: 太酷了。你刚才在那句话中间还提到了加快速度,而且你们会以某种方式追踪和衡量这一点。你能多谈谈这个吗?因为这是每个产品团队都在试图搞清楚的事情。“我们怎么知道自己是不是变快了,是不是已经快到极限了?”你们实际上是怎么做的?你们怎么衡量这些东西?
Varun Parmar: 其核心哲学是,速度更像高尔夫球比赛,你只是在和自己比赛。这不像如果 Lenny 和 Varun 在高尔夫球场上,这无关紧要。我不是在和你竞争,我只是在和我自己竞争,因为那是唯一的……我只是在击球,所以问题是我们能进步多少?我认为我们围绕这一点的核心哲学以及我们正在努力做的事情是,在所有的产品团队、功能团队中,我们只是在收集所有的信息,并将其提供给每个人,以便他们能够实际看到周期时间是多少。我们感兴趣的是,从你获得洞察开始,从你确信“我能为我的用户、为我的人物角色做一些独特的事情”开始,到实际交付这种价值需要多长时间?
Varun Parmar: 我们遵循一个产品流程,它从 P-strat 开始,也就是战略,然后我们进入 P0,即问题的定义,接着我们进入 P1,即解决方案的定义,然后我们进入 P2,也就是一旦解决方案发布,我们是否达到了我们在决定开展这项工作之前最初定义的指标。你拥有所有这些阶段关卡,然后我们基本上将我们正在做的所有事情分为小、中、大。你可以进去说,“嘿,我以为这是个小东西”,而小东西意味着你可以在不到一个月的时间内完成,等等。有 50 个其他产品团队也在发布这些功能,那么平均值是多少,方差是多少,中位数是多少?
Varun Parmar: “哦,等一下,实际上似乎我在问题定义阶段花了更多的时间。让我去和那个实际上做得快得多的其他产品团队聊聊”,或者“哦,我实际上做得非常非常快,而我做得快的原因是因为这个。让我去向更广泛的团队分享这个”。通常,产品运营职能,我们内部称之为产品卓越,也就是某种产品卓越职能,会记录其中的一些事情。我想说,获得可靠的数据,然后因为有些事情是通过会议进行的,有些是通过 Slack 进行的,我们在这些维度上还可以做得更好,但所有这些数据都是可用的,我们公开提供它,人们可以以此对自己的情况进行基准对标。
Lenny: 太酷了。好的,所以你们有这个你称之为 P-strat 的文档,它算是一个初始概念,有趣的是你使用了 P0、P1,这通常用于 Bug,但你把它用在定义产品上真的很酷。所以 P-strat 只是一个想法推介。P0 基本上就是一个规范,比如产品的一页纸说明,然后 P1 和 P2 基本上就是到了“这是我们正在构建的实际产品”。你基本上追踪每个步骤的时间,并将其映射到“这个项目应该有多大”。听起来随着时间的推移,你按个人进行追踪,就像检查你是否符合一个小项目在每个步骤中应该花费多长时间的基准一样?
Varun Parmar: 对,完全正确。
Lenny: 哇,这真是太酷了。你能分享的任何模板,以及我们可以包含在节目笔记中的这些东西都会非常棒。
Varun Parmar: 好的。
Lenny: 因为人们总是在寻找类似“啊,我想做点这种事情”的参考。如果他们可以直接拿来就用,那是越多越好。
Varun Parmar: 好的。
产品开发流程与路线图机制
Lenny: 稍微转个话题,听起来你们在以某种形式使用 Scrum。你能大致谈谈产品开发流程吗?你们的冲刺有多长,你详细计划未来多长时间的事情,具体到高层次来说,产品开发流程是如何运作的?
