Product Management: What everyone says and what it is actually- Chetan Channa

Agenda

What does a Product Manager Do ?

The role of Product Manager

The role of product manager is to define, develop, deploy & maintain product and services that :-

▪ Provide more value than the competition

▪ Help build a sustainable competitive advantage

▪ Deliver measurable benefit to the business

Let’s talk about value for a bit

Let’s do this quick survey

1. The more features you have, the more likely you are to have the things that any individual customer cares about. Customers expect products to keep getting better, and the way a product keeps getting better is by adding more features.

2. Customers buy products because of the needs that the product fulfills and the problems the product solves. Features in and of themselves are useless — they exist to fill a need.

Features and Values are NOT synonymous The job of the product manager is to identify the minimal possible product that meets the objectives and provides the desired user experience — minimizing time to market, user and implementation complexity.

You as a Product Manager need to say “no” and ask “why”. If you are scared of saying “No” just say “Given time and money everything is possible”

The role of Product Manager

The role of product manager is to define, develop, deploy & maintain product and services that :-

▪ Provide more value than the competition

▪ Help build a sustainable competitive advantage

▪ Deliver measurable benefit to the business

Now let’s talk about ‘Measurable’ benefitsYou would be surprised to see how many organizations do not have proper analytics & dashboard in place. They would only have targets for high level metrics like revenue.

So it’s important that you analyze, build and publish metrics you are focussing on with every feature you launch

Now let’s talk about Requirements

What does this Carpenter want ?

How the product manager sees it ?

▪ The carpenter has a problem. He needs a hole in the wall. Now he could use a nail and a hammer or a drill. But then there are multiple factors with which the carpenter is concerned.

▪ Speed

▪ Accuracy

▪ Safety

▪ Ease of using

▪ Reliability

▪ Price

▪ Product Managers define the problem criteria fully and this is one of the major skills which a product manager should have.

But…there’s a problem

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford

Product Managers define the problem criteria fully and this is one of the major skills which a product manager should have. Eliciting hidden requirements is one of the most important skill, a product manager should have. If you can get down to ‘real’ requirements, consider your job 50% done

Let’s talk about Strategies & Roadmaps

Focussing on metrics would only give you short term benefits. Instead focus on value. Use roadmap as a tool for saying No to others.

And for you as a product manager, the strategy at most of the times is getting shit done. Prioritization

Talking about Roadmaps – How to ?

Feature UVsReturn Visitors

Reviews

Score

Weight 10 4 5 60

Deals Implementation 4 5 0 60

Social Integration on Site 3 4 0 46

Establishments SRP Redesign 2 2 0 28

Restrobar Management 1 2 0 18

Emailers Enhancements 3 3 0 42

New City Launch 5 4 0 66

Review/Rating Process Re-design 1 2 3 33

Gamification 1 4 4 46

Referrer Program 4 3 0 52

Let’s talk about Stakeholders now - Developers

▪ Developers – They know the ins and outs of product. Product managers gather requirements and communicate to engineering what they need to develop

▪ Reality Check - Developers know the ins and outs of product and will develop what they want to irrespective of what is communicated to them

Let’s talk about Stakeholders now - Marketing

▪ Marketing – They craft the messaging. Product Managers craft the content that marketing needs to build the campaign on.

▪ Marketing will launch a campaign and say whatever they want to irrespective of what is communicated to them.

And my favourite - Sales

▪ Sales – They know how to sell the product. Product Managers are focused on market needs whereas sales are focused on specific customers need.

▪ Sales will sell whatever features they want to make their quota irrespective of what is communicated to them.

In the end, this is what every PM should do

▪ Communicate everything

▪ Document everything

▪ Listen to everyone

▪ Question everyone

▪ Measure everything

▪ Be good with everyone

▪ Be right & not good to succeed

Thanks