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5569

This is the fifth and final post of this series I’m writing to introduce an aspiring Product Manager. In my first post, I shared a resource list for aspirants to start their basic research about Product Management, in the form of a periodic table. In the second post, we explored different types of Product Managers working in the industry, with an aim to help you find your type. The third post was about the career ladder of product management so that readers can see where they are currently and how their roles would change as they move up. The fourth post gave an inside view of how features are planned, launched, supported and discarded so that aspirants can get a very close look at how products are built. With this post, my aim is to give you a detailed to-do list when you land your first job as a Product Manager. To make this easier to read, I have designed a list of challenges (or labors), similar to those that Hercules had to face to prove himself! Imagine you are a newly recruited product manager, and this is your first day at the workplace. How do you prove yourself worthy of the responsibilities entrusted to you? Explore our Popular Business Management Courses Leadership and Management in New-Age Business Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management Professional Certificate Programme in HR Management and Analytics Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Healthcare Management Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Certificate Programme in Finance for Non Finance Executives Certificate Programme in Operations Management and Analytics Global Master Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management upGrad's Job Linked Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad Global Professional Certificate in Effective Leadership & Management Advanced General Management Program Strategic Human Resources Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Digital Transformation Cornell Certificate Program Executive Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Management Essentials Business Management Courses Challenge 1 – Knowing what you are building and for whom Get clarity on the following 4 key things about your product: Questions to figure out How to get info Personas Who is using the product? Who is paying for the product? Who all are dependent on the Product – customer, user, decision maker, tester, internal teams, etc.? Existing product managers,  your reporting manager, UX manager, customers Problem Scenarios and Alternatives What is the main problem our product solves for the customers? What are the alternatives our customer has? Existing product managers,  your reporting manager, UX manager, customers Value Proposition and Differentiation What does our solution do? How is it different from others in the market? What is our core competency because of which we are able to deliver this? Existing product managers, Marketing team, senior management Customer Journey maps and Touchpoints How does the customer interacts with the product – from discovery to repeated use? What are the channels of communication between the customer and product – for promotion, sales and support? Product manager, UX manager and customer support team. Unless you have conquered this challenge, you run the risk of building something that your customers don’t need. Once you know the answers to these questions at the back of your hand, you will achieve the ‘gift’ of clarity. Now, it’s time to move to the next challenge. Top Essential Management Skills to Learn SL. No Top Management Skills to Learn 1 Consumer Behaviour Online Certification Financial Analysis Certification FinTech Certification Online 2 HR Analytics Certification Online Communication Courses Online Effective Communication Certification 3 Research Methodology Certification Mastering Sales Certification Business Communication Certification 4 Fundamentals of Journalism Certification Economics Masterclass Online Certification upGrad’s Exclusive Product Management Webinar for you – How to craft GTM Strategy for a Product? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/panel-discussion-on-crafting-gtm-strategy-for-a-product.mp4 The Soft Skills required for Product Management Challenge 2 – Knowing why you are building what you’re building and what to focus on Talk to the senior management and experienced product managers to figure out the vision of the company. Ask them these five questions in this specific order – What do we want to become in the long term, as a company? How is this product (the one you have been assigned to) helping us in achieving that goal? What are the goals we need to achieve in the next 12 months for our product? What are the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for this quarter? What does the existing product roadmap look like for this quarter? Once you have got the answers to these five questions, go back to your desk and introspect. Start