Varun Parmar: 有些东西是我在 Box 学到的,启发了我们在 Miro 做的一些事情,还有些东西是我们自己演变出来的。我们建立起来的东西之一是我们的路线图流程,所以这算是关于不同团队如何看待他们将要开展工作的第一件事。我们有一个滚动六个月的路线图,这看起来很长,但我们有很多企业客户,就像我提到的。如果说我从大企业学到一件事的话,那就是他们总是要求进行路线图审查。这往往是我想坐下来和企业领导者一起开的最喜欢的会议,和他们一起过一遍我们正在做的事情。我们所做的是,我们试图构建一种机制,既能让我们的客户得到他们想要的东西,同时又不会剥夺对我们来说极其重要的敏捷性,以便更快地交付价值。
Varun Parmar: 我们的做法是,我们有一个每三个月更新一次的滚动六个月路线图,在这条路线图的前三个月,我们有 80% 的确定度,这意味着我们声称在路线图上的事情有 80% 会被完成。这就是目标。对于接下来的三个月,因为是六个月,所以前三个月是 80%,接下来的三个月是 50%,因此在随后的三个月里我们的清晰度要低得多。这允许产品团队拥有灵活性,基于客户的要求、竞争对手的举措,以及围绕大型语言模型发生的一些技术突破,他们可以转向,可以转向并朝着那个方向移动,而且他们这样做既不会受到客户的惩罚,也不会在内部受到惩罚。这就是我们的做法,而这一切都是在公开发布的年度战略背景下进行的。
年度战略与团队自治
Varun Parmar: 每年我们都会发布一份战略白皮书,它在内部向所有职能部门的每一位 Mironeers 公开,清晰地阐明了我们想要做的主要押注。为什么我们想要做这些押注?预期的结果是什么,以及这如何向上衔接到我们从 OKR 视角以及我们所拥有的整体商业战略角度试图推动的整体业务成果中。所以人们拿着那份产品战略、白皮书或工件,然后以此为依据构建他们的路线图,这些路线图每三个月更新一次。然后在团队内部,我们让团队在他们正在执行的一些仪式方面拥有相当的自主权。我们显然希望他们采用最佳实践。我们有一个敏捷教练团队,他们会分享最佳实践,或者在团队有某些特定需求时提供帮助。
Miro Connect 仪式
Varun Parmar: 然后我想在此基础上,我们做了某些关键的,我会说,仪式,这些可能很独特。例如,我们有一个叫做 Miro Connect 的东西,它每隔一个周五举行一次。每隔一个周五,例如,在我们的阿姆斯特丹办公室,你可以走进去,在下午 4 点,4 点到 7 点或 8 点,有时会持续到很晚,你会看到一群产品团队围坐在桌子旁,感觉就像,“哦,这就像是个推介什么的。”人们走进来,玩得很开心,你手里拿着饮料,背景里可能放着轻音乐,你从一张桌子走到另一张桌子,会有团队在展示所有这些出色的工作……如果做得好,这偶尔会发生一次,但如果做得对,在能获得的结果方面如同魔法一般。
Varun Parmar: 我告诉你,曾经有一个团队在我们的柏林中心做展示,他们说,“我们正在开发这个功能,然后有一位工程师走到那张桌子前说,‘你们在做什么?’”团队描述了它,“哦,我们正试图做类似这样的事情。”而这位工程师实际上在他们之前的经历中就处理过那个特定问题,从字面上看,他们已经实现过这个了。所以他说,“那么你们打算如何实现这个?”而坐在那里的团队工程师说,“这是我打算采取的方法,这会花我三个月的时间。”他就像,“哦,你介意我去帮你们做这个吗?”他们就像,“当然,人越多越好。开始吧。”
Varun Parmar: 所以这个人放下了他们的啤酒说,“好吧,我玩得很开心。让我回趟家吧。”在接下来的三四个小时里,他去把整个东西编码出来了,提交了一个拉取请求(pull request)。第二天早上,这个在 Miro Connect 上展示的核心团队的一位工程师查看了这个拉取请求,审查了代码并说,“是的,原本这个核心团队需要三个月才能完成的东西,因为他们缺乏专业知识,结果在三个小时内就完成了,因为有另一位工程师碰到了他们并说,‘我知道这个该怎么做。我实际上可以在这里帮你们,’然后继续做了正确的事情。”我们正试图创造这些神奇时刻。它偶尔发生一次,但我们有一个成功案例,我喜欢在我得到的每一个机会都讲述它。但这是我们在如何运作方面所做的另一种独特的事情,算是首尾呼应了我们的运作方式。
Miro Connect 的形式
Lenny: 这个故事对任何产品经理来说就像是一场梦。想象一下,通过一次对话节省了几个月的工作。我想人们会想,“我们怎么才能经常复制这种事?”我太喜欢这个了。关于这些会议,只是为了理解一下,如果他们的团队在柏林,比如说,那里桌子前面有一个屏幕,他们对着屏幕说话,就像视频会议一样吗?
Varun Parmar: 是的。我的意思是,目前我们发现通过音视频会议之类的工具来做这些活动真的很困难。所以通常发生的情况是,会有一个音视频桥接在播放,但主要是人们走到各个团队面前,然后进行现场对话。通常这些事情就是这样运作的。是的。
OKR 节奏
Lenny: 明白了。好的,所以你们有滚动六个月的路线图。你们有公司的年度愿景战略,两周的冲刺。是不是也有一种季度 OKR 的流程,还是——
Varun Parmar: 有的。
Lenny: ——没有这些?有的,好的。
Varun Parmar: 有的,是的。
Lenny: 你能稍微谈谈这个是怎么运作的吗?
