Product Management In Open Source - LAS 2019

What role does Product Management play within open source? I'll cover what Product Management is and how it can help you make better software.

Transcript

1. Product Management In Open Source
2. My Name Is Nick Richards
3. Flathub-ist
4. Former Product Manager at Endless (open source) Current Product Manager at Lucid (not open source)
5. What is a Product Manager?
6. Christian Knows!
7. "Product managers are responsible for taking information and feedback from [everywhere] and converting that into a coherent project direction and forward looking vision. They analyze common issues, bug velocity, and features to ensure reasonable milestones that keeps the product functional as it transforms into it’s more ideal state."
8. "Most importantly, this role is leadership."
9. What does a product manager actually do?
10. • Tell The Story • Integrate all the things • Maintain Standards
11. Saying no in an encouraging way
12. Sounds like a great app maintainer?
13. Why should you care? You do this already
14. Christian, again
15. "For the past 3 years I’ve been working very hard because I fulfill a number of these roles for Builder. It’s exhausting and unsustainable. It contributes to burnout and hostile communication by putting too much responsibility on too few people’s shoulders."
16. Let's do it better
17. These days you make some 'requirements'
18. Which get turned into 'tickets'
19. You've already lost!
20. Find your story
21. Great applications have a point of view
22. A mix of internal drive and user satisfaction
23. What's a good first step in Product?
25. Example for Flathub
26. Snap, Google Play, Apple App Store, Distros, Windows Store, AppImage...
27. For i in $list • How do they reach the user, • What problems do they solve, • What's good or bad about them, • What's easy or hard to copy?
29. GNOME design team do this well.
30. What does this imply?
31. Saying no in an encouraging way
33. Q1. What feedback should you listen to?
34. Q0. How do you get feedback?
38. In person, Gitlab, Discourse IRC, press reviews, blogs, forums, user testing
39. Great products never listen in just one way
40. Endless has metrics (this is controversial)
41. Nautilus #1!
43. Disintermediate
45. • Tell The Story • Integrate all the things • Maintain Standards
47. Summing up: • Everyone is making a product, and you can get more deliberate • Get a diversity of feedback, but be discerning
48. Questions?