looking at it backward and figure out how the current roadmap is going to help achieve the quarterly OKRs. How is achieving these OKRs going to help you meet the annual goal for the product? How does achieving that annual goal for this product fits in with the company’s overall goals for the year? How would that help in getting closer to the company’s vision in the future? Sometimes a few things might not be clear or might not make sense. Ask the senior managers or your reporting manager, the metrics the company is measuring and how they give a true picture of the progress. If you don’t understand how your present actions transform into something big in the long term, you will not be able to prioritise things. Once you have figured this out, you would achieve the ‘gift’ of perspective. Move to the next challenge. Our Top Management Articles Top 7 Career Options in Management To Choose [For Freshers & Experienced] Online Product Management Courses to Kickstart your Career Top 10 Career Options in Business Management in India 8 Crucial Business Management Skills Every Manager Should Have Future Scope of Management: Scope, Salary, Career Opportunities Career Options After MBA – Highest Paying Management Jobs 5 Key Skills Required for Successful Management Career & How To Achieve Those Skills? What is The Nature and Scope of Management? Importance of Management in Every Organisation – [A Complete Guide] Challenge 3 – Knowing what has been built till now and how This challenge can be broken down into 3 sub-tasks: Knowing the architecture of the product – What are modular flows that make up our product – Login flow, Onboarding flow, Checkout flow, etc. are some examples. Breaking down the product into modules will help you understand the complexity of the solution. This can be explained best by a senior developer who has built the architecture or a senior tester who has done manual testing of all the flaws. Knowing what is included in all the modules – Read PRDs of each flow to get detailed information about what it includes. Clarify doubts from existing product managers. Ask the developers who have worked on specific modules. Knowing the tools being used to make everything – What is the tech stack being used? Which languages and frameworks are we using and why them specifically? Which tools and third-party services are being used to support the core stack? This can be best explained by the development lead or the architect. Once you have the answers to these 3 questions in detail, you have earned the gift of knowledge. Now move to the next challenge. Challenge 4 – Knowing the processes and tools This is where most newly recruited product managers start. Completing this challenge is mandatory to prove your worth as a product manager. However, by skipping the first 3 challenges, newly recruited product managers miss out on a lot of things that are likely to haunt them later. This challenge involves understanding the process of product management – freezing requirements, writing PRDs, sharing designs, handovers from stakeholders, handover to developers, running sprints, measuring progress, assigning tasks, filing bugs, going through the testing process, the release process, the processes post-launch, etc. One of the key tasks, in order to complete this challenge, is to understand how the company stores and tracks the metrics (or data points) that you discovered from challenge 2. Each company has a unique way of doing these things, and the tools used by them to manage these tasks also vary. Understanding what is working in your company will help you run the day to day product operations. At the end of this challenge, you would have achieved the gift of competence. The Hard Skills required for Product Management Challenge 5 – Knowing the people you work with Last but not the least, understand the structure of the organization. This challenge is mandatory for 2 main reasons – knowing the other functions in your company and the reporting hierarchies in those departments will help you reach out to the right people whenever you are gathering requirements for the product. But even more importantly, building a good rapport with these stakeholders will help you develop organization-wide influence, which is a much-needed quality for the long-term success of a product manager. Just like knowing what metrics to track for the organization, you also need to learn the key metrics for each department. Check how these metrics are depending on the product. Ask these stakeholders what is wrong with the product that is hindering them in achieving their goals and their expectations. Once you have completed this task, you would have achieved the gift of influence. Just like Hercules, if you conquer these 5 challenges, you will be on your way to prove your worthiness as a product manager. All the best for the journey ahead! Study Product Management Courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Program for you: Design Thinking Certification Program from Duke CE

