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Product Management Process

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Discover, Design, Deliver

In very simple terms product management is about breaking down huge problems into a smaller bits problem(Not to solve the problem)

What is Product Management

Based on the answers to the first two questions, product management is the business management of products, product lines, or portfolios, holistically, for maximum value creation, across their life cycles. Managing products is akin to managing a small business within a bigger business. Sometimes an organization has one product, sometimes it has several, as I mentioned earlier.

Two characteristics  of a great Product Manager : 

Entrepreneurial: Figure out a customer problem that you see out there and solve it. If you are technical, you can prototype it. If not find someone who can and influence them. These are practical skills you can use to showcase your PM potential

Ask for opportunities: If your current organization has a product team, ask for opportunities to help out on a team for learning and contributing. You will have to do extra work but will show the leaders that you have initiative and that would translate into

Breaking down the problem

“Product Management is the art of solving your customer’s problems to reach your business objectives”

Product managers must continuously solve a wide range of problems by considering the following factors

  1. Market Research – Identify customer needs.
  2. Statistics – Use data to help support decision making.
  3. Creative Thinking – Create new ideas, anywhere, any time.
  4. Critical Thinking – Narrow your ideas to the most viable, feasible, and desirable.
  5. Decision Making – Make decisions faster with more confidence.

we want to achieve a fit between the problem and the customer (problem/customer fit) as well as a fit between the problem and
the solution (problem/solution fit).

Discover, Design, Deliver

Discovery and Design is a critical phase to define what is the MVP to build, and why.

Many companies have a product idea in mind, and they normally jump right into defining the product requirements before having validated that it is indeed a great idea that people need.

We also call Discovery and Framing D&F.

The goals of the D&F are: Validate the assumptions that you made about the product Have validated user stories before spending time and effort to build it.

Build an MVP that is small enough just to validate your product value proposition. Namely, the whole D&F exercise is to ensure that you are building the RIGHT product before wasting time building it.

It is part of the Lean Startup practice which encourages iterative “Build, Validate, Learn” cycles. The discovery part is to go broad for exploratory research.

The framing part is to narrow down based on all findings to find a solution and the road map.

Discovery

In the first phase of the cycle, we want to learn more about the potential user, his/her needs, and the tasks that he/she must complete. At the same time, we define the innovative framework more exactly, for which we want to design solutions. For the definition of the design challenge, we use, for example, “WHY” and “HOW” questions in order to broaden or limit the scope. Tools such as Interview for empathy Extreme users and the 5W+H questions support this phase. The following phases and tools help to ensure that we learn more and more about our potential users

we focus on evaluating, interpreting, and weighting the findings we have gathered. The result eventually flows into the resulting synthesis (point of view). Methods such as context mapping storytelling or vision cone are used for the presentation of the findings. The point of view is usually formulated as a sentence.

The Kano Model Noriaki Kano, a Japanese researcher and consultant, published a paper in 19843 with a set of ideas and techniques that help us determine our customers’ (and prospects’) satisfaction with product features. These ideas are commonly called the Kano Model and are based upon the following premises:

Define

Once we have defined the point of view, the Explore phase “Explore” begins. Explore is a step toward finding solutions for our problem. Usually, different forms of brainstorming

The building of prototypes helps us to test our ideas or solutions, quickly and without risk, with our potential users. In particular, digital solutions can be prototyped with simple paper models or mock-ups. The materials are very easy: craft materials, paper, aluminum foil, cords, glue, and adhesive tape are often sufficient to make our ideas tangible and come alive. Various kinds of prototypes are presented in the Toolbox section under the heading “Prototyping” The prototypes range from critical experience prototypes all the way to a final prototype. Ideation, building, and testing must each be seen as one sequence. They cover the so-called solution space.

The description of the challenge is an important instrument for the full and complete description of the task, including the problem. The formulation of the problem statement should be seen as a minimum requirement; a problem brief allows for more details that may help in accelerating finding the solution. The disadvantage is that very narrow design briefs do not leave much leeway for creativity. Thus the problem brief is the translation of a problem into a structured task.

Delivery

the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort.

It’s now time to take your idea and turn it into code. Within the Lean Startup context this is where you would create your Minimum Viable Product — MVP. If you are in the growth stages this where you add the new features to expand your product.While conducting the build it is important to make sure you follow best practices in terms of Unit tests, Continuous Integration and Incremental Deployment.

Depending on the maturity of your product, how you plan to measure your experiment can differ greatly. You may be measuring through capturing analytics, running UX testing on prototypes or even having shadow sessions with users.

This is the critical part of the process: Make a decision on what to do next. The decision should be based on the insights and trends from the measure stage. Generally there are two possible paths Pivot or Persevere. Pivot means you change direction either partially or fully. Persevere means you carry on what is there and move on to the next cycle

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