This document outlines 15 lessons learned as a product manager. Some key lessons include: focus on increasing revenues and reducing costs while delivering value for today's costs; understand customer and market needs through quantitative and qualitative data balanced with intuition; set realistic expectations and don't push unrealistic quarterly targets; test hypotheses early to fail fast; and serve as the owner and conduit of information between cross-functional teams to drive the product vision while remaining unbiased. The overall message is the importance of balancing strategic and tactical work with a focus on building products customers love.
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15 Lessons as a Product manager
1. 15 Lessons Learned as a Product Manager
05/03/2013
Suresh Krishna Madhuvarsu
> www.sureshkrishna.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/sureshmadhuvarsu
2. Remind your self about this fundamental
building block everyday
Strive towards increasing the revenues;
reducing the costs and increasing the profits.
3. Today’s cost has to yield >2x revenues or
indirect positive effect. If not, something is
wrong with today’s cost.
Sunk costs are important; don’t get stuck to
past mistakes.
Know a dead horse; don’t feed it;
4. Everyone has a perspective on what should
be done
Customers may not always be right; Also,
they may not always be wrong.
Understand the user and buyer relationship
Understand the engineering, sales limitations
5. Collect quantitative and qualitative data
about the market and customers
Gather the expert intelligence from the
previous experiences
Balance between the data and intuition
6. …not tomorrow; not yesterday
Set realistic expectations to customers
Don’t push quarterly targets too hard on to
sales
If you sell future, you always need to catch
up
7. The cost of fixing a problem tomorrow is
much more expensive than today
Don’t be lazy
8. Everyone is watching you
Your market, customer and industry
knowledge brings in energy to other teams
Be positive
9. Human relation is much better than Email
and Phone conversation
Take time to know everyone who is
connected to the product
Networking is part of the job; it is an
investment
10. You are smart; but customer is ALSO smart
Your story has more effect than your feature
Keep the story consistent
11. Test the hypothesis as early as possible; Fail
early
If you plan for a feature make sure someone
out there is ready to use it
If there is a feature that’s not profitable, don’t
be afraid to prune
12. You are the owner of the product
Every thing starts at you and ends at you
Don’t pass the buck
13. …but should not drive your product
Spend enough time to understand the moves
of the competition
YOUR vision should drive your product with
an ultimate goal of building products that
customers love.
14. … with "no biases“
The glue to the cross functional teams
Conduit of the information and data flow
15. Everyday is different at work
Don’t get deep into the tactical work
Don’t stop with Strategic work
Do enough to balance the important and
urgent tasks
16. …and smart people
There are lots of things going on and being
happy helps
Being funny or humorous helps