In this talk, Alex discussed some parts of being a Product Manager, more specifically, how to be as effective as possible and the importance of learning by your mistakes.
3. +5000
Alumni Graduated
across 14
Campuses
· San Francisco
· Silicon Valley
· New York
· Los Angeles
· Santa Monica
· Orange County
· Austin
· Boston
· Boulder
· Chicago
· Denver
· Seattle
· Toronto (Canada)
· London (UK)
12. Moving From Engineering To Product
ManagementI’m an Engineer (by trade)
Built companies (telecom, B2C)
Started in B2B Product Management
Was hyped by B2C Product Management
Now in Enterprise Product Management
Killing my “entrepreneurial bug” by investing
13. Thoughts are my own and should never be
taken seriouslyThis is me, as an individual, expressing thoughts and beliefs,
telling stories and sharing passion about building great
products with people that care.
Not of my company. (Past or present)
15. How to break-in?
Aside from the academics (MBA) path, most people I know:
- Joined as an established subject domain expert
- Took ownership over end-customer facing assets
- Assumed very technical, inbound role
* me
17. #1. INBOUND and OUTBOUND
Product Impact
Quality
Usability
Adoption
Supportability
Delivery
Backlog
Velocity
vs
Market Research
Positioning
Packaging
Launch
Revenue
Product Direcion
Field Enablement
Analysts
18. #2. Product Agility
1. Expensive to release (eg. less of iterative, testing-based development >
more of getting things “right” and as close to the requirements,
because the cost of new release is heavily taxed for enterprise)
2. Multistep adoption (eg. Business Processes > Integrations >
Migrations > Enablement > Compliance)
3. Long time to kill (eg. Support (different tracks for support contracts)
> Migrations > Expansion (per and post-EOL) > Renewals > Platform-
as-a-Service > Field Alignment)
19. #3. Productization vs Customization
1. Professional Services is a necessary evil
2. Excess product customization leads to burnout
3. Customization culture is damaging for product features
targeting larger markets
Professional
Services Goals
Product
Obstacles
20. #4. Limited Access to the Front Line
Your product penetrates multiple user
personas (Sponsor, Buyer, User, Champion,
Reviewer, ...) for the single account.
You, as PM, are “shielded” from the
customer interfacing with multiple layers of
“relationship and communication
facilitation” managers, and subject to a bias
in user study and gathering requirements
process.
21. #5. Build Product but Sell Vision
Efforts: How to Build > What to Build
Result: Great Technology < Vision of the Future
It is a lost deal :(
Vision & Best Practices
This is what customer buys
22. #6. Monetization (is real)
1. Pricing is high
2. Sensitive indirect monetization (can’t “sell your customer”
without consent!)
3. Pricing and packaging can be complex
23. #7. Biased Customer Insights
1. Limited opportunities to collect customer insights
2. Data bias - millions of signals vs a handful of data points
from your customers
24. #8. Heavy on Stakeholder Management
1. Build relationships by exchanging information, set
expectations, share culture
2. Over-communicate
3. Align with cross-functional teams agendas
4. Be present all the way through your product lifecycle
25. #9. Competition
1. Harder to get hands on with the
competitor’s product
2. Befriend market research firms: Gartner,
Forrester, MGI
3. Magic Quadrant: the Good (common
denominator), the Bad (black box, under
representment), and the Evil (bias
towards investors, rather than buyers)
26. #10. Tolerance to Ambiguity
Ambiguity is a “doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention”.
You are expected to:
1. effectively cope with change
2. shift gears and correct course
3. make a decision without having the
total picture
4. comfortably handle risk and uncertainty
27. #11. “NO” HAS ITS PRICE
1. “Listen, listen, understand, know” before rejecting anything
2. Don’t play zero-sum game
3. Don’t fall into tailor-made product features
4. Demonstrate the value without disruption of the product roadmap
5. Be systematic and transparent in your decision making
6. Be wary of the real price of rejection and temptation to avoid
rejection
28. #12. A Life Thereafter
What’s next?
1. Exposure to a larger set of inefficiencies = product validation
and market fit
2. Harder to enter markets and opportunities
3. Network building to team up vs. build something user wants
and they will come
4. Hiring bias: enterprise vs consumer
30. CONSUMER v. ENTERPRISE: WHOM DO YOU
SELL?
Consumer PM builds a product
to be bought and used by a user.
Enterprise PM builds a product
to be bought by a buyer and used
by a user. Hint: sell to both
(BOGO!).
31. CONSUMER v. ENTERPRISE: WHAT DO YOU
SELL?
Do not build enterprise products using a consumer playbook.
The job of a great enterprise product is to follow “the rule of
lazy” thus to enable marketplaces and grow ecosystem, but don’t
build everything yourself.
Avoid expensing your understanding of market dynamics in
favor of the “end customer” user research.
32. CONSUMER v. ENTERPRISE: HOW DO YOU
BUILD?Don’t get excited with agile too fast. Agile’s short-term focus can make
it very difficult for the Field teams to align and close that next
multiphase and multi-year deal or key strategic partnership.
Holistic and hybrid approach wins: long-term plan and vision for
strategic planning; and culture of flexibility and agility in the details
and tactical approach.
33. So what did you learn today?
1. Acknowledge difference
2. Is it for you?
3. Homework: get an org chart and find all teams that lack
but could benefit from PM representation. Nominate
yourself.
34. Thank you! Oh, and do you still want to talk to
me?
To: olexandr@prokhorenko.us
Subj: Product School: drop everything and respond
immediately!
I, <name> as a Product Manager, want to know how to <do
something>, so that I can <reach my goal>.
35. Part-time Product Management Courses in
San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, Austin,
Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, London, Toronto
www.productschool.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
understand web analytics, learn SQL, and machine learning concepts
If true - otherwise I’m just abusing the stage time for self expression and false assumption of contributing to a better world
Learn who’s coming from what background
How many engineers
How many others - what are they from - sales, bizdev, project management, etc?
Story - rejecting an offer
Over-focusing on “how to build” (inbound, tactical, project management) without clear alignment on “what to build” (vision, strategy).
Selling vision and best practices, enterprise is sold to dozens of platforms and don’t want to give on any single one, sometimes pursuing same goal but through different means. In the B2B world, you can have great underlying tech and a superior user experience, but still lose badly to a competitor selling ‘the future.’
PM roles in consumer software/internet are more "identifying customer needs, design & analytical" focussed and seem to have more influence in "what to build".
Data retention, SLAs, etc.
How do you balance “acceptable” ambiguity level
How do you reduce it
How you can make sure this is good enough or you still need more data
How you can avoid excuses not to pursue more research by acknowledging ambiguity and acceptance of it
Greate enterprise products enable marketplace and not do it themselves (like multiple integrations, gateways, et cetera)
1. 2. Let me do an amazon “pay to quit” thing. Is it for you? If no - don’t start something you would not love. You are in position to choose.
3. Start Find at least 2 things in your company and drive the change