Varun Parmar: 可以,可以,可以。在 Miro,我们实行 OKR,它从公司层面开始,然后这些公司层面的 OKR 由 AMPED 组织接管。就像我们描述的,这就是 AMPED 组织,然后我们将其分解,我想说在我在 Miro 的这两年里,我们已经对此进行了优化。早期我们是按季度做 OKR,我想说最近我们实际上已经演变为六个月的 KR。我们发现六个月是合适的节奏,能为团队提供足够的时间来推进执行这些 KR,并最小化每个季度重新计划的“开销”。我们发现对整个组织来说,以六个月为基准来做这件事要有效和高效得多。然而,我们是按月做牵引(traction)的。所以每四周,作为 AMPED,我们会按月审视 AMPED 组织的 KR 来做牵引。不过,计划和目标是在六个月的基准上制定的。
Lenny: 我很喜欢 OKR 可以是任何东西,可以是每六个月,可以有目标,可以有关键结果。它就是这样一个术语,基本上适用于人们用目标做的任何事情。
Varun Parmar: 没错。
Lenny: 而且它很管用。太棒了。
Varun Parmar: 确实如此。
Lenny: 再次强调,如果你的团队能分享你们做这些事情的任何模板,那就太棒了,我们会把它放在节目笔记里。
Varun Parmar: 当然,绝对没问题。因为我想,正如你所料,我们在 Miro 上运行 Miro,所以我们可以作为模板分享很多东西,关于我们如何在 Miro 上运行这些东西,不仅是 OKR,还包括产品评审。我们有异步评审结合同步评审的方法,我们拥有这种混合体验,所以我们绝对可以向社区分享我们是如何做其中一些事情的。
产品团队技术栈
Lenny: 太棒了。这很好地引出了我想问的另一个问题,也就是产品团队工作流中还有哪些其他工具,技术栈里有什么?显然有 Miro。也许谈谈你们用 Miro 做什么,但除此之外还有什么?你们用什么来做任务管理、错误跟踪之类的事情?设计呢?
Varun Parmar: 从自下而上的基础设施视角来看,我们所有的工单都在 Jira 中处理,我们正在使用 Jira 中一些较新的功能,比如制定路线图和确定优先级之类的。在此之上,所有的规格通常都记录在 Confluence 中。话虽如此,我们实际上是 Google Docs 以及 Coda 这类工具的超级粉丝,它们允许我们以一种非常有效的方式跟踪我们的 KR。在此之上,显然我们大量使用 Miro,我想说用于我们的很多事情,特别是在团队的产品和设计方面。通常我们所有的洞察都会被捕获在 Miro 看板内,所以当我们去进行用户体验访谈之类的时候,我们会录下这些,然后这些录像会被添加到一个 Miro 看板中,所以 Miro 充当内容中心或特定项目的团队中心。
一旦捕获了所有洞察,通常所有的头脑风暴和团队创意生成也会在 Miro 看板上进行,因此 Miro 实际上也被用作促进会议和研讨会的工具。当所有这些内容被综合成一系列建议和结果,比如当我们进入之前谈到的那些产品评审时,Lenny,同一个 Miro 看板随后就会转化为一系列演示文稿,所以我们使用 Miro 进行演示。我们在该功能上实际上做出了一些非常出色的更新,如果大家还没有体验过,我强烈推荐去试试。其中有一个名为 Showtime 的功能,它基本上抽象出了 UI,让用户能够专注于内容,并且以交互的方式呈现,这样通话中的每个人都可以在演示过程中做出反应、分享评论并留下反馈,而不会真正打断演讲者的任何流程,因此我们也大量使用它来进行演示。
我想说,最近我们开始将一些同步会议转变为异步视图。我之前提到了我们拥有的 Miro Talktrack 功能,很多团队的做法是,提前发送一段五分钟或十分钟的 Talktrack,这只是一个 Miro 看板的链接,点击后你就可以坐下来放松。接着你会获得一种神奇的体验:你坐在那里,Miro 看板会自动移动,因为就像 Lenny 那样提前录制好了。然后视频开始播放,你可以随时暂停,添加你的评论等内容。这样,当下次你们开会时,就不需要再向每个人重新交代背景,那些同步会议会变得更有针对性,专注于推动结果或达成共识。人们只需关注在异步产品评审中添加的评论,以便在同步会议时加以利用。Miro 看板也被用于这一场景。
我想说,现在我们许多的数据看板也展示在 Miro 看板中。我们最近围绕最受欢迎的 VI 工具发布了数据可视化功能。在 Miro,我们大量使用 Google Looker,因此我们许多的数据看板都在 Looker 中。你通常会发现,我们的分析师团队和产品团队只需获取一个 Looker 数据看板的链接,将其放到 Miro 看板上,它就会展开成完整的可视化效果。与屏幕截图不同,你永远不需要去手动更新它,因为就在 Miro 看板上,它始终保持最新,你可以随时刷新。因此你基本上会体验到,在整个产品开发旅程中,Miro 充当了许多团队的唯一事实来源,单个 Miro 看板满足了那里的多种用例需求。
Lenny: 那么在路线图制定方面,每个团队的路线图都在 Miro 中吗,还是你们会使用类似 Jira 的工具?
