Product Manager roles and responsibilities can often be very broad from company to company and even between products. Major factors that tend to impact PM roles relate to the company and/or product’s culture, maturity, size, pricing structure, etc.
Not every team or organization may be positioned to fully benefit from having a product manager, however in such cases, other employees are likely to take roles and responsibilities that are often given to a PM and to ensure that they are well equipped to do so, training and structure may be required. In this article, we will look at some key aspects that a Product Manager (PM) or individuals with PM responsibilities should consider to maximize the potential product success.
Design and execute on detailed user studies that conflate with the organization’s capabilities and resources. Briefly, user studies are related to the standardized examination of user characteristics and behavior associated with the company’s product, services, or systems. To gain further insight on the concept of user studies and the most common types of assessment, refer to SemanticScholar and Scott MacKenzie at York University.
Whenever possible, build and evaluate prototypes alongside key stakeholders and customers. By allowing key stakeholder to be a part of the prototyping process, it allows for greater transparency and a lower risk of unexpected disagreements at the end. Customer feedback in this environment can serve as a counter-balance to the team and stakeholder’s perspective, allowing for a broader picture of the solution. Further, by involving clients early and throughout the development process, costly late changes may be prevented.
Explore options and develop the right environment for cross-relational externalities for the team and/or organization. This may involve vendors, procurement, partners, supply chain, contractors and offshore resourcing. Look at what will be needed, the necessary steps to be taken to procure it, the tools and processes that will be required, vendor options, etc.
As organizations reach a certain product management size, ensuring that teams adhere to a certain structure can help provide guidance and build synergy between teams. In such environment, an organization should consider building a product management office to help compile best practices, tools and process, then define and maintain standards for product management. Not every organization may benefit from such structure due to resource constraint and other factors, but building an annual PM task force to revise product management practices can be an essential middle ground.
Product management should aim to drive decisions based in part by data insights. According to Mckinsey, organizations have captured only a small fraction of the benefits that can come from data analytics. These decisions can range from employee management, marketing, customer service and many more. To successfully achieve data analytics proficiency and gains, multiple data collection mechanism should be considered, built and maintained. Below are a few examples that may be worth having in your industry/operation:
After defining and building the data analytics, the organization or product management team should aim to build dashboards catered to decision making stakeholders.
There are many pitfalls that can come from data analytics, it can range from poor datasets, weak exploratory processes, ineffective hypothesis testing to difficulty interpreting data. That is part of the reason why data insight should not be the only factor when making decisions, sometimes a quick call with 5 customers can help build a stronger case for changes (or lack thereof) in a product feature than 10,000 lines of data.
Learn to identify potential risks, problems and opportunities early, this will allow the team and organization to make an informed decision whether to avoid, control, transfer or accept it. Part of being able to identify issues at an early stage is to sometimes spend some extra time in the planning phase and to instill a culture of transparency and communication. There are several techniques that can be utilized for risk identification purposes, find one that work for you and your team and develop an action plan accordingly. Agile driven teams are also bound to do similar risk identification processes, albeit within shorter turnarounds due to the structure of teams.
Every year, organizations are faced with a multitude of cyber-attacks, a recent study by McAffe and CSIS has concluded that cybercrime has cost the world economy over $500 billion and this number continues to grow exponentially. Cybersecurity can impact all aspects of an organization. For example, it can lead to breaches of customer and employee data. These attacks are causing major damage to organizations of all sizes, impacting areas such as:
Some organizations may find themselves having a solid cyber security program to help support product management, others may need to build a solution themselves to improve both internal and external security. Here are a few areas that should be considered as part of the product and the organization/ team’s product management cybersecurity arsenal:
Product management often involves a lot of communication with stakeholders and customers. To help guide the narrative of the conversation, product managers can benefit from being good business storyteller. When storytelling is well-done, it can help the team better visualize the process that the customer goes through to find the benefits and impediments. It can drive prospect and recurring customers to do business with the organization. When a product manager goes through the process of storytelling, they have a chance to better understand their product to allow for enhanced prioritization, communication and results. To get a better sense of storytelling, refer to TEDx David JP Phillips ‘The magical science of storytelling’.
Build a database system of VIPs that work or are related to the product that is being built. This is likely to comprise of key internal stakeholders, major players, exceptional personnel that are in and outside of the organization, (potential) partners, influencer fans, activists and others.
Product managers and other professionals should often look at the past to gain a better sense of what has worked or not worked. They will then use the knowledge gained from the past to visualize how the future may look like. By building the connection between these two times, the professional can then concoct a plan or solution to tackle the present. Below are a few questions that product managers may benefit to look at:
The Past
The Future
There is often value to be gained from not only looking at the field in which product is expected to be engaged on, but also potential fields that can disrupt or help augment its value. Organizations aiming to be the disruptor, should always look around and sometimes build partnerships that can extend its capabilities and goals.
Based on the outcomes of this exercise, product managers should be able to create a story (Refer to Storytelling) that can be used to build the strategies and gain the support from key stakeholders. They will be better positioned to make decisions today that will help the organization reach their goals.
Embrace success and failure as a learning opportunity and be sure to document it to its fullest possible extent for future organizational and personal reference. Remember to have iterative retrospectives and an organizational structure to maintain the records in a way that is easily indexable.
Learn from the failure of others within and outside the organization, these are invaluable insights that can help drive personal improvement. There are always areas for improvement whether a product succeeds or not, learning to contextualize and evolve from it is a key part of product management work.
The Product Management work plays a central role in the success of the organization. Successful PMs will often strive to create the right environment for a great product release and the right structure and planning to guide future iterations needed for the product. Considering and implementing the areas covered in this article will be essential to personal, product and organizational success.
RASCI Template Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp The RASCI matrix is a visual business tool used to define the connection between members and their
Communication Plan Template Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp Communication helps instill important information between different parties, helping to build relations, drive collaboration and much
Team Charter Template Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp Team charters can help teams, projects and organizations build the rules of engagement and roadmap needed
Check Register Template Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp Financial transactions have existed throughout history, helping buyers and sellers exchange goods based on their needs.
Employee Training Tracker Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp Training is a great way to learn or hone the skills relevant to one’s professional career
Bi-Weekly Budget Tool Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Share on email Share on whatsapp There are many cases where employees or contractors are paid bi-weekly for their effort. To some,
