Main Takeaways:
- Defining the Product Manager role
- Understanding the key competencies of a Product Manager
- How to make big impact on your product while avoiding major pitfalls
9. How to be an
impactful product
manager
Akram Hassan - Product Manager @ Uber
10. Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation and on the following slides
are solely those of the presenter and not necessarily those of my current
employer.
12. About me
Started my career back in my home country Egypt as an Engineer and
moved to the U.S in 2006
Started as a program/product manager in Microsoft and almost been
in product for 12+ years
● Microsoft 2006 - 2013
● EMC 2013 - 2017
● Uber 2017 - Present
13. The product manager role
is one of the most
undefined roles in the
Tech industry
Marketing
Engineering
UX Design
Sales
Data Science
Legal
Customers
Partners
14. Why hire a product
manager?
Is that it?
➔ Customer engagement
➔ Requirements definition
➔ A coordinator across teams
➔ Project Management
➔ Partner management
15. Ultimately you are hired as a
product manager to make
an impact on the product
16. You are measured by the
impact you make and
mostly that what builds
your resume.
23. Who’s the customer
Who are we serving, and what value
are we bringing?
Define the customer and then be in
the shoes of your customer.
Tip
The customers will
always tell you what
they need right now,
but shouldn’t be telling
you what is the right
solution
24. Validate assumptions
Don’t just take whatever vision or
mission leadership has defined.
You need to validate assumptions
Tip
Don’t take
assumptions for
granted, you need
to validate and
assess before you
dive in
25. Gather Insights
Gather insights about your customers,
market and opportunitiesTip
Every organization is
different but in today's
world data is key to
build your hypothesis
27. Begin with the end in
mind
Start with a picture of where you want
the product to be in the long term and
then work backwards
28. Forward looking
It needs to be a multi-year plan that is
forward lookingTip
Always ask yourself
what is the end game
here.
29. Be ambitious
It needs to be ambitious enough to be
something to look for.Tip
Don’t limit yourself with
the tech or constraints
of today, think without
constraints
30. Grounded in reality
Be grounded in real customer needsTip
Think of customer
needs as a collection of
pain relievers and gain
creators.
31. Define success
Define what success looks like at the
endTip
Make sure you have
measurable KPIs that
you can measure
success
33. Build the story
Stories make it easy to understand and
grasp by everyone so build an end to
end story
Tip
Tell the audience about
the problem through a
story, ideally a person.
34. Define the big bets
Start with the big bets that will make
big impact on your roadmapTip
Think what will move
the needle for your
strategy and ultimately
your roadmap
35. Build it bottoms up
and top down
Depend on your team to come up with
ideas and align them with your
strategy
Tip
Utilize the collective
energy of your team,
excite them with your
vision and they will
amaze you
36. Take small steps
Be specific in the short term but less in
the long term.Tip
Plan and deliver in
increments rather than
deliver everything in one
shot. Giving you time to
improvise.
38. Communicate up,
down and across
➔ Leadership alignment
➔ Excite the team
➔ Align with the rest of the org
39. The wrong
customer
➔ Especially in the enterprise space a lot
of times the product gets sold to the
wrong customer
➔ Avoid special features that don’t align
with the product vision and strategy.
Say No
40. Engineering
Debit
➔ Doing too much then you won’t go
anywhere
➔ Doing too little it will hinder the product
growth and scale
41. Dependencies
➔ Scrutinize every dependency you take
and make sure it aligns well with the
vision and strategy.
➔ It is better off not to take any
dependency in the early stages
42. Use the force
➔ Every organization has a key
competency
➔ My advice know it and use it
43. Listen to your
inner voice
➔ Everyone has his own inner voice
guiding us, listen to it!
44. You are it!
➔ There is no one else defining what the
product will do, or where it is heading.
Believe me you are it!
Came from an Engineering background then changed roles to a PM. My experience @ Microsoft and Uber as a PM has been focused on being a platform pm vs. EMC more consumer focus
If you look at all these functions, PM is the space in between all these roles. They are the ones bringing everyone together across a single vision.
Although most of the below are tasks a PM may do they are not why you are hired. There is a lot more to PM than that
Requirement management: We have some customers and we want a product manager to talk to them
A coordinator: We have a lot of partners and we need some customer interaction
Project Management: We need someone to keep track of the work we’re doing being a scrum master
Partner management: We need someone to coordinate work across multiple teams
These are aspects of the job but this is not why you were hired you were hired.