Varun Parmar: 是的,我想我们有几种用于路线图制定的工具,而我们的观察是,虽然这些工具在解决各自特定需求方面表现出色,但我们尚未找到一个通用的路线图制定解决方案。因此,有些团队会使用 Miro 来制定路线图,他们会使用 Miro 中的看板组件来实现。他们在做什么?下一步是什么?待办列表里有什么?但我想说的是,关于如何在大规模上真正将这些制品整合在一起,这仍然是一个尚未完全解决的问题。
我们开始看到的一种趋势,这实际上是 Miro 的一个独特用例,是我们使用 Miro Talktrack 来赋能整个现场组织。具体做法是,出于赋能的目的,我们将整个路线图作为一个 Miro 看板发布出来,这样它就成为一个经过批准可以向客户展示的制品。你会看到里面有五六段录像,企业业务负责人对他们正在进行的所有工作录制了一段五分钟的视频,平台负责人录制了,终端用户体验负责人录制了,主导我们部分 AI 体验的负责人也录制了。因此,你可以直接进入看板,点击那段视频,通过使用 Miro 和我们提供的这项功能来满足你的需求。
创新与维护的投资平衡
Lenny: 太棒了。听起来每个团队基本上都可以选择他们想使用的工具。并没有标准化的规定要求每个人都必须使用 Jira 或 Miro 来制定路线图。我很喜欢这种方式,也很欣赏团队经常这样自主决策。关于产品组织可能还有最后一个问题,之后我想稍微转向增长话题,谈谈 Miro 是如何实现增长的,以及你们在增长方面学到了什么。我经常想问的一个问题是,你如何在新赌注、创新与维护以及一般的增量工作之间取得平衡?作为产品负责人,从宏观层面来说,你是否有一种理念,然后具体到 Miro,是如何在这些两个甚至三个领域——错误修复、增量工作以及大赌注——之间平衡投资的?你是如何考虑这个问题的?
Varun Parmar: 关于如何在这些领域分配投资,我们有一些经验法则。我想说的是,Lenny,这在很大程度上取决于团队的状态。有些团队比其他团队背负了更多的技术债务,有些团队则正在开发一些真正重大的从零到一的功能,因此我认为这其中存在差异。这种标准差实际上取决于你处于哪个区间,即你是一个我们认为需要在平台上创造下一代体验、因而必须优先考虑创新工作的团队,还是一个对于实现我们在提升看板性能等方面的目标至关重要、因而我们需要在这些关键领域进行投资的团队?
但我想说,总体而言,创新工作与非创新工作的比例在 60% 到 80% 之间浮动。可以说,在任何给定时间,大约 20% 到 40% 的可用产能会被分配给架构级项目。我们的 CTO 正在推动一项技术路线图,我们认为随着平台的扩张,这项工作极其重要,现在我们在平台上拥有超过 5000 万用户,所以我们必须持续投资以确保平台具备可扩展性。有些团队可能有 40% 到 50% 的产能被分配在这方面,因为它们是核心组件的关键部分。而其他一些可能更侧重于终端用户、更关注 UI 的团队,这方面的分配比例就会较低。但我认为一般的经验法则是,20% 是一个基准线,但最高可以达到 40% 到 50%。
Lenny: 那么在更大的赌注和长期思考方面呢?
Varun Parmar: 是的,有 20% 到 40% 用于技术相关项目、维护等工作。
Lenny: 哦,明白了。基础设施、维护,确保一切正常运转。明白了。
Varun Parmar: 没错。
Lenny: 那么那些不期望在短期内看到回报的大型长期赌注呢?你是否有一种经验法则,比如会将总资源的百分之多少投入其中?
