Top Tasks: A How-to Guide

by Gerry McGovern

Essence of Top Tasks is a prioritized list of what matters most to customers. You then continuously improve these top tasks based on evidence of customers trying to complete them. Developed as a result of 15 years of research and practice. Implemented by some of the world’s largest Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, IBM, Google, European Union, Toyota, Tetra Pak, and hundreds more. More than 300,000 customers have participated in Top Tasks studies in over 40 countries and 30 languages.

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction

222 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 5, 2018

Reviews

[Andrea Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I watched a YouTube video and read a few blog posts about Top Tasks before picking up this book (at an admittedly great price of $6 CDN). I had some questions about how Top Tasks mapped to Jobs to be Done and hoped this book would dig into the strategy of identifying and prioritizing users most critical activities.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn much more from this book than what I'd already seen elsewhere, and my lingering questions remained.

I struggle with the idea that you should group tasks as nouns. What? "Pricing" or "Prices" is not a task. It's not something someone is trying to get done.

If Top Tasks is just about content organization or navigation, fine. But I feel as though it's somewhat being packaged as something larger than it is.

[Ashraf Bashir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Super basic, focusing on useless details like the 10 pages dedicated to when should you use brackets in collecting users tasks (flows) while collecting it from customers in excel sheets! or the huge amount of pages dedicated to how to group similar tasks (use cases) by adding extra column of overlap! Or the huge section where the author repeats himself again talking about navigation menus telling very basic ideas like do what you promise in links' texts (or really, i was expecting we should do something else contrary to the text just to confuse end user!)

Not recommended for any product manager or any software engineering manager. It may fit fresh graduates or junior product managers starting the first day in their career as trainee, but not something really useful for any experienced manager

[Cristen]

Good book, practical, with many examples to help you understand.

[Andrew Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great reminder that information architecture is still the most important part of user/customer experience.

[Raili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed & practical

Very practical and helpful book about top tasks analysis. Guides you through the process from start to finish with plenty of examples. Recommend!