by Pranay Bhardwaj

26 Oct 2017

Blogs

5788

This is the fourth post of a five-part series I am writing with the aim to help a product aspirant enter the world of Product Management. In my last post, I broke down the discipline of Product Management into four parts with an aim to help Product Management aspirants understand their career trajectory within a company or in general. In this post, I will be talking about the life journey of a product feature, from ideation to abandonment, to help a Product Management aspirant get a 360 degree perspective on what the role of a Product Manager involves.   T – 30 days It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. That is literally the case where a product feature’s birth is involved. It all starts with some level of discomfort. Some employee in the company faces discomfort in achieving one of his daily tasks – maybe the user base has increased and he is not able to manage it with the old processes. Some executive in the company looks at an excel sheet and thinks that the company is losing too much money because of, say, high numbers of product cancellations. Or maybe a competitor launched a product feature that is causing the customers to leave the said company’s product. Someone looking at the marketing conversion funnel noticed high drop-offs at a certain stage and felt that optimizing that might help him achieve his quarterly target. Or it could be a 100 different reasons from a high number of customer complaints for a common problem to a new feature being demanded by a majority of the users surveyed the previous week. The point is – it all starts with some level of discomfort. Explore our Popular Business Management Courses Leadership and Management in New-Age Business Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management Professional Certificate Programme in HR Management and Analytics Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Healthcare Management Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Certificate Programme in Finance for Non Finance Executives Certificate Programme in Operations Management and Analytics Global Master Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management upGrad's Job Linked Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad Global Professional Certificate in Effective Leadership & Management Advanced General Management Program Strategic Human Resources Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Digital Transformation Cornell Certificate Program Executive Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Management Essentials Business Management Courses Now, this discomfort is brought to the notice of the Product Manager; or maybe the Product Manager is the one who notices it first. This is the point which starts a chain of events that might lead to the birth of a new feature.   T – 25 days It’s time for the Product Manager to mull over the problem statement. He goes and talks to customers or internal stakeholders who reported the discomfort and then those who are actually experiencing it; all with a single aim – to make sure that he has identified the ‘root’ problem statement. If this stage is taken lightly or the Product Manager doesn’t spend enough time on this, then the product features born are fragile, distorted and meet their end pretty quickly. Top Essential Management Skills to Learn SL. No Top Management Skills to Learn 1 Consumer Behaviour Online Certification Financial Analysis Certification FinTech Certification Online 2 HR Analytics Certification Online Communication Courses Online Effective Communication Certification 3 Research Methodology Certification Mastering Sales Certification Business Communication Certification 4 Fundamentals of Journalism Certification Economics Masterclass Online Certification Once the Product Manager has identified the core problem statement, he decides if it is worth solving. Is the discomfort really a big one or is it kind of exaggerated or worse, just made up? Would solving it actually add significant value to the customer and/or the company? Would not solving it impose a significant penalty on the customer and/or company? Is there a way to solve this problem with a minor tweak in processes or through any activity that doesn’t require product changes – say changing a vendor, negotiating better price from an existing vendor, getting a third party software to solve the problem, hiring an extra employee, changes in content, graphics, call-to-action button, etc? Basically, if there is a way we can get similar value-addition from a method that doesn’t involve product changes, then we would go for that over changing anything in the product – whether that means adding or removing. Once the Product Manager is convinced that solving the problem statement will provide significant value and a product level change will give much more ROI (considering time, money and effort v/s value) than a non-product level change, the seeds of a new product feature are planted. Which of These Product Management Tools Are You Using? T – 15 days If the Product Manager has some prior experience, he might propose a solution based on that experience. However, that might not be the best solution in all cases. If the problem statement requires a highly technical solution, the Product Manager discusses the same with developers and engineering managers and takes their advice on best way to go about it. If the solution requires design level changes, the UX lead might be consulted. It could be that the Product Manager and UX person organise a design sprint and choose the solution that is received well by the actual users of that feature. Sometimes the problem is totally business related and hence requires a buy-in from the senior management. So, there can be multiple ways a solution could be finalised. But once it is, the Product Manager is responsible for converting that theoretical solution into an active product feature. Our Top Management Articles Top 7 Career Options in Management To Choose [For Freshers & Experienced] Online Product Management Courses to Kickstart your Career Top 10 Career Options in Business Management in India 8 Crucial Business Management Skills Every Manager Should Have Future Scope of Management: Scope, Salary, Career Opportunities Career Options After MBA – Highest Paying Management Jobs 5 Key Skills Required for Successful Management Career & How To Achieve Those Skills? What is The Nature and Scope of Management? Importance of Management in Every Organisation – [A Complete Guide] upGrad’s Exclusive Product Management Webinar for you – How to craft GTM Strategy for a Product? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/panel-discussion-on-crafting-gtm-strategy-for-a-product.mp4   T = 0 (aka birth of the product feature) When a particular solution is identified, the Product Manager, in collaboration with the relevant team, hashes out a basic outline of the solution. It may or may not include a prototype of the solution. Sometimes it is just a basic excel sheet with ‘if-then’ conditions written for when to show a particular CTA to a user, etc. The Product Manager puts the solution into words in the relevant PRD (Product Requirements Document). If the feature is small, it might just be a paragraph in an existing PRD for a bigger feature. Sometimes the feature is so huge that it requires a complete PRD just to detail it properly. The PRD is run by the relevant teams and the Product Manager makes sure that broad consensus exists regarding the feature. T + 15 days Small features might take less than a day to be frozen. Big features, sometimes, take more than 30 days to get everyone’s go-ahead. Let’s take an average of 15 days to say that this is the time when the newborn feature is introduced to the developers. A proper design and PRD handover take place where developers who are working on the project are informed about the 5Ws (What, Why, When, Where, Who) and the test cases (how the feature should behave or not behave once it is released). Along with the engineering manager, a proper release schedule is decided for the feature with deadlines for when the development will end when the testing will start, when the reported bugs will be fixed and the final release date. Then the whole timeline is divided into measurable sprints (usually 15 days long). Once developers are satisfied, development begins. T + 30 days Sprint 1 ends. One part of the product feature is rolled out. It might not be customer facing yet, but most teams follow Agile methodologies today for software development – meaning that we build incrementally and iteratively. So, rather than building a big feature in 6 months and releasing all at once, we break the whole thing into independent parts that can function on their own (a bunch of User Stories) and are quickly ready to be reviewed and iterated. The Product Manager makes sure that the release timeline is on track through daily scrum meetings and discussions with the relevant engineering manager working on the project. In case there is a delay, timelines are adjusted accordingly, or small parts of the features are dropped to make sure that release is on time. After each sprint, the progress made is presented to the Product Manager and relevant stakeholders in a meeting, and post-approval it is released. One Year of UpGrad’s Product Management Program T + x days After ‘n’ number of sprints, the development is complete and the entire feature is out. It is not necessary that the customers get to use the feature only when released completely. They could be using it since the release at the end of sprint 1 itself. Each subsequent sprint cycle release only makes the feature more robust and brings it closer to what it is intended to be. Launching a feature is itself an art and involves a lot of steps that we will skip and just assume that after a lot of drumming and chest-thumping, it was declared to the world that a feature has been released. This might be as complex as a full-blown Press Release with the CEO himself talking about the new launch, or it might just be something on which a mail is sent to a particular department that is going to use the feature and probably requested it in the first place. So now that the feature is out there, let’s give this feature a name – Mr. Feature. T + y days Even after the final release, things sometimes go wrong. Mr. Feature, which was once all shiny and valuable, might not be the same anymore and there could be multiple reasons for it. This phase in a product’s cycle is about supporting the product. One fine day another release was made that caused Mr. Feature to perform in unintended ways (a.k.a. become buggy) or maybe another feature was removed that had some dependencies on Mr. Feature and this caused the buggy behaviour. It could also be that when the feature was made, we underestimated the number of users who will use it or didn’t plan all the use-cases and now the feature is not able to scale up to these many users or use-cases. This is either reported by the test team in their periodic review, or it is reported by some team member who just discovered it while using the feature himself. In case of customer-facing features, these complaints might come from the actual customers of the product and be communicated to the Product Manager via the Customer Experience team. The Product Manager tries to understand the root cause of the bug and, according to priority, schedules the fix for the next release cycle – it could be added in the current sprint if it is high-priority or even subsequent sprints. After the bug is fixed and released, Mr. Feature lives to see another day, albeit in a reformed form – Mr. Feature 2.0 – thanks to the Product Manager and the engineering team. Kudos! T + z days It is said that all good things must come to an end. Sadly, that is the case with Mr. Feature too, no matter what its version is – maybe Mr. Feature 9.263.75! That means Mr. Feature has lived a long and happy life, but now the end of the road is here. It might be due to various reasons. A new feature came along which made the need for Mr. Feature altogether redundant. It might be something extreme too – like the company decided that although the feature was adding value to its users, it didn’t make economic sense for them any longer.  No matter what the reason be, it is communicated to the Product Manager (or he is the one who starts the discussion) that Mr. Feature’s services won’t be needed anymore. Now, as heart-breaking as it is, the Product Manager has the duty to lay Mr. Feature to rest. Although, before that, he needs to make sure of a few things like informing the users who were using Mr. Feature that it won’t be available from a certain date, the new feature is working well before removing Mr. Feature, no other flow gets impacted when Mr. Feature is gone, and so on. So, it is time to say RIP to Mr. Feature. In your product management career, you will have to do this multiple times. But remember, the end of one feature is the beginning of another and the cycle continues. Such is the product management life! Study Product Management Courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Program for you: Design Thinking Certification Program from Duke CE