Varun Parmar: 你可能见过这个,三层面框架(three horizon),在麦肯锡和哈佛商学院等等地方很流行,分别是第一层面业务,也就是把食物端上桌的东西。一般来说,我们大约有 70% 的资源分配会放在这里,上下浮动。然后是第二层面,是相邻的事物。在接下来的 12 到 36 个月内,我们认为它是实质性的。通常这大约占 20% 的分配。然后是第三层面,也就是三年后,三到五年,下一代的事物,这大约占 10% 的比例。所以在第一、二、三层面,大致是 70/20/10 的比例。
Lenny: 太棒了。在我们切换话题之前,关于你如何思考产品,还有其他的想法吗?关于 Miro 的发展故事以及你在增长方面学到了什么,我只有几个问题。
产品领导力哲学
Varun Parmar: 在产品领导力方面,以及我们认为应该如何培养产品领导者,我认为这更多是一种人员哲学。我们有我们的产品领导层,由负责所有这些 streams 的所有人组成,我总是告诉他们,你们必须思考两个角色。产品领导团队中的每个人都是产品领导团队的成员。你必须做的最基本的事情是推动问责。产品领导团队中的产品领导者需要做的第一件事,就是与产品领导团队中的其他人共同推动问责。他们的另一个角色是 stream 负责人。他们实际上负责为相应的角色和相应的客户等交付价值。因此,当你戴上 stream 负责人的角色帽子时,这不同于产品领导者的角色,你的第一指标,你的第一目标,就是推动改进。
当你回去和你的团队一起工作时,始终要用一种视角来看待:你是在改进事物吗,无论你想改进什么,但你总是要问自己,“今天和昨天比,明天和今天比,我改进事物了吗?”这是你应该思考的标尺。当每个星期一下午一点,我们聚在一起,你坐进产品领导团队时,你的第一目标实际上是围绕这一点推动问责,你要确保我们作为组织中的领导者,正在为公司做正确的事?我认为这是一个哲学构架,我总是以此来提醒人们他们应该做什么。举个例子,明天我们有校准会,公司正在进行年度评估周期。
Lenny: 美好的时光。总是充满乐趣。
Varun Parmar: 是的,没错,总是很有趣,而且作为领导者这非常关键,因为它为你接下来要做的所有事情定下了基调。在我的开场白中,我唯一要提醒房间里每个人的就是,“你们在这里的第一目标是做一个产品领导者,而问责是你必须写下的东西。就是这样。互相监督问责,包括我自己,以确保当我们深入进去时,这才是关键。”我认为一旦人们理解了他们如何在这两个特定目标之间运作的双重性,实际上就会带来真正高绩效的团队,如果他们保持开放,并且团队中建立起了信任,这样的团队实际上能够创造某种魔力。
Lenny: 当你说问责时,它看起来是什么样的?是指出来,“嘿,你没有实现我们试图实现的目标”还是“你领导这次会议做得不好”?它仅仅是经常性的直接反馈,还是有其他你看到的体现方式,你喜欢看到什么?
Varun Parmar: 是的,我认为这基本上是以一种非常开放和建设性的方式实践反馈,并专注于对业务重要的事情,不要回避进行一些观察和对话,不要回避它们。但这所有的视角都是为了什么是为业务做的正确的事情,如果你觉得领导团队中有一个或多个成员没有达到需要完成的目标,那就直接说出来。这不像是在抱怨什么,而只是说,“我有这个视角。这个视角对不对?”因为实际上它与我们整体的文化价值观很好地联系在一起。
如果你以富有同理心的视角来做事情,那么你会把它作为一个问题提出来,而不是一个陈述。我认为这是我们在 Miro 大量实践的事情之一,我相信我看到了正在发生的某些事情,也可能只是我,我没有看到其他的事情。“但这是什么?你能帮我理解一下吗?你能帮我弄清楚为什么会发生某些事情吗?因为我可能只是缺少了这个视角。”但是因为你把它提出来了,这就是以有同理心的方式实践问责的一部分,它实际上让整个团队在如何运作方面进入了正确的心态。
Lenny: 最近有没有人给你某种直接的反馈,或者指出你做得不好的地方,从而对你进行问责,你可以分享的吗?
Varun Parmar: 一直都有。是的,一直都有。当我们做异地会议时,这其实是一件有趣的事情,就是每次我和我的领导团队做异地会议,通常会有一个一到两小时的环节,是对 Varun 的反馈,而且我实际上是公开做的。房间里大约会有 8 到 10 个人,我会强迫大家非常诚实,我想向每个人展示我的脆弱,我不是完美的,我有很多需要改进的地方。每次人们这样做时,有趣的是他们会以非常惊人的方式敞开心扉,我想我很喜欢它,因为它帮助我变得更好。它帮助我识别我的盲点。但它起到的作用是,因为我以公开的方式做这件事,它带来了很多信任。它带来了信任,因为我公开地做这件事,我是一本打开的书,他们可以分享任何他们想分享的东西,不仅是和我,而是在所有人面前公开分享。
Lenny: 你愿意分享一件他们建议或指出的、希望你做得不同或更好的事情吗?
