What is product management?

Let me start with what it’s not: Asking customers about what you need to build Writing detailed specifications Creating prototypes and wireframes Assigning tasks to developers Verifying and accepting the work of others Obsessing over velocity, deadlines, and roadmaps Acting like the mini-CEO of product If your job title is a Product Manager and you are doing any of the above, please read Product Manager vs Project Manager vs Product Owner and schedule 1:1 with your boss asap. The items listed above are following the project management mindset – inherently nothing wrong with that, but the world has changed in the past decades and product-led companies approach product management in a slightly different way. The old approach is all about: focusing on the outputs (shipping features or new software versions) command & control leadership style (top-down roadmaps, PMO herding the cats) inability to trust (“If I give them freedom, they will name the customer-facing element abcd”) fear of the unknown (trying to identify all dependencies upfront, if something gets skipped or omitted, once it pops up it causes delays or scope reduction) etc. We are not doing that here! So, what are we doing? First and foremost – understanding the customer, their problems, needs and desires Understanding the market and the business in-depth Collaborating closely with engineers, designers and data analysts – members of our product team I’ll make a short pause here – as a Product Manager, your main goal is to tie the following four key things together: value we bring to the customer, technical feasibility, high usability and business viability. We need to make sure we solve customers’ problems and bring value to them but we also need to make sure those solutions work for our business (and make us money, which is almost always the ultimate goal). We need to make sure our ideas are technically feasible (which is waaaay easier if you have empowered tech team you can rely on) but also highly usable (no one likes complicated solutions to simple problems, right?) We do all this by: focusing on the outcomes – we don’t stop when new feature is released, we iterate until it solves the core problem (in fast paced environments, we often have to follow 80:20 approach – with 20% of total effort we should achieve 80% of the desired outcome and we move onto the next thing) having empowered leadership style – we give our teams problems to solve and they shape our roadmap by proposing solutions (which we then prioritize using product metrics) building autonomous teams – we turn the ship around (make sure you watch this 10 min video!) we embrace the unknown and double down on product discovery we experiment to validate assumptions – fail fast, fail often but also choose your battles wisely Questions every Product Manager should be asking If you catch yourself asking what? and when? more often than why? and how?, you might be stuck in a feature factory. In a product-led environment, these are the questions every product manager should be continuously asking: Why are we developing this thing? Why do we need to develop it right now? Who are we developing this for? What makes our product special? How does this fit product vision? How does this fit company strategy? What does success look like for this? How can we tell if it’s successful? What do our customers truly need or want? How will this affect our customers and users? How will this help our business? Can we just buy something like this instead of building it? How can we make sure our customers will love it? Will our customers know how to use it? Can we actually build this with the technology we have? How can we get it to the market? Do we have the right channels? Should we even do this? Are there any ethical issues? What are the biggest risks? How can we test them? What does the data tell us? How can we learn the most with the least effort? What else could go wrong? What’s holding us back? What’s the one most important thing that could help us in the long run? Have I explained the vision and strategy clearly? How can I do better at this? What should I stop worrying about because I can’t control it? Have I asked my teammates, boss, and customers for feedback lately? What am I good at? What should I do more of? What should I stop doing? What’s the one most important skill I should learn next? Further reading check out this video of Steve Jobs during 1997 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Pay attention to how he answers the provocative question and redirects the discussion avoiding potential conflict situation but also focus on his approach to innovation – start with the customer and work backwards to technology instead of creating shiny solutions and then trying to sell them. at the exact same year, Jeff Bezos shared a very similar philosophy in his letter to the shareholders, where the first of his approach is to relentlessly focus on the customers after every post it’s a good practice to go one step back and see where it fits in the big picture – review once again the [Product Management Mind Map] if you haven’t already, check out What is Product Discovery? and if you have, review the Index and choose your next topic to dive in deeper 😉