Featured Articles
The Product Manager vs. The Strategist
Product begins with the what, strategy with the how, says Julia Mitelman.
In Summary: Product connects customer needs with business goals. The direction can come from the top (PMs execute on executives’ visions) or from the bottom (PMs weave features into marketable stories).
Strategy considers the external and internal landscape to identify market gaps and opportunities, enabling the company to compete.
As competitors catch up and customer expectations change, Product Managers evolve their products as they search for their most relevant needs. As customer expectations change, strategists continuously search for new ways to gain the edge. Flexibility and adaptability are key to both roles.
With very few exceptions, most tech companies excel at either product or strategy. When the two come together, real breakthrough success occurs.
Making Product
Applying Leverage as a Product Manager
Be impactful, says Shopify's Brandon Chu.
In Summary: Product Managers have lots of choices about what to do each day, all of which produce some positive output. Developing awareness of where they have leverage is critical to their long term impact.
Vision and Strategy are foundational. They provide the direction, the inspiration and enable a group of people to execute as a team. Scope and Backlog are optimisations. They accelerate progress towards a known destination.
Both are important, but going faster in the wrong direction is far worse than going slower in the right one.
When prioritising focus, a PM should first ask themselves if they’ve built a solid foundation for their team to operate in. If not, that’s where they need to start.
Product Management in a Driverless World
Christine Deakers hits the road with a panel of product experts to discuss the challenges of managing driverless products.
In Summary: Very soon, we'll need to think of the car as a platform, not a product. Platforms will need to position themselves somewhere on the spectrum of premium vs. bare bones services. Are we the iOS or the Android of driverless cars?
'Apps' on the platform could still be software (like music or films) but they could also be physical features like having a training bike in the car for workouts.
Most Product Managers today have never worked on a product where 'failure' of the product meant someone might be killed. Upholding safety must be the number one concern for all PMs who will need to manage user anxiety and train the passengers of the future.
With self-driving cars, you’re not designing for the driver, you’re designing for the passenger only. The PMs of the future will need interior design skills as the layout of the car will reflect a passenger’s requested experience.
Planning Product Discovery
Product discovery work is often straight forward and the Product Team proceeds quickly to delivery. But, for certain efforts, true problem solving is necessary, says SVPG's Marty Cagan.
In Summary: It's vital for Product Teams to identify the big risks that need to be tackled. In Marty's experience, teams tend to focus mainly on tackling technology risks – especially performance or scale - or usability risks. But it's important to consider the broader risk spectrum.
For instance, there is value risk – do the customers actually want this particular problem solved? - as well as stakeholder risk: does our solution works for the different parts of the company?
Imagine the Facebook Product Team tasked with tackling the problem of fake news. There are tangible technical solutions but broader issues as well. Who gets to define truth? Is it appropriate for Facebook to take on that role? And how does all of this mesh with Mark's product vision?
Discovery is critical to coming up with solutions that work not just for your customers, but for your company as well.
The User as Hero!
Start with the story, not the Product.
In Summary: Product Managers have traditionally discussed products in terms of solving problems. But in a hyper-competitive world it’s no longer enough to simply solve a functional problem. You need to understand your user’s story.
For Product Managers, using 'Jobs to be Done' shifts focus away from features to the outcomes users can expect from using the product. It also transforms one’s understanding of the competitive landscape. For instance, Netflix competes against sharing a bottle of wine, not just other television channels.
UX Designer Donna Lichaw encourages product developers to 'storymap' their products against the classic 'narrative arc' of a novel or Hollywood film. She reminds us that it's our job to tell the customer how our product will help them become a hero.
In the midst of the mania for AI, ML and neural networks, it’s important to remember that they are ‘just’ technologies. There is no human story yet. It’s important to start with a story, one in which your user is the hero.
Designing Product
What Product Managers need to know about Service Design
Don't just chase 'customer pain points', pay attention to internal organisational experiences, says Megan Erin Miller..
In Summary: If you find terms like 'Customer Journey Map' and 'Service Design Blueprint' hard to distinguish, then this thorough, well illustrated piece by Megan will answer your questions.
Journey mapping is about a 'front stage' lens through which to better understand and empathise with the customer’s experience. Blueprinting is tying the 'backstage' or behind-the-scenes of the business to the customer’s experience.
Beware: your Product Team might be losing time, money and employee moral trying to maintain a great customer experience with inefficient and painful internal processes.
New Features start with 3 Questions
Julie Zhou on how Facebook designs products that solve real people problems.
In Summary: Returning to Stanford after 10 years, Julie describes how the product design process at Facebook starts with three questions: What people problem are we solving? How do we know it’s a real problem? And how will we know if we’ve solved it?
By answering those fundamental questions at the outset, Julie explains, product designers ensure they stay focussed on urgent problems for users (rather than the business) and develop features that truly enhance user satisfaction.
Product Quote of the Month
“If a customer is hurling complaints, this is good news for a Product Manager.”
Anger shows product love, says Aha's Brian de Haaff.
“We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost”
Nokia's CEO is living proof that Clay Christensen was right.
