🤹 Product Management
Product manager is a team member that focuses on achieving business success by meeting user needs through the continual planning of product solutions.
Responsibilities of a product manager:
- Plans so that the product is delivered on estimated time.
- Identifies, validates feasibility and scales tradeoffs of features.
- Finds and introduces new ideas to improve the business.
- Creates and maintains a road map for product development.
- Leads the team in executing the road map.
- Understands the target market.
- Listen to the end users; don't persuade people to your way of thinking.
- Represents the end user in the product development process.
- Patience; time between an idea and anything concrete isn't measured in weeks.
- Writes a lot of notes and lists to pass ideas on.
Business is the King 🫅. For a product manager, measure of success is the state of the business and the value that the product provides to its users. Intentionally releasing an imperfect feature is a common decision a product manager might have to make.
If you want to create the perfect tech, become a programmer.
If you want to create the perfect design, become an UI designer.
If you want to make business, become a product manager.
Relying on a product manager is an alternative business strategy. Product managers exist based on an assumption that it's easier to identify market problems and solve them with technology than it's to find buyers for an existing solution.
The best way to stay ahead of copycats is to build emotional distinction. Brand promise, culture, trust, giving back, etc. You must focus on these in between releasing the next differentiating feature.
Dramatically reducing scope enables shipping impactful features fast to get early feedback; complexity and polish can be added later.
Measuring customer behavior, rapidly testing ideas, and analyzing online commentary can guide product strategy without direct customer interviews.
Even if direct customer interviews can be valuable, they take time to organize and the results can be a mixed bag outside your control.
Extremism and thought-play is helpful in brainstorming. Brainstorming for new business ideas or product adventures can easily get stuck on recent events and small details. Sometimes the brewing storm needs a nudge.
Present and discuss extreme scenarions like:
- what must change if you were to increase your prices 10x?
- what would we do if we lost all customers to a competitor overnight?
- what if we had no technical support starting from tomorrow?
- with unlimited resources, what philanthropic initiatives would we start?
The point of this to create distinctively new venues to explore 🛣️
Switching to a radically different business model forces rethinking value propositions, cost structures, features, marketing and may unlock superior business models.