Most of the times I ask teams why you need a product manager? You are hired to make an impact on your product. But what is that impact how can it be defined?
You are hired to make an impact on the product, team and ultimately your organization.
You are hired to outline the vision, define the strategy and how we are going to take this product forward
The role of product managers is to bring everyone together across a single vision they are the ones that need to see the light at the end of the tunnel and take us by hand towards that light while doing that they need to at this regard a lot of the noise I don’t know a good product managers is the one that can say no not yes
If you look at the PM resume what you are trying to get out of it is what kind of impact they had. Of course we look at the work history, but impact is what ultimately decides for you what they actually did. Now lets define impact
First lets look at what constitutes impact. How can we define it. Simply to get to impact you need to build Vision, Strategy and then your roadmap then execute on it and this is basically impact.
PMs are hired to draw the vision and then set the strategy and from there define the roadmap. Then as they execute they drive actual impact.
The big question is where to start! This is probably the toughest aspect of our jobs as PMs is to put our hands where to start, and mostly it defines how we are going to make progress moving forward.
The problem, solution and value Steve has been a master at talking about the problem, then presenting a solution and convincing you of the value it brings.
First iMac he was presenting after he got back to Apple, and one thing resonated very well with me in his presentation when he showed a PC with 10s of cables all scrambled in the back and then he had one cable for the iMac. Further when he talked about the having a built-in ethernet and making it internet ready!
The why is ultimately about the problem space. Is why do we need to invest here. Why does this project ultimately exist?
So defining the problem is probably half of what you are doing. If you fail here everything else has a cascading effect. It is important to put your hands on the problem we are trying to solve. Over and over we see teams or individuals failing to define what is the problem we are trying to solve. It is a classic everyone falls into that trap especially with new ideas.
You represent the customer in every way, so you need to be the shoes of your customers. Team members will ask you in every what will customers think of this or that for every feature they bring.
Everyone assumes. Validate everything and anything. I usually start with the notion all false until proven otherwise :), a lot of times people assume and build their view based on these assumptions. They assume about the customer, about partners, about the market, about the competition, about almost everything. Validate and make sure you do that in the way that is not discrediting people around you.
What are the market challenges, competition, key players
What are the customer gains and pains
What is the best business model that fits your product
Data is great, but ultimately it is there to inform you. Don’t rely too much on data you need to build your strategy based on what is the business model. A good business model for your product depends on your market.
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A good reference is business model generation
The what is basically what are we trying to achieve here. Basically it is your strategy and what approach you will use to go after the problem. It is basically saying what is our end game here?
Always have a picture of where is the end state. Draw that picture very well. I always take people and say close your eyes and dream where we should be. Based on that we start the end state. Having the end in mind lets you work towards a goal, a clear goal that everyone is trying to get to. Further it becomes your “North Star”, having that in your plan helps work towards something and also helps align you to always to get back to it if you get off track.
It needs to be forward looking enough to be multi-year. Don’t think of just short term gains it needs to be defining what is the end game. This is ultimately what your strategy is evaluated on.
You need to have ambitious goals that are not easy to achieve. They need to be ambitious enough to excite your team and customers. It needs to be something your team is looking forwrad to. Don’t go with an easy to achieve goal. You need to have a BHAG
It still needs to be grounded in real customer needs. Don’t go and dream of some mythical customer and start building a very fluffy vision. It needs to touch on customer needs. Pains and Gains of your customers. Your customers are a collection of pain relievers and gain creators.
It is not easy to define measurable KPIs for every problem space. However, that what brings us back to the question, are we achieving our goals? Without KPIs we can lose track of what we are trying to achieve. It is very important we develop a cadence for measuring success.
Start with the customer and build a story around them. Make sure your story is continuous and has a sequential flow. Show the impact / value prop you are making on your customer. Show success at the end of the story and how you reach that happy ending.
As you build your story you need to define what are the big bets that will move the needle. These could be features or initiatives within your product
Invite your team members and start building the plan but remind them always to align with the strategy and big bets we are all making. They will amaze you!
As you build your plan be more specific in the near term and vague in the long term.