Presentation on Practice of Product Management at PODIM conference in Slovenia 2015, covering:
1. Why is product management important
2. What are the fundamentals of product management
3. What is the product management cycle
4. Product backlogs
5. Product roadmaps
4. the role of product manager
is to discover a product that
is valuable, usable and
feasible
Marty Cagan
Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
8. CONTEXT FIRST!
 Environment in which the problem needs to be solved
 where,
 when
 Who
 Feedbacks into what problem you are solving
 This is far before you look at device or anything
like that
 Starts setting constraints for the possible solutions
9. COGNITIVE LEAKS!
 People are surrounded by
distractions that drain their
mental energy
 Your product is just
another drain, treat
your users carefully
 Remember, people using
your product are not stock
photogray models!
10.
11. PRODUCT
BACKLOG
 What you could do, not what you will do
 Separate your product backlog from your development
backlog
 Provides continuous intelligence about customer
problems and unmet needs
 Get everyone involved in the product backlog
 If it becomes a black box, everyone else will distrust it
and seek a way around it
12. WHAT IS A ROADMAP?
An artefact that communicates
the direction you’ll be going in
order to
fulfil the product vision.
14. I love deadlines.
I love the whoosing
noise they make as
they go by.
Douglas Adams
15. DAT
ES
 Priorities change, dates force you to delivery what is no
longer worthwhile
 Dates become promise, when the promise isn’t kept
trust is loss in the roadmap
 Dates go on release/project plans
 Clients engage more with roadmaps without dates
16. DELIVERY
 Is it done?
 What about?
 Documentation
 Marketing
 Sales briefing
 Not for the product
manager to do but make
sure it is done
18. “If you trust in yourself. . .
and believe in your
dreams. . . and follow your
star. . . you'll still get
beaten by people who
spent their time working
hard and learning things
and weren't so lazy.”
Terry Pratchett,
The Wee Free Men
Good afternoon
Cover why good product management is important & basics of good product management practice
Solutions looking for problems - segway
You think you know more than you know - foursquare
Good product management practice reduces these risks. But what do I mean by product management?
What is product mangement?
Definition used at ProdPad and MTP
Intersection: Customer, Technology and Business
The role of product manager
Responsible for promoting good product management practice
If you don’t have one, get one –they make a difference
How does a PM function in an org
Like a conductor
Picks music
Set tempo
Keep in sync
Team effort just like a symphony
What problem are you solving?
Strategic to tactical
Product vision is the answer to this question at the strategic level
Is this problem worth solving
Is the time right? Market demand there?
Can it be done at the right price?
Tesla Energy Powerwall
Fundamental questions that underpin all of good product management practice
Product managers should lead the charge in getting the organisation answering those questions but doesn’t need to provide the answers themselves
But problems don’t exist in isolation.
Better understand the problem
Forms basis for things like personas
Before devices
Sets constraints
Example It doesn’t make sense to build an app that requires a credit card when the people with the problem that you are solving with the app don’t even have bank accounts
If you take away only one thing from this talk today, then I hope you take this away. Using these questions is an awesome start to good product management practice.
Cycle – no defined beginning or end
Non-linear, with feedback loops
Good product management is not about speed but effectiveness
Two key tools of the process: product backlog and product roadmap
Ideas, feedback, market analysis, analytics analysis.
What you could do, not what you will do
Separate Product backlog and development backlo
Ok to have stuff never build
Continous intelligence
Get everyone involved
Don’t be a black box
You’ve farmed, now what? Priortise! Bu how? Product Roadmap
Many designs as PMs
What is it for?
A roadmap is an artefact that communicates the direction you’ll be going in order to fulfil the product vision.
Not for selling
Not for marketing
If it doesn’t, worthless
The essential elements of a good roadmap are:
Time horizons
Scope
Strategic initiatives
Product areas
Here you can see how we design roadmaps on ProdPad.
You’ll notice there aren’t any dates on the roadmap and that is for very good reasons!
Roadmaps shouldn’t have dates!
Not milestones or estimates of when you get there
Priorities change as you learn
Creates a promise
Dates go on release/project plan
Improved engagement
Is it done? No
Release/project plan
Making sure what is delivered solves original problem
Making sure everything around is done
Now restart the cycle
Not a competition about shipping
Usage is far more important than shipping
Focus on learning
Spend more time in product backlog less time shipping
Learn fast, not build fast!
Good product mangement practice is:
Questions
Context
Farming product backlog
Roadmap that communicates direction
Your product and company will be successful not because you use the latest technology, or have the best developers, or ship the most times, or have the greatest salesman or the perfect vision or the most detailed 10-year roadmap.
You’ll succeed by having something that people want to use.
Deliver value to your customers and the rest will follow.
Good product management practice will help you discover, build and deliver that value.
Thank you for listening and I hope you all found something useful in this talk
If you’ve not grabbed one, there are booklets available called the “Handy Guide for Product People” available outside on the stand
Get in touch if you’d like to know more