The Craft of Product Management
If you believe that the job of a Product Manager is a simple one — moving a product across an assembly line of engineers and analysts — then you are as ignorant as I was until Jan-25–2020.
I attended a talk by Mr. Nitin Chandra, Chief Product Officer of NestAway, organized by E-Cell IIT KANPUR. I will now share with you a glimpse of 80% of what I remember (80% of what I understood (80% of what I retained)), totaling to about 51% of what he spoke about during that 80-minute talk.
As a product manager, your job is to understand the needs of the market and convey your ideas to the engineering team to work on. Now, you might think…
Why can’t an engineer and customer collaborate directly to build a product? Why is a project manager needed as an intermediary?
In a startup, it’s simple to wear many hats as an entrepreneur. You could be the engineer building the app, as well as the CEO, CTO, and CPO all at once. You are only accountable to yourself or a few others, and you could entirely change the UX/UI of your app overnight without question. At this low-risk stage, the minimum is at stake.
However, as the company grows from 10x to 100x to 1000x, the need and role of a product manager evolve. Now, your vertical expertise matters more than your horizontal expertise. As the scale of the company grows, even small changes in the product, like color or UI, can significantly impact users, which can affect revenue. Let me explain you via some example
Example 1: Consider Facebook. It still uses its years-old deep blue color login page, while hundreds of more interactive login pages are used across other businesses. Given the scale at which Facebook operates, even a slight change in UI/UX can result in billions of dollars lost in revenue. As the company grows, the number of factors that can impact revenue increases, making the revenue equation more complex.
Example 2: Go and check out Amazon’s checkout page now, as many of you may be unaware of what I’m about to tell you. Clicking on the Amazon icon on the checkout page actually leads to nowhere, whereas on every other page clicking the logo takes you to the homepage.
Why is that? There must have been a product manager who put a lot of thought into it and concluded that changing this variable could lead to a massive increase in the company’s revenue.
Given the above examples, as a novice in the field of product management, do you think Google or Facebook would hire you to play with such sensitive variables? Or would it be easier for you to get a job in a startup as a product manager? The barrier to entry for expertise increases with the scale of the company.
As a general trend, companies think that,
“Where ever in doubt insert a PM”
With so many project managers (PMs) involved at different stages of product development, newcomers may find it difficult to find their place. Product management is a learnable craft that requires time and effort.
To better understand the role of a PM, consider the example of a small startup with limited funding that wants to expand into two new cities, Bombay and Bangalore. The Chief Financial Officer has to make a tough decision on which city to prioritize due to limited resources.
Similarly, a PM faces the dilemma of having limited engineering resources and must choose between implementing change X or change Y in code or UX/UI. This decision is challenging since a single choice can impact hundreds of variables.
As a PM, it is their responsibility to decide which features to roll out in an app and in what order. Despite having hundreds of demands, a PM must narrow down the list and choose a couple of features to work on and deliver.
One of the most important skills of a PM, often underestimated, is the ability to sell ideas and convince people. This skill is valuable not only for customers but also for senior management.
Politicians are the best product managers, as they manage their own products called “brands”. They know how to convince the masses and simplify their promises to a minimum common denominator so that every voter can understand.
As the saying goes, “It’s harder for giants to innovate, so they acquire startups.” This explains why startups innovate more rapidly than larger companies. The less complex the structure, the easier it is to innovate.
Nowadays, more and more product managers are becoming analytics and data-driven. While data can help you make better decisions, it cannot create anything new without intuition. For example, if you want to know whether saving passwords in an app for quick future login would be useful, your intuitive idea might be that it would have a positive impact on revenue. You can then test this hypothesis with data. However, relying solely on numbers would not do the job.
Product managers need to be both creative and focused. According to Dr. Barbara Oakley’s course on Learning How to Learn, creativity requires dispersed thought, and you can be creative when you are relaxed enough. On the other hand, focus requires prolonged thought over an idea. Having both states of mind at the same time may seem impractical, but it’s a skill that great product managers must master to be able to switch between them quickly.
Product managers have to balance the needs of business and engineering teams. While the business team’s goal is to generate revenue as quickly as possible, the engineering team’s goal is to find an elegant and efficient solution to the problem, which requires patience. Ensuring that both parties work together effectively is a constant challenge for product managers.
As times change, so do human activities and their pain points. For example, if you are building a product for tourists, their most painful point may be language. If you can address this need, your product will be an instant hit among tourists.
A PM should be ready to accept and improve upon mistakes as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the market will force you to realize your mistakes, which can be costly.
A product manager should be confident in their ideas because the design reflects it. Take Apple’s products as an example; their design expresses authority over the concept, still reflecting the vision of Steve Jobs, one of the best product managers in the history of mankind. Now, compare it with Google’s Pixel; it looks good, yet at some level, the lack of confidence in its product manager is reflected in it.
Read Nitin’s blog on mindtheproduct.
To become a good product manager, you should:
- Keep finding flaws; even the best products have some flaws in them. That’s why they require constant updates and upgrades.
- Develop a maker’s mentality; put yourself in their shoes.
- Show genuine empathy towards others; it will help you to spot pain points.
- Be honest with yourself and your colleagues.
Tip: If you are entering into project management or entrepreneurship, before even beginning work on a product, it’s important to test your idea. One way to do this is by running a Facebook ad and gauging people’s willingness to pay for what you want to build. Remember, businesses are built around money. Even if you think your idea is world-changing, it’s important to consider whether or not it can generate revenue and, more importantly, profit in the long run.