by Pranay Bhardwaj

04 Oct 2017

Blogs

6658

This is the third of a five-part series I am writing with the aim to help a product aspirant enter the world of Product Management. In my last post, I wrote about the difference in job roles of a Product Manager at different companies, based on their core competencies. In this post, I will be breaking down the discipline of Product Management into four parts with an aim to help Product Management aspirants understand their career trajectory within a company or in general. To help you visualise this better, let us assume we are running a hypothetical product like Uber for Air Taxis. The company provides a platform for booking air pods on demand, for users to commute from point A to B. Please note that this article is in context of a Software-based company (booking platform) and not a company that produces physical goods (air pods). The Product Management Hierarchy in any organization is divided into four essential aspects: Vision, Strategy, Tactics, and Execution. The larger the organisation, the more differentiated will be each aspect from the other. In smaller companies, all four might be done by one person, or at the very least, there will be significant overlaps. Company Hierarchy: CEO > 1 Vice President of Product > 3 Directors > 10 Product Managers >  4 Associate Product Managers Explore our Popular Business Management Courses Leadership and Management in New-Age Business Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management Professional Certificate Programme in HR Management and Analytics Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Healthcare Management Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Certificate Programme in Finance for Non Finance Executives Certificate Programme in Operations Management and Analytics Global Master Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management upGrad's Job Linked Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad Global Professional Certificate in Effective Leadership & Management Advanced General Management Program Strategic Human Resources Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Digital Transformation Cornell Certificate Program Executive Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Management Essentials Business Management Courses   Vision Taking our example of Uber for Air Taxis, the VP of Product will set the entire vision of the product, including the price at which the service should be provided to customers, the cities to launch this service in, product positioning in the market, making sure the product is not violating any regulations, setting the broad product roadmap, budget allocation through the CEO, etc. Also, the VP will be the final decision maker for every big hiring decision in the Product Management function. VPs need to plan for the next 3 years or more. VPs of Product don’t make basic product-level decisions, their success criteria are making sure that the ‘product’ and the ‘company’ are aligned and that the product is always fulfilling the business goals. Top Essential Management Skills to Learn SL. No Top Management Skills to Learn 1 Consumer Behaviour Online Certification Financial Analysis Certification FinTech Certification Online 2 HR Analytics Certification Online Communication Courses Online Effective Communication Certification 3 Research Methodology Certification Mastering Sales Certification Business Communication Certification 4 Fundamentals of Journalism Certification Economics Masterclass Online Certification Their main job is to represent the company stakeholders’ interest in all products and push the product’s interest to all company stakeholders. It is more of an influencer role. Since the VP is directly reporting to the CEO in this example, the VP might also have a say in the overall company vision (the business) and not just the product vision. Note: As the company grows, there may be more layers that get added between the CEO and VP. In large companies, there may be multiple VPs who report to a CPO or an Executive SVP or some other fancy title at an Executive level in the company. Hence these VPs have no say in overall company vision. For example, in Amazon, there will be an SVP of Amazon Web Services, an SVP of Amazon Marketplace, an SVP of Amazon Retail, and so on. Each SVP would have a few VPs reporting to him and these VPs will be heads of their respective product lines under the umbrella terms such as ‘Web Services’. The Ultimate Product Management Resource List Our Top Management Articles Top 7 Career Options in Management To Choose [For Freshers & Experienced] Online Product Management Courses to Kickstart your Career Top 10 Career Options in Business Management in India 8 Crucial Business Management Skills Every Manager Should Have Future Scope of Management: Scope, Salary, Career Opportunities Career Options After MBA – Highest Paying Management Jobs 5 Key Skills Required for Successful Management Career & How To Achieve Those Skills? What is The Nature and Scope of Management? Importance of Management in Every Organisation – [A Complete Guide] Strategy A strategy is used to translate the vision into an executable plan of action. This part is taken care of by the Director. Usually, the Director of Product Management (depending on company size) would approve the product roadmap with milestones, timelines, and budget constraints, that will be used to decide the entire product