Varun Parmar: 是的,我认为总的来说,找时间见我往往有点困难,而且通常总有这样的反馈,就是需要更多时间,也许在邮件或 Slack 上回复更快一些之类的。这是我一直在努力工作和改进的领域,所以是的。
Lenny: 这感觉像是在敷衍。听起来并不怎么痛。我就觉得,“是啊,是啊,我知道。我没有很多时间。对不起。”但我能理解,这又回到了你关于障碍物的观点,以及为团队消除障碍有多么重要,因为那会带来更快的进展。
Varun Parmar: 没错,没错。
Miro 的早期增长
Lenny: 好的,那么让我稍微转向 Miro 的增长,我在这里只有几个问题。我知道你那边已经很晚了,所以我不想耽误你太久。
Varun Parmar: 没问题。
Lenny: 第一个是,我一直在不断探索公司是如何获得第一批用户的,我其实还没有听过 Miro 是如何获得前一千名用户或客户的故事。我知道你早期不在那里,但你碰巧知道 Miro 最初是如何增长并获得前一千名用户和客户的吗?
Miroverse 与模板的获客作用
Varun Parmar: 我认为其中最根本的一点是,我们始终采取以用户为先的方法,去接触某些相关的社区,这可以说是“点燃火种”的关键部分,也就是人们开始谈论产品的惯常方式。鉴于产品的协作属性,一些早期采用者邀请了同样作为早期采用者的人,飞轮效应便开始发挥作用。我听说我们在内容营销方面做了相当多的工作,将产品列在 Capterra 等网站上也有所帮助。在 SEO 和自然增长方面也有早期的投入,那是关注的重点,是驱动流量的主要来源,漏斗顶部就是由此而来的。一旦流量进入,产品团队就非常专注于构建关键循环,以此作为驱动增长的核心机制。每一个实际上引入了障碍的交互,他们都会去审视,去查看数据,并决定:“让我们降低这个障碍,移除这个东西,以便产品能被有效地接纳。”这是一个随时间演进的过程。事实上,在早期阶段,一些功能是以试用的形式提供的,后来模式从有时间限制的试用演变成了高级订阅模式,这进一步加速了业务的增长。我想说,这些就是为获得前一千名左右用户所采取的一些方法。
Lenny: 你谈到了 Miro 是如何增长的,它有一个神奇的闭环:“我自己使用 Miro,然后以我使用它的任何方式与我的团队分享。”他们会想:“哦,Miro,这很酷。”然后他们开始使用它,接着与他们想合作的人分享,这就创造了一个增长闭环。我想象这就是 Miro 最初和现在主要增长的方式。在除此之外,Miro 的增长方式有没有什么令人惊讶或违反直觉的地方?我想销售也是其中的一部分,我们可以谈谈这个,但是否还有其他有趣且值得一提的事情?
Varun Parmar: 没有,我认为那就是增长的关键。我认为有一些特定的用例,天然适合邀请大量新用户。例如,Miro 作为一种工作坊工具很受喜爱,通常是一个人在使用 Miro,但他们邀请了 10、15、20、50、200、300 人参加那个工作坊。在这些特定的用例中,人们接触到产品,然后去注册,接着开始将它用于该用例或其他用例。我认为这其中另一个加速器是我们拥有的模板,特别是 Miroverse 在其中发挥的作用。举个例子,当时有一个围绕 FIFA World Cup 创建的模板,是一个 FIFA World Cup 图解。Cornelius 是一家加拿大战略服务设计咨询公司的创始人兼董事总经理,他创建了这个 Miroverse 模板,获得了超过 10 万次浏览,这个单一模板被复制了大约 1.5 万次。鉴于其极高的热度,它实际上被 Google 收录了。当你在搜索 FIFA World Cup 时,你实际上会看到 Miroverse 的 FIFA 模板出现,这是另一个漏斗顶部的获客渠道,确实吸引了大量用户。所以我想说,Miroverse 也是其中一个关键的加速器。
增长渠道的构成
Lenny: 如果要画一个 Miro 增长方式的饼图,你大概会说口碑、自然增长占百分之多少,相对于你刚才描述的,本质上是一个 CO,相对于销售、主动销售?你怎么看这个问题?有没有一种简单的方法来建立这个模型?
