I have been asked this many times - What does a Product Manager do? How to be a successful PM? How should the team be structured? Here's an attempt from a recent talk that I gave on Product Management.

1. Cloud Strategy Meeting
O c t o b e r X X 2 0 1 5
Sandeep Grover, SVP Global Ecommerce

2. 2
Agenda
• What is Product Management
• Do we need it
• Startup vs Large Fintech
• How is it different for B2C vs B2B
• How to be a successful Product Manager
• How to organize to get the most out of it

3. 3
My Background
Work Experience:
• More than 15 years of Experience – Engineering, Product, General Management
• 3 Years at Amazon.com leading the Risk/Fraud Team
• 3 Years at GoDaddy.com leading Products for Small Businesses
• Currently, SVP Global E-Commerce at Feedzai, a machine learning based Risk
Management Startup
Education:
• MBA, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, US
• B-Tech Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India

4. Cloud Strategy Meeting
O c t o b e r X X 2 0 1 5
Software is eating the world!

5. 5
What a Product Manager is not?

6. 6
Product Management connects the Outside w/ Inside
Product
Management
Market
• Current/
Prospective
Customers
• Competition
Development
Team
• Engineers, QA,
Data Science
• Prod Marketing

7. 7
Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer and create
shareholder value for an organization

8. 8
Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer and create
shareholder value for an organization
• Customer can be Internal (Other teams in a
company) or External
• Lots of Customers (B2C) or Few (Enterprise)

9. 9
Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer and create
shareholder value for an organization
• Organization can be Small (startup) or Large
(Big bank)
• Any Industry Vertical (Internet or Fintech)

10. 10
Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer to create
shareholder value for an organization
• Customer has Pain Points but they may or may not know about it
• Customer will most likely not know how to solve that pain point
• If you ask them, they will give you a narrow solution
• Product Manager validates and identifies the problem at hand
• Product Manager will decide if the problem needs to be solved

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Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer to create
shareholder value for an organization
• Solution - could be a product or service
• Product Manager will use various tools to find the best possible solution
• B2C = User Surveys, Usability tests, A/B tests, analyze data
• B2B = Talk to Customers, Sales, Customer Reps, Look at competition,
Research Reports
• Product Manager will quantify the key metrics that the solution will drive:
• Could be user engagement, revenue, profit, more users or even making
the engineers more productive

12. 12
Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer to create
shareholder value for an organization
• Product Manager will be the champion and drive launches
• Work with Engineers/QA/Technical Writer/UX to build a solution that meet the
requirements
• Prioritize and make sure the most important stuff is delivered first
• Communicate Progress to the Executive Stakeholders
• Work with Legal to ensure compliance
• Train the Sales people or Customer service people
• Build and Manage the brand of the product

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Product Management
Product Management = Deliver innovative solutions on behalf of a customer to create
shareholder value for an organization
• Product Manager’s role is to create shareholder value by:
• Prioritizing the right projects for the product and the company that would
result in:
• Getting more users, retaining them, Generating more value per customer
• Increasing topline, bottomline etc.
• Driving Partnerships, Proposals, answering RFPs

14. 14
Product Manager: Examples of what they can do
Product Managers is a strategic and business oriented role, focused on delivering
solutions to Market Needs:
PM:
Identify
opportunities
that meet
Market needs
PM:
Launch
Products into
the Market;
Find Product
Market Fit
PM:
Improve and
Grow the
product line to
scale
PM:
Oversee
Existing
Products in the
Market
PM:
Wind down
products that
no longer meet
Market Needs

15. 15
Product Manager: How they will do it?
• Competitive
Analysis
• Usability test
• User Surveys
• Conferences
• Talk to
Competition
Customers
• MVP Launch
• Get Early
Feedback
• Write Business
Requirements
• Fail fast
• Maintain and
track Metrics
• Growth Hacking
• A/B Tests
• Backlog Building
• Documentation
• Metrics tracking
• Backlog
grooming
• Internal Exec
Reviews
• End of Life
Products
• Work with
Legal

16. 16
Product Manager : Summary
Lead Teams
Assess
Opportuniti
es
Maintain/
Wind down
Products
Drive
Launches
Market:
Customers
Internal Teams

17. 17
Product Manager Job/Titles can vary
• Product Managers can sometimes be called:
• Program Manager (Internal facing product and is more execution focused
working with several cross company teams)
• Technical Product Manager (PM in a Platform team dealing with APIs/SDKs)
• Product Marketing Manager (PM focused on Go to Market for a white labeled
product)
• Role and Responsibility can vary by:
• Industry/Company
• B2C vs B2B
• Startup vs Mature
• Internal vs External Customers

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Example of a PM in B2C Companies

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Example of a PM helping Internal Teams
• At a Large company, four different teams are integrating with some code base at
the function level – the team is maintaining 3 different version of code bases
• A savvy PM might realize that an API might better serve his clients
• Starts socializing this with internal teams to get feedback
• Teams like the idea but resist the change as there is work involved on their side as
well
• Savvy PM builds a business case for it quantifying the cost/benefit for the company
• Garners executive support for the project
• Proposes timelines, executes and communicates progress to all stakeholders

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Checklist to become a good PM
What needs to be done and Why?
• Make sure you are solving the biggest impact problem
• Articulate the Value and Vision early on
• Gather Exec Support early on to make sure its funded
• Tools – Hear the Customers (directly, indirectly), Analyze Data, Don’t neglect Competition
Leading Teams:
• Cause the team to have a shared understanding of the Product – this should included extended
team such as Marketing, Legal, Sales, BD
• Give People Problems/Questions/Hypotheses (What and Why) rather than Solutions (How)
• Make yourself redundant
• People should see you as the CEO of the Product
Execution:
• Be there to answer any questions team may have on a daily basis
• Fail Fast

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How to Organize to get the most out of PM

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How to Organize to get the most out of PM
BU Leader
Product
Management
Engineering Operations Marketing Sales
UX

23. 23
Q&A
Thank You