Why You’ll (Eventually) Need a Product Manager at Your Startup
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Why You’ll (Eventually) Need a Product Manager at Your Startup Rich Mironov Sportsbet, Melbourne 4 Dec 2014 © Rich Mironov, 2014
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Transcript of Why You’ll (Eventually) Need a Product Manager at Your Startup
Why You’ll (Eventually) Need a Product Manager at Your Startup
Rich Mironov
Sportsbet, Melbourne 4 Dec 2014
© Rich Mironov, 2014
• Veteran product manager/exec/strategist • Business models, agile, organizing product teams
• 6 startups as “product guy” or CEO • The Art of Product Management • First Product Camp, first agile product owner track, blogging since 2001
ABOUT RICH MIRONOV
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• What do big-company product managers do? • Why (small) startups don’t have them • Q&A / Issues Backlog
AGENDA
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market information, priorities, requirements, roadmaps, epics,
user stories, backlogs, personas, MRDs…
product bits
strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence
budgets, staff, targets
Field input, Market feedback
Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets & Customers Development
Marketing& Sales
Executives
Product Management
WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO (AT A BIG COMPANY)?
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5
WE CAN PRODUCT
MANAGE OURSELVES
CEO CTO
Dev Dev/UI
Dev/Build
STARTUP DON’T NEED ORG CHARTS OR ‘FORMAL’ PROCESSES
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Pitch, funding, biz model, vision, BD, sales, markeRng, PR, legal, office space, payroll…
Architecture, code, hiring, customer
pitches, hiring, code, resolve tech disputes…
Front end, code, UX/UI, mobile client, code, “how it
works,” user support
Back end, code, cloud, data & APIs, code, security, code, performance, code…
Code, repository, build, code, backup, plaXorms, testbed…
• For those at small startups (1-8 people), what product (management) issues are you seeing?
• Those at 9-24 people, what issues?
• 25+?
DISCUSSION
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SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS GROW
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CEO
Mktg Sales
US EMEA
ROW Bus Dev
COO
RecruiRng
Finance
Eng
Team1 Team2
SysOps
20+ PEOPLE FORM AN ORGANIZATION
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• Departments • N2 employee conversations • Current customers expectations • Multiple deals from sales/BD • Focus on immediate revenue • What’s the status of x
(and can we ship it NOW)?
PROBLEMS AT SCALE
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GOOD IDEA TRAIN
• Pulls into product station every day • From customers, sales, CEO, eng, competitors, surveys…
• Unloads hundreds of “good ideas” each day • Most are not new, inconsistent, not worth displacing current work
• Eng can implements 2-3 good ideas per week
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My urgency somehow creates resources • “CEO says it’s really important.” • “We already promised it to a big prospect.” • “How hard could it be? Probably
10 lines of code.” • “We’ve been talking about this for months.” • “Engineering should be more productive.”
MAGICAL BACKLOG THINKING
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• Requests always >> capacity • Fulfilling all requests is bad • Can’t A/B test everything • Bottom-up feature lists
don’t create strategy
PRIORITIZATION LAWS OF GRAVITY
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1. One backlog despite pressures and promises 2. Represent customers/users 3. Details and facts: what does it really do today? 4. Curate the product/target segment 5. Work the issues,
speak the truth
SOMEONE NEEDS TO MANAGE THE PRODUCT DAY-BY-DAY
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• Get more (of the right things) done • Lightest/leanest tools, fewest meetings • Templates don’t
replace judgment • Be a mensch, not
(just) an MBA
“JUST ENOUGH” PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
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CONTACT Rich Mironov, CEO Mironov Consulting 233 Franklin St, Suite #308 San Francisco, CA 94102
RichMironov
@RichMironov
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