Varun Parmar: 不涉及具体数字的话,我想说从根本上讲,Miro 是一家 PLG 公司,产品渠道是用户增长的最大贡献者之一。随着业务的发展,为了满足世界上一些最大公司的需求,当企业细分市场和企业客户画像试图为成千上万的用户部署 Miro,然后这些用户在 Miro 上进行数十万个工作坊,从而在平台上邀请数百万用户时,这是我们看到的飞轮的一个关键部分。我想说产品渠道可能非常强大,而企业端越来越多地成为这种加速的关键部分。
产品与销售团队的协同
Lenny: 这很好地过渡到了我们的最后一个问题,你们从产品驱动增长起步,听起来这显然是当今增长的重要组成部分,但正如每家产品驱动增长公司最终都会做的那样,我想你们也有了一个庞大的销售团队。作为一名产品领导者,在一家产品驱动增长公司里与销售部门合作,关于如何让这种关系发挥作用,以及如何让产品与销售组织有效地协同工作,你学到了什么?
Varun Parmar: 有一些经验教训,我想说也许这是我们正在努力改进的一个领域,即在整体运营方面,如何让自助服务更贴近高接触(high-touch),以及让高接触更贴近自助服务。首先我想说,把这两个组织结合在一起是一项非常艰巨的工作,你必须非常刻意地关注交叉点,并且必须确保这些组织不认为彼此是竞争对手。这是一个产品,一家公司,只是我们服务客户的两个渠道。我们做了一些事情,比如让产品营销团队跨这两个职能工作,确保他们搭建桥梁,将我们从销售组织听到的企业端客户的直接需求,与我们在自助服务端的需求连接起来。在账户不同成熟度阶段的交接方面,有一个完整的流程。它可以从自助服务开始,驱动产品采纳,一旦有了采纳,就会出现主动提出需求的用户,然后销售代表介入,经历资质审查流程,接着就有机会扩展该账户。多年来,我们设计和构建了整个漏斗及其流程,这也是所有这些运作的关键部分。但就像我说的,我认为在一些领域我们可以进一步理顺运作方式,并将其视为一个单一的整体。
Lenny: 我想对于外面的每家公司来说都是如此。
Varun Parmar: 是的。
未来的产品功能
Lenny: 在进入我们非常令人兴奋的闪电问答之前,也许还有最后一个问题。人们可以期待 Miro 即将推出哪些功能?
Varun Parmar: 大约一个月前,我们发布了 Miro AI,这是在生成式 AI 和大型语言模型等领域所有惊人工作背景下推出的。看到社区对我们发布的用例所展现出的热情,真的非常非常令人兴奋。因此,我们将在未来几周和几个月内完成最终的交付工作,并进行正式发布(general availability)。我认为这是一件大事,我们将在其中添加更多功能。就在今天,我们实际上宣布了一系列关于 Miro 如何用于团队例行事务和敏捷实践的深度增强与更新。现在你真的可以在 Miro 中进行回顾会议了,你可以开启一种私密模式,在回顾会议期间,当 Lenny 在输入他的反馈时,没有其他人能看到,然后一键点击就可以公开展示。我刚刚看到了一些反馈结果,它被评为人们心目中的头号功能。
此外还有一些更深层次的集成,比如将整个项目看板从 Jira 引入,开始在 Miro 中以一种有趣且协作的方式进行依赖关系映射,利用这种依赖关系映射连同项目看板,开始进行项目增量规划,这本质上就是正在发生的 Scrum of Scrums 或大型房间规划。我们在那里添加了一些非常出色的功能,这是在我们所做的冲刺故事点估算等更新的背景下推出的。现在作为平台一部分,有大量可用的功能和应用,允许你的整个团队在 Miro 中进行团队例行事务,你可以自动化某些事情,可以精简流程,你可以异步地完成某些事情,然后以同步的方式完成剩下的部分,所以我认为这也是一次重大更新。
闪电问答
Lenny: 太棒了。到此为止,我们已经进入了非常令人兴奋的闪电问答环节。我有六个问题要问你。准备好了吗?
Varun Parmar: 准备好了。
Lenny: 好的,开始吧。你向他人推荐最多的两三本书是什么?
Varun Parmar: 一本是,我很喜欢这本,Paul Kalanithi 写的《当呼吸化为空气》。这是那种真正感人的书,读到结尾你可能会热泪盈眶,但真的非常非常精彩。我们谈到了 Frank Slootman 的 AMPED,然后是 Satya Nadella 的《刷新》。我认为在哲学层面上,我们今天谈论的一些事情就是我在这些书中找到的灵感。
Lenny: 最近最喜欢的一部电影或电视节目是什么?
Varun Parmar: 《Ted Lasso》。我不知道它算不算近期的,但是——
Lenny: 它出了新季。
Varun Parmar: 对,我非常喜欢。我认为它传递了非常积极和令人振奋的信息。我认为演员的表演非常棒。它很幽默,角色塑造得很丰满,所以我认为总的来说看这部剧是一种享受,至少对我来说是这样。
Lenny: 你最喜欢问的面试问题是什么?