management function of the company. The Director of Product’s main job is to define the function of Product Management within the company and not any individual product. He works on things like staff allocation to different products, resource allocation to different products, ensuring documentation and reporting is happening properly, aiding Product Managers with support from cross-functional teams, resolving disputes between Product teams and making sure everyone is incentivised and motivated, setting up KPIs for individual Product Managers and their products, deciding when to push a product and when to withdraw it from market, etc. Directors set the broader strategy of what next to do and plan for the next 12-18 months. In our example, the three Directors of Product Management would look after a bunch of product lines, each. Each Director will have 3-4 Product Managers reporting to him. Each Director would make sure that the Product Managers on his team are happy with their work and motivated. The Director would also be the go-to person for all technical problems that the reporting Product Managers are having while managing their product because the Director has already been through all this and can provide guidance. upGrad’s Exclusive Product Management Webinar for you – How to craft GTM Strategy for a Product? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/panel-discussion-on-crafting-gtm-strategy-for-a-product.mp4 Also, the Director would be thorough with the overall market conditions, competitor initiatives, supply/demand forecasting to answer all questions that the Product Managers or VPs might ask. Note: In most companies, there is a significant overlap between Strategy and Vision. In a small company where Product Managers directly report to the VP, the strategy might be decided completely by the VP. Tactics Tactics are the small maneuvers you make to solve problems that are preventing the execution of strategy. In most companies, this is the role that Product Managers are responsible for. Product Managers have a lot of independence and ownership as far as making small tactical decisions like adding/removing features going out in the next release, conducting customer surveys, prioritising bugs, etc, are concerned. In our Uber for Air Taxis example, the Product Manager will write the Product Requirements Document (PRD) for the feature that has been prioritised within the roadmap, and discuss it internally with all the functional teams to make sure everything is covered. He will also give test cases to the testing team and do a proper PRD handover with complete designs to the development team. The Product Manager will then conduct weekly scrums to make sure that the release is on track. He will also need to make sure that each release is received well by the customers, or else course correct. Each Product Manager is independently responsible for the product or parts of the product that he is managing. Other than making sure that releases go on time, making sure that the right releases are prioritised and proper metrics are tracked is a core part of the Product Manager’s job. Product Managers need to be hands-on where managing mistakes and measuring success/failure of each release is concerned. These metrics for success/failure are approved by the Director or VPs first, and weekly reports are sent to them. Note: In small companies, Product Managers might be responsible for Tactics as well as Execution, while the VP takes care of Strategy and Vision. However, as the company grows, there are Associate Product Managers (APMs) or Product Analysts reporting to Product Managers, who are heavily involved with daily reports of progress. Career Paths and Transitions in Product Management Execution Execution involves tracking product metrics on a daily basis, number crunching to derive insights, conducting surveys, talking to customers, looking after customer complaints received on a regular basis, using the product internally or user testing to report bugs, etc. In a small company, all these things will be done by the Product Manager himself. But as the product grows, there are Analysts or APMs hired who are given specific parts of the product to manage. Analysts and APMs have very less leeway and they are almost always instructed what to do by the Product Manager. They act as the eyes and hands of the Product Manager. In our example for Uber for Air Taxis, an APM might start his day by looking at all the customer complaints that came up the previous day, summarise them by issue type and count, and then present it to the Product Manager to take action on. He might sit with the Product Manager as he calls a few customers to understand the problem and then the APM might have to do the same thing with more customers to derive data from. Later, the APM might be instructed to send discount coupons on the next ride to all of the customers who faced an issue, etc. If there is nobody who reports to the Product Manager, he will be responsible for all the tasks mentioned in this section. I hope this post helped you understand how the overall function of Product Management works in any company. In the next few posts, I will try to clear up more doubts that surround this field, that I hope will help you in your career as a Product Manager! Study Product Management Courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Program for you: Design Thinking Certification Program from Duke CE

