Product Management

I've been reading a lot on Product Management lately. I gave a small talk to my team about it for our team presentation day, called Thap Thursday.

Transcript

1. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Thap Thursday Alex Horré 13.2.13 Wednesday, 13 February 13
2. JOB OR ROLE The job or role of the product manager is to discover a product that is valuable and feasible by collaborating with designers and engineers. Minimum viability AND GET YOU TO Wednesday, 13 February 13
3. APPLY FOCUS e.g. value, usable, feasible 33% 33% 33% Business Value User Behaviour Tech Constraint Wednesday, 13 February 13
4. mindtheproduct.com Wednesday, 13 February 13
5. “Functionality (product requirements) and user experience design are inherently intertwined...” Marty Cagan Wednesday, 13 February 13
6. INTERTWINED •User behavior (user stories) is usable •Business value (prioritization) is value •Tech constraint (Domain knowledge) is feasible Wednesday, 13 February 13
7. TAKE ONE AWAY... •Design is just fancy lipstick •Just make it look good and different; don’t worry about functionality. •Endless meetings; hours stolen •Changing priorities like the wind •My kid can do this; why can’t you? •What’s taking so long? Wednesday, 13 February 13
8. METHODOLOGY •SCRUM, XP, Lean •Degradation •Iterations •Feature-sets (F vs FN) •Estimation •Prioritize obvious Wednesday, 13 February 13
9. “It doesn’t matter how good your team is if they’re not given something worthwhile to build; discover a product that is valuable and feasible.” Marty Cagan Wednesday, 13 February 13
10. MINIMUM VIABILITY ...and to identify the minimal possible product that meets the recipe of value, usable, feasible to minimize time to market and user complexity. Marty Cagan Wednesday, 13 February 13
11. OBVIOUSNESS “Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which things go in which bucket is critical to fully understanding how to make something useful. You have to make tough calls about what needs to be obvious, what should be easy, and what should be possible. The more things something (a product, a feature, a screen, etc) does, the more calls you have to make.” Jason Fried Wednesday, 13 February 13
12. FAIL FAST; LEARN QUICK •Build •Measure •Learn •Iterate Wednesday, 13 February 13
13. SIMPLICITY IS HARD “There's no virtue in saying no to the things that are easy to say no to...” Steve Jobs Wednesday, 13 February 13
14. PM VS PM •Project managers go broad; aligns delivery •Product Managers go deep; delivers quality •Not Sales and Marketing, fitting the role of... Wednesday, 13 February 13
15. PRODUCT MARKETING Creating a product is much different than telling the world about a product. Too many times there is a tendency to simply pass down (perceived) requirements from sales and marketing—out of sight, out of mind—to the engineers. And—no surprise —this almost never results in valuable, usable, and feasible products. Marty Cagan The above model is flawed for the fact it defines requirements absent of design, functionality and the user experience defined by the two. Wednesday, 13 February 13
16. CURRENT READING Marty Cagan Wednesday, 13 February 13