Introduction to Product Management
“Good companies manage Engineering. Great companies manage Product.”
– Thomas Schranz, Founder and CEO of Blossom
Before getting into Product Management, we need to understand, what is a Product? Well, a product is an experience or service which solves a user pain point and gives a much better value than before.
Product Management is an art to create such experience or service by understanding consumer pain points from a lateral view and finding solutions in a scalable way.
A Product Manager is someone who understands the ‘why’ of the problem at a meta thinking level, focuses on end outcomes in terms of users and builds solution based on that.
A Product Manager knows the difference between needs and wants. A PM tries to solve problem with small dx’s and prioritizes them to build a solution on top.
Some of the skills of a Product Manager:
- Being Curious - About customer wants, Competitor’s growth
- Problem Owner - Focuses more on problems than features for better user satisfaction
- Bias - Towards consumer side, walking along the changing user behavior
- Ever learner - Possesses great passion, storytelling capabilities and proponent of mental models
There are different types of Product Managers based on the focus areas of a product:
1. Technical Product Manager- Have strong technical background, mostly transitioned to product from an engineering role. A TPM is focused more on platform side and helps in breaking down complex requirements to tasks for development team.
2. Data Product Manager- More adept at data management and analytics, work closely with data scientists, known for predictive analysis and focuses on what to capture and what not to capture.
3. Growth Product Manager- Focuses more on improving a certain business metric rather than an entire product. A GPM runs a series of short-term experiments, working on micro rather than macro level.
4. Business Product Manager- True jack of all trades, has good knowledge of Tech, Design and User empathy. A BPM understands the terminologies of Business, Operations and Finance.
For conducting experiments to solve a problem, a PM can have two modes of thinking:
- Vertical Thinking- Working on an existing solution, progress in small steps and make the product better fit for the user. It is usually applicable for deterministic problems and provides decent improvement in the metrics.
Example- Improvement of UI and user journey on a website to increase the sales conversion ratio. - Lateral Thinking- Breaking the patterns and coming up with a radical solution. It is applicable for non-deterministic problems and provides sweeping edge in metrics.
Example- Introduction of IRCTC for online ticket booking for Indian railways.
Life Cycle of a Product:
- Development Phase- Testing of hypothesis and idea to solve the identified problem.
- Introduction Phase- Introducing product in the market for people to start noticing and finding some success.
- Growth Phase- Hitting the Product Market Fit and finding scalable growth
- Maturity Phase- Business growth flatens up, predcitable products, increase in competition
- Decline Phase- Demand of the product starts to decline in the market
Learnings from Breaking into Product Management course by shravan tickoo
