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The Mom Test

I'm really happy that The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick has become a staple of Product Management. It's a simple but powerful truth for Product Managers.  Interviewing customers and prospects is an accepted convention.  Staying in the problem space "falling in love with the problem" is critical. The issue I've seen firsthand is that the way we change modes from interviewing into selling is just natural. I think of all product management this might be the most important one. Building the right landing page or user journey is nothing if you haven't really validated the problem you're trying to solve.

There's two core truths 

  1. Our own biases to sell our own solution(idea) will come through in questions unless we're very careful 
  2. People in general are nice and don't want to tell you that you have a bad idea

This book has great conversational examples of people slipping into selling over and over. It gives you great examples of how to prevent falling into that trap. How you phrase questions, how you follow up are all opportunities to fall into that trap. 

This book helps you but also to determine when evaluating second hand feedback. When the salesperson tells you customerX will absolutely buy if we just do Y you can check the recording  

There's some great PM books like Inspired by Marty Cagan, Lean Product Playbook, and Crossing the Chasm. If you read just one book on Product Management, I think this is the one.



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