Sept, 2017 presentation by Mike Goos, 20 year veteran of product management in the Silicon Valley who has led product teams at Shutterfly, AOL and GeoCities (acquired by Yahoo). This information is for people new to product management or considering a career change who want to learn what it takes to become a great tech PM.
2. Former Sr. Director of PM at Shutterfly
Angel investor in BeamAuthentic (IoT)
Former advisor to Box (pre-IPO)
20 years of product management and UX
2
4. Product Manager’s Role
The 3 Questions
Functional Skills
Domain Expertise
Taking Ownership
Personal Gap Analysis
Michelle & Maurice
Your own
Tools
Training
4
5. What is our product?
Who is it for?
Why is it valuable?
5
6. Gathering Requirements
Writing User Stories
Grooming a Backlog
Listening to Feedback
Analyzing Data
Prioritizing Features
UnderstandingYourTarget Market
Identifying Under-served Customer Needs
Writing a MVP Document
InfluencingTeam Members
Measuring KPIs Objectively
6
7. Market Category
Examples:
eCommerce, Mobile, Social, Games, FinTech, AR
Target Market
Customer interactions (e.g., sales, biz dev,
customer support)
Primary/secondary research (e.g., product
marketing, business analytics)
7
9. Entire pie is owned
by product team
Each slice is equally
important (and delicious)
You own a piece
All pieces required
Each piece highlighted
per phase of process
9
10. Entire pie is owned
by product team
Each slice is equally
important (and delicious)
You own a piece
All pieces required
Each piece highlighted
per phase of process
10
Eng
Des
PM
QA
CS
Mkt
14. Product management pillars
Marketing
Technical
Business
Communication Style
Relevant for all experience levels
14
15. Marketing
Segment vs. Category
Size and rate of growth
Direct/indirect competitors
Points of Differentiation
Positioning/Benefits
Technical
Stack
Trends
Performance
Business
Business Cases
Revenue Model
Pricing
Make/Buy/Partner
Legal Environment
Communication Style
Internal/external audiences
Written vs. Spoken
Executives vs.Team
15
16. Previous role:
Market research analyst
Current role:
Product manager for an
eCommerce company
Current score:
Marketing: B+
Technical: C
Business: B
Communication Style: A
16
17. Previous role:
Sr. Sales Engineer
Current role:
Product Lead for
enterprise SaaS company
Current score:
Marketing: C-
Technical: A
Business: B-
Communication Style: B-
17
18. Define the PM pillars for yourself
Marketing
Technical
Business
Communication Style
Choose any grading system
Record a benchmark for each pillar
Set realistic goals for future improvement
Quarterly
Annually
Option: Share personal gap analysis with your
manager and use for performance evaluations
18
20. Creation
MS Office/365
Google Docs
Lo-Fi: Balsamiq, Marvel
Hi-Fi: InVision, Flinto
Collaboration
Whiteboards
Google Docs
Slack
Lunch
20
21. Books
The Lean Product Playbook
Hooked
The Product Book
Groups
SF PM Meetup
Lean Product Meetup
Classes
Product School
MindThe ProductWorkshop
Mentor
Your manager
A colleague
21
22. Posts (e.g., blogs, news feeds,Twitter, LI)
Good ProductTeam/Bad ProductTeam
Inspired by 1996 posting (Good PM/Bad PM) from
Ben Horowitz when he was Director of PM at
Netscape
By, Marty Cagan
▪ Author of Inspired: How to Create Products
Customers Love
https://svpg.com/good-product-team-bad-
product-team/
22