How do you organize your data while you're working on the product?
Alexey Shashkov
73 replies
Howdy, fellow product makers!
How and where do you keep and organize all of your data (ideas, hypotheses, visions, results of tests, insights, extracted data from customer interviews and user researches, tasks, etc.) for your product?
Replies
![Collin Thompson](https://ph-avatars.imgix.net/962123/a5d4c9b4-0589-467f-a230-5334e99b2601.jpeg?auto=compress&codec=mozjpeg&cs=strip&auto=format&w=36&h=36&fit=crop)
Collin Thompson@techronin
I use google drive, mostly docs, and Airtable. I love airtable because you can literally make anything. I like to start with basic lists and tracking and then turn them into useful insights. eg. I might pipe all our Typeform responses into Airtable and then sort the data so that when I talk to the product team I have real insights and data to back up our product roadmap decision—which is also in Airtable. For product, I just make a list of items, with a description, a user flow, person responsible, what part of the stack, deadline, status, and link it to an epic or story and then we can track productivity across the team this way.
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@techronin Hello, Collin. I appreciate your replies under my discussions. I owe you one!
I like the idea of tryintrepid.com. I'm curious to know what's your key differentiator from your competitors like Monday etc.
I really love Google docs and Airtable too. And I'm curious what don't you love about that solutions? What missing?
@shashcoffe that's a super hard question to answer....do you have any ideas on how we could be more unique and different? who else do you see us competing with?
@shashcoffe sometimes I think products just do waaaaay too many things. I'm a fan of all in one solutions. I love them. Like, I hate switching in between 3-5 different tools just to make a solution for us internally, or for a consumer/business facing product, but sometimes when you buy a Swiss army knife you end up not using a bunch of functions that you still have to pay for. I think the company that gets it kinda right is Adobe and their creative suite. Like, you can get a bundle or you can get one-off apps that suit your needs-but when apps, or now super apps, bundle too much stuff it's like what do you do when you can do everything., I get paralysed. hahahah
@techronin Collin, I'm not using project management software, but I've tried a lot. Wrike, Asana, Jira, Monday, Basecamp.
I think that is to be a niche player is a good idea. For example, you can focus on one narrow segment like the early-stage founding team and do the best project management tool for them. That can be the key differentiator too.
How do you and your team manage your product to develop, improve and grow?
@techronin I totally understand you, Collin. I really like focused niche solutions, but sometimes I need a consolidated solution.
Can you tell me how you found your problem and came up with your current product idea>
I personally use Notion. You should defo check it out.
@iampascio Sure! I’m a big fan of Notion and use it every single day!
How exactly do you organize your product data in Notion? Is there a special structure?
I was using Google Drive + Docs for a long time but switched to Notion a few months ago and I just love it :)
Even though, I still reference google spreadsheets in my Notion pages sometimes...
@david_gregorian Hi, David. That makes sense. I use Google Spreadsheets + Notion too.
I'm just curious, how do you organize your data in Notion? Do you use a special template or is it chaotic?
@shashcoffe I usually have one main overview/summary/introduction page for each project which has a reference to all its connected subpages without a specific structure. No special template. I think it is more important to just be in the flow and document the process well.
@david_gregorian Absoutely agreed, David. I do that the similar way: One page for each project with subpages.
What do you miss (if anything) about this way?
@shashcoffe Currently I don't miss anything. How about you?
@david_gregorian Thanks for answering, David.
I feel like I don't have enough help organizing all my data in Notion, so I keep trying different templates, but I end up going back to my simple structure.
We've just recently started so, we've been using Google Drive. But we can definitely feel all the data piling up and are considering moving on to something better.
I see people mentioning Notion, but I'm also interested in seeing what other people recommend as well! :)
@theanshikasingh Hey, Anshika. Thank you for your reply. Can you tell me more about why you want to move on to another way? What’s wrong with Google Drive + Docs? What don’t you love about Google Drive?
@shashcoffe Hello Alexey, I'd say that it's mostly the fact that we're working on a few different products so, switching between them all could be a bit tedious. Plus, it's great for storing the larger finished files but not so much for writing smaller ideas, comments and mind mapping.
We use a combination of Miro (for customer interviews or mapping different opportunities to move a metric) and Coda (for everything else).
As we onboard our early adopters via 1-1 calls there's a ton of information, we've found that it's easier for us to collect these via post-its than fully documenting them on tables or doc pages.
@shashcoffe nice to meet you too, Alexey!
Good question. Not sure if it's a tool missing, but the sense-making process takes quite some time. And connecting the qualitative insights from calls with quantitative insights from product analytics (we use Mix Panel for this). Happy to share more on how we structure it if its helpful.
We use notion. I've set up a Gannt chart for all current tasks and I keep a separate table for the future tasks backlog.
@sofya_narbut Sofya, yeah, Notion is a cool tool for that tasks. Is there anything you miss?
@shashcoffe more blocks for teams, mostly... There are some downsides to notion I can deal with. Though I also use google sheets ,also helpful to store stuff, love it a lot.
@sofya_narbut Sofya, what do you mean about "more blocks for teams"?
And do you use any professional product management software?
@shashcoffe I meant that it would be lovely to have less strict limitations for team spaces. As for professional pm software, I don't use it at the moment, but I used to use Jira, it was quite alright.
@sofya_narbut Sophia, thank you for your answers! It was so helpful and curious to talk with you here.
@shashcoffe I use Miro - it's brilliant in that you can just grow and grow the document, and it really feels "alive". On the flipside, it's all too easy for it to grow into a sprawling mess, with no direction!
Have you tried it?
