Seb Zuddas Wiki

Introduction to Product Management

3 min read

Leading through Influence

  • Are the team happy?
  • Being emotionally available within the team.
  • Does the team have clarity with the thing they’re building?
  • Always be open to listen. Be authentic when listening. The team is expert in what they do.
  • Build rapport with the team.

Who are the core team?

  • UX
    • What does the product look like?
    • How does the customer use the product?
  • Engineering
    • Build the product.
  • QA
    • Testing the product.
    • Are the features used as intended?
  • Marketing
    • Customers need to know what the product does.

Who are the extended team?

  • Finance
  • Legal
  • Business Ops
    • interested in the TAM (total accessible market. Measured in currency.)
  • Business Development
    • Will there be vendors?
    • Are there collaborators?
  • Execs and Investors
    • Will what you’re building be successful? It’s important to be able to convince these people.
  • Users
    • The most important group.

Which Development Model to use?

The creation is dependent on the product made. Are you building an app vs a physical device? This informs the development process.

Waterfall

  • More appropriate for a physical device.
  • Product details need to be articulated and consolidated before it is built.

Agile

  • More appropriate for pure software.

Product Lifecycles

  • Each product has a different lifecycle, often depending on whether your product warrants an agile vs a waterfall methodology.
  • It is important to flow between sprints.

Research

  • It is important to create a strong research plan (build a strategy).

  • It needs to be an organised process.

  • Quantitative vs Qualitative.

  • Internal vs External.

  • Balancing these four factors are vital to conducting effective research.

  • Customer meetings

    • Can dive deeper than in a survey
    • What do they want?
    • When do they want it?
    • Look for actionable feedback.
    • In meetings, you are there to listen.
    • Need a team scribe, where they write absolutely everything that the customer says.
    • Keep the focus on the customer, create an environment where the customer shares.
    • Fostering strong relationships.
      • Introduce everyone.
      • Let the customer introduce themselves.
      • Let the customer vent.
      • Establish an active listening process as a result of the customer venting.
      • Have the customer react to something you put in front of them.
    • The pitching of a product depends on the product type.
    • Don’t answer the customers questions about the proposed project. This is because you may lead them.
    • Respond with a question. ‘how much do you expect?’ ‘What do you expect?‘.
    • Customers need to tell you what they want and what they don’t
    • Create a list of features. They have £100 to spend on the features. Now, make them allocate where they want to ‘spend’ the money.
      • Create a game with this - ‘eliminate at least one feature’, ‘your minimum spend is x’
    • Summarise a customer meeting asap after. Immediately sit down and summarise with the team, in private.
      • What was the best thing you’ve heard?
      • What was the worst thing you’ve heard?
      • What went well? What didn’t?
      • These help guide conversations with the next customer
    • Check for trends with the £100 test.
    • Over the interview rounds, the product priorities will change.
    • Organise the findings around the quadrant of reserach.
    • Use critical questions from the customer meetings.
    • Offer findings through internal white papers.

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