Varun Parmar: 我实际上会问一道数学题。对于面试过我的人,我有这么一道数学题,它是基于 Adobe 如何创建其首个 Creative Suite 捆绑包的。实际上,在收购 Macromedia 之后,我就是负责为首个 Creative Suite 制定定价和包装的团队成员之一。这是一道能让你非常快速了解人们解决问题能力的数学题。通常我会把这道题出给面试者。我已经出了,我不知道,七八百次了吧,所以我现在对人们花费的时间有了一个非常非常完善的正态分布标准,他们会在哪里卡住,而对于那些我录用的人,关于他们能够解决问题,我有什么证据表明他们使用了那个作为框架?所以那是我的最爱问题。
Lenny: 所以你是说,你已经将那些在解决这个问题时采取特定方式的人与他们的成功进行了回溯映射,并且你某种程度上发现这是他们表现的一个好信号?
Varun Parmar: 是的。不是直接的,但确实有相关性之类的。
Lenny: 太棒了。这是面试中最大的问题之一。你以为你在问这些令人惊叹的问题,而且它是个好信号,但你其实不知道。没有人会回过头来说,“哦,这个人很糟糕。这个人没有……”能在这一道题上获得这么多数据,真的很酷。还有两个问题。你在产品开发方式上做过的哪些相对微小的改变,对团队执行能力产生了巨大影响?
Varun Parmar: 我们谈到了其中一些,比如移除路障。我认为拥有“更快速、更高质量地提供巨大客户价值”这样的座右铭,其简洁性,而且它实际上是我们评估标准的一部分,是我们衡量自己等方式的一部分。所以我认为只是提出这些你可以让整个组织团结起来的简单概念,我认为这仍在进行中,但我相信它正在带来积极的成果。
Lenny: 最后一个问题。你最喜欢的 Miro 模板是什么?
Varun Parmar: 实际上是 FIFA 世界杯的那个。我对那个设计非常着迷。是的,它是最新的一个,但我想在回顾会议方面也有一堆模板,而且我想……就像你的模板一样。
Lenny: 太棒了。我们会把所有这些链接都放上去。Varun,这太精彩了。达到了我的预期甚至更多,你的团队和我认为的一样有趣和独特,我很兴奋人们能从你身上学到东西,我们会在节目笔记中与这期节目一起分享大量链接。最后两个问题,如果人们想联系你并了解更多,他们可以在哪里在线找到你?听众怎样才能帮到你?
结尾与联系方式
Varun Parmar: 谢谢你,Lenny。这很有趣。我很享受我们的交流。大家可以在 LinkedIn 上找到我。我想这可能是联系我的最好方式。我认为我可以向大家请求一两件事,一是如果你是现有的 Miro 用户,并且你用这个产品做了一些有趣的事情,我强烈鼓励你将其作为模板贡献到 Miroverse 中。有很多人在使用它,我们非常希望你能去那里贡献。第二件事是,我知道很多产品开发团队、产品经理和设计师都是你的粉丝,Lenny,所以这些人也是使用 Miro 的用户。如果我们能做些什么让产品变得更好,如果你觉得我们可以将平台扩展到哪些领域,我们很乐意听到你的声音,直接在 LinkedIn 上联系我,发私信或者在那里与我建立联系,是的,让我们知道。我们在这里是为了服务。
Lenny: 太棒了。Varun,再次感谢你的到来。
Varun Parmar: 谢谢你,Lenny。太棒了。
Lenny: 再见大家。非常感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这很有价值,你可以在 Apple Podcast、Spotify 或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅这个节目。另外,请考虑给我们打分或留下评论,因为这真的能帮助其他听众找到这个播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有过往的剧集或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期节目见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| AMPED | AMPED |
| Andre | Andre |
| Barbara | Barbara |
| Cornelius | Cornelius |
| Creative Suite | Creative Suite |
| Design Sprint | 设计冲刺(Design Sprint) |
| domains | domains |
| Elena Verna | Elena Verna |
| FigJam | FigJam |
| Figma | Figma |
| Frank Slootman | Frank Slootman |
| general availability | 正式发布(general availability) |
| high-touch | 高接触(high-touch) |
| Jake Knapp | Jake Knapp |
| Lenny | Lenny |
| Macromedia | Macromedia |
| Miro Talktrack | Miro Talktrack |
| Mironeers | Mironeers |
| Miroverse | Miroverse |
| Paul Kalanithi | Paul Kalanithi |
| PLG | PLG |
| pull request | 拉取请求 |
| Satya Nadella | Satya Nadella |
| Slack | Slack |
| streams | streams |
| three horizon | 三层面框架(three horizon) |
| traction | 牵引 |
| Varun Parmar | Varun Parmar |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)