@nik_hazell Hey, Nik. Nice to see you under my comments again!
Yes, I use Miro too. I really love that tool, but it's not handy for writing long-form notes for me. For that reason, I use Notion + Miro + Google Spreadsheets.
How do you make your Miro-board doesn't turn into a sprawling mess with no direction?
@shashcoffe 👋 ha, it's becoming a bit of a habit!
I've found that through diligent use of frames, I can generally keep things under control, and make it easy to organise things.
For long form notes, I do still tend to use google docs, or slides - both of which have their plusses and minuses 😬
Over the years of working on many products, I realized that writing a ton of ideas, visions, and todos is pure BS.
you will end up with a huge pile of text that you can't bring to reality.
If you have an idea that is possible to apply in the next few days just do it no need to write an essay about it.
if it's not applicable in the near future forget about it. ideas are worthless!!!!
@hamedbaatour What a brilliant point! Thanks for that, Hamed!
I really like the idea of InTab.io. Styling websites without CSS should solve my problem when I'm building sites on top of Notion.
@hamedbaatour It's a pleasure for me.
Hamed, can you tell me how you came up with that idea and how you manage your product to develop, improve and grow?
Notion tables for official documentation that the team utilizes with content documents in Google drive for Operations work.
We also use Zoho projects for development organization.
Then for my personal notes... some messy combination of bullet points on Notepad, Notion, and Atom.
@henry_zhang3 Hello, Henry. I'm just wondering why you are using different solutions instead of one?
Google Docs. OMG, this is literally everything for me. Quick creation, simplicity, ability to share, edit and collaborate. The different types of documents you can create.
If it's something visual than definitely Figma
@pablo_palmitas Hey Pablo. Thanks for your powerful reply.
Is there anything that you don't love about Google Docs?
I am building something that helps you organize your customer data - would you love to see a demo once It's live and shares some feedback? thanks in advance
@gibin_michael Surely! What does your product do?
@shashcoffe ow cool so u can essentially connect my app with any lead generation forms or sign ups flows and u will have the birds eye of the customer - less questions more data - sort of like "clear bit forms" - but comes with more features and affordable - let us connect over email or twitter ? what u think ? i mean i have lot more to share with you :P happy holidays :)
@gibin_michael Michael, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. Much appreciated!
Yes, let's have a Zoom call and chat a little. You can DM me on Twitter with your available timeslots: @shashcoffe
- ideas: pen and papers, slides
- visions: same
- extracted data from customer interviews and user researches, insights: slides and Miro, see here https://ferrucc.io/posts/buildin...
- tasks: GitHub and gdoc
- feature requests: https://blog.june.so/how-to-mana...
hope it helps!
@enzo_avigo Howdy, Enzo! I'm really glad to see you in the comments. Much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing that. I grab your and Ferrucio's systematic approach to my product work. Thanks for the templates in that article! That's really helpful that you added your own examples!
Enzo, I'm curious, have you already tried any Product Management Software like Productboard, and why don't you use it in June?
@shashcoffe the one thing that I learned PM-ing is that you don't need fancy tools to visualize your roadmap, and you need something very flexible (as flexible as your brain).
A slide is way enough and this is what the best companies in the world do. Smaller one (or less experimented ones) tend to think a tool can solve an organizational problem, they rarely do. Instead you need to put some intentionality and work into collecting, digesting and organizing feedback. With dedicated tools you may save a few minutes here and there, but you're going to lose that time learnings the tools, so its usually not a good investment of your energy.
hope it helps!
@enzo_avigo Totally it helps. Thank you again, Enzo!
Can you tell me how do you do customer interviews?
Well notion first of all, but also have been looking into getting a NAS..
Hey! I use Google products for most of my work :)
@antonovna Hello, Alina! 😊
What do you miss about Google products in your work?
@shashcoffe Telegram.
I create private channel for each product I am working on.
I have created custom software that helps me with that. It's nothing fancy but it does what it's supposed to do. :)
@tsvetanakos Can you tell me more about what that custom software does for you?
Good question!
I use the Google suit! Gdrive, doc and sheet!
@roy_outgrow Hi, Roy. Thanks for the reply!
How exactly do you use these tools to work on a project? Can you tell me more about it?
I personally (for my side projects at byxyz.net) love using Trello and Google Docs to keep track of all the tasks, research, and information. And we use Notion at our startup (gosocial.io), it's super cool, great for collaboration, and makes my life easy.
@rajat_dangi1 Hey, Rajat! I really love Notion too. But why are you using Trello + Google Docs instead of Notion alone?
@shashcoffe I use free version of Trello and Google docs for my side projects because these are free tools and easy/great for collaboration.
@rajat_dangi1 Now I get it. That makes sense.
What stage are you at right now with gosocial.io?
@shashcoffe We are currently at growth stage and generating revenue too. Also building the essentials parts of the platform to make it self-serve (such as creator studio, from where our users can create their community, host event, manage discussion channels, etc).
@rajat_dangi1 Rajat, what is the most challenging part of this stage?
Have you tried dovetail? https://dovetailapp.com/
I like Notion as a huge amount of other people in the replies but to be specific about having a great research repository, since trying dovetail there's no better way to have everything stored and centralized at the same place. Including tagging, taxonomies, data, insights, nuggets...
@jordisquare Oh yeah! Jordi, that’s what I’m looking for! Thank you for sharing that.
How many times do you use that product?
@shashcoffe Glad to hear! I use it a lot and it works wonders, specifically for storing all user interviews data to then review them with a great level of granularity.
@jordisquare I’m discovering it for myself. Thank you again.
Jordi, I’m curious – Is there anything you miss about Dovetail?