by Pranay Bhardwaj

24 Aug 2017

Blogs

898935

This is part 2 of a five series post I am writing with the aim to help a product aspirant enter into the world of Product Management. In my previous post, I have provided an extensive list of resources required for a person to kick-start his journey in product management. And in this post, I will be explaining how to identify the company that is best suited for you or is most likely to hire you when you are out looking for a job. As explained before too, Product management requires competency in 3 domains – Tech, Design, and Business, but not all product managers excel at all three domains. It is important for a Product management aspirant to understand the role that would fit him best based on his core competencies. To help you visualize these roles, I will be portraying the 3 types of Product Managers based on famous characters from TV series. Choose the personality that you relate to most, and discover the companies which will be a right fit for you. Please note that in this post I have exclusively focused on Indian startups for the purpose of examples. Read: Product management jobs and their career prospects. Explore our Popular Business Management Courses Leadership and Management in New-Age Business Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management Professional Certificate Programme in HR Management and Analytics Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Healthcare Management Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Certificate Programme in Finance for Non Finance Executives Certificate Programme in Operations Management and Analytics Global Master Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management upGrad's Job Linked Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad Global Professional Certificate in Effective Leadership & Management Advanced General Management Program Strategic Human Resources Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Digital Transformation Cornell Certificate Program Executive Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Management Essentials Business Management Courses Walter White from Breaking Bad Walter White is a middle-aged chemistry whiz in Breaking Bad who is wasting his life as a chemistry school teacher. Through various twists and turns in the plot, he gets involved with some drug peddlers in the city. When he sees the quality of meth they are selling, he feels unsatisfied and ends up creating the purest meth ever, and he does it all by himself, in a makeshift lab. If you relate to the character of Walter White in some ways – feeling frustrated with bad technology being used or know of better ways of doing things because of a better than average or deep understanding of technology – then you are a tech-first kind of person. Tech-first people do great when the company they work for works on a proven business model and the industry it operates in has a standard user experience across solutions. Here, innovation means making something feasible with a leap of technology. It would be beneficial for you to join companies that are pioneering new ways of solving real-world problems through a technology-first approach. Few examples of such companies are – Ather, GreyOrange, Belong, UnoCoin, ZebPay, Niki.ai, Razorpay, JusPay, Mad Street Den, Postman, etc. Career Paths and Career Transitions in Product Management Jerry Seinfeld from Seinfeld Jerry Seinfeld is a famous American comedian who played himself in the iconic show ‘Seinfeld.’ Although there were many such shows by different comedians, Seinfeld was unique.  He made a show about ‘nothing.’ In the show, Seinfeld and his friends just lived their daily lives, and yet managed to make everyone laugh with their general observations and unique personalities. This unique way of doing a show made it stand out from all other shows and see major success. If you relate to the character of Jerry Seinfeld in ‘Seinfeld’, and look at the world in a completely unique and refreshing way, then you are a design-first kind of a person. You will shine the most in places where the business model is already proven and technology is not a competitive advantage in the industry. Here innovation means re-envisioning the presentation of the solution, making it more delightful and easy. Some of the companies that would suit a design-first Product Manager are BookMyShow, Zomato, ScoopWhoop, Practo, CueMath, Scripbox, TVF, Voonik, HealthifyMe, Bank Bazaar, Eat.fit, etc Top Essential Management Skills to Learn SL. No Top Management Skills to Learn 1 Consumer Behaviour Online Certification Financial Analysis Certification FinTech Certification Online 2 HR Analytics Certification Online Communication Courses Online Effective Communication Certification 3 Research Methodology Certification Mastering Sales Certification Business Communication Certification 4 Fundamentals of Journalism Certification Economics Masterclass Online Certification . Pablo Escobar from Narcos Pablo Escobar was a notorious South American drug lord. And Narcos is a dramatized story of his life. In the series, the genius of Pablo Escobar is seen as he finds clever ways to transport drugs from Colombia to all parts of the world, strikes brilliant strategic partnerships to help his business, and always stays one step ahead of the government and his competitors. If you relate to the character of Pablo Escobar from Narcos, and prefer being aware of the market scenario to the extent that enables you to always be on top of things; if you can strike great partnerships, and iron out all issues that can damage your product’s consumption, then you are business-first. Such people excel in roles where technology know-how is not a competitive advantage and product design is not the primary success criteria. But the overall structuring of the business is the real game winner. Here innovation means the way the business is done through the product. upGrad’s Exclusive Product Management Webinar for you – How to craft GTM Strategy for a Product? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/panel-discussion-on-crafting-gtm-strategy-for-a-product.mp4   Some companies excelling in this field are Rentomojo, Swiggy, SlicePay, Droom, MagicPin, Byju’s, Urban Ladder, BlackBuck, Oyo Rooms, Ola Cabs, Flipkart, HouseJoy, NoBroker, ZoomCar, etc. Product Management 101 and Career Prospects To sum up, I hope this article helped you create a mental model of the difference in jobs or roles of Product Managers across companies. However, to get the maximum out of this article, here are some things to keep in mind –   A Product Manager’s job is always a mixture of – tech, design, and business. Every successful Product Manager has to be comfortable with all three domains. This post was written to help you understand how a Product Manager’s role demands excellence across different verticals and different companies. A single company can have multiple types of products. Example – Flipkart has a team working on a recommendation system, which requires a tech-first Product Manager. But a team working on the seller-side app requires a business-first Product Manager. In this article, I’ve broken down the Product Manager’s role into Tech, Design, and Business. I’ve not specifically created a separate role for data, as every Product Manager requires some knowledge in data. Knowledge of data is independent of product or the business but dependent on the stage or maturity of the business. Established businesses, whether tech-first, design-first, or business-first, require data-focused Product Managers. This is because once a product matures there will be a lot of data available, and the business requires a Product Manager who can understand and make sense of such data. Once there is an established business, only incremental changes are required on all fronts. Hence, every Product Manager, by default, will need to become data-oriented. Our Top Management Articles Top 7 Career Options in Management To Choose [For Freshers & Experienced] Online Product Management Courses to Kickstart your Career Top 10 Career Options in Business Management in India 8 Crucial Business Management Skills Every Manager Should Have Future Scope of Management: Scope, Salary, Career Opportunities Career Options After MBA – Highest Paying Management Jobs 5 Key Skills Required for Successful Management Career & How To Achieve Those Skills? What is The Nature and Scope of Management? Importance of Management in Every Organisation – [A Complete Guide] Study Product Management Courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Similarly, this article doesn’t focus on growth, as every Product Manager dealing with a product in its nascent stage of build-up, will have to be growth-oriented, unless a separate role of a Growth Manager has been carved out. Featured Program for you: Design Thinking Certification Program from Duke CE Read my next post in this series to figure out your position on the Product Management Ladder?

by Pranay Bhardwaj

10 Jul 2017

Blogs

6295

The idea to write this post came to me while I was browsing through all the web pages I have bookmarked till date; pages that are related to Product Management. I just wish there was a tool that could create a mind-map of sorts with all the links you have ever bookmarked. I am actually working on building that tool, but more on that later. In the meantime, I wondered if I could do something with all the information I have gathered while researching Product Management over the past few months, into a sort of easy-to-grasp chart. And was there ever a more recognized chart than the Periodic Table of Elements? I don’t think so! So, here I’ve attempted to organize all the information in this simple format that can help any new Product Manager get a complete picture of what this function entails and the best resources out there to help improve your knowledge of Product Management. Core Skills for a T-Shaped Product Manager Prioritisation (P) There is a reason why this skill is at the head of the table. This is the most used and most required skillset of a Product Manager. There are always thousands of things that can be done, hundreds of strategies to follow, dozens of ways something can be implemented, but you have limited resources in terms of time, manpower, capital and the opportunity to satisfy the customers. In such a scenario, a Product Manager has to know what to prioritise and what to say NO to. It is often said that a Product Manager’s job is more about saying NO then about saying YES. But these decisions should not be taken from a position of authority, rather they should be about asking the fundamental questions to understand the root cause and being very clear about the ‘Why’ of the product and the business. Read: Product management jobs and their career prospects. Explore our Popular Business Management Courses Leadership and Management in New-Age Business Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Human Resource Management Professional Certificate Programme in HR Management and Analytics Executive Post-Graduate Programme in Healthcare Management Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Certificate Programme in Finance for Non Finance Executives Certificate Programme in Operations Management and Analytics Global Master Certificate in Integrated Supply Chain Management upGrad's Job Linked Advanced General Management Program from IMT Ghaziabad Global Professional Certificate in Effective Leadership & Management Advanced General Management Program Strategic Human Resources Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Digital Transformation Cornell Certificate Program Executive Leadership Cornell Certificate Program Management Essentials Business Management Courses Research skills (Rs) From market research to user research, or just researching on the internet about the best tools that can be used to solve a particular problem, Product Managers have to develop good research skills. Business acumen (Ba) An understanding of business profitability, competitors, industry dynamics, regulations, unit economics, pricing and ecosystem play is critical for the success of a Product Manager. In most companies, Product Management is actually a business function. Product Managers act as the critical interface between the business and its customers, and the management and engineers. Understanding the business of your product is very important to succeed in this role. Check out our business management courses to upskill yourself. Technical know-how (Tk) There is no industry in the world which is untouched by technology. Knowing what lies under the hood of your product is very important for a number of reasons, Mainly, for communicating with engineers and understanding what they are talking about; and strategising better about issues, shortcomings and potential opportunities to achieve business goals better, via technology, etc. Prototyping (Pp) Sometimes it is better to show than to tell. Making quick prototypes are a good way to not only communicate better to customers and other stakeholders, but also to collect feedback. Words and presentations can only convey so much, but if you give someone a prototype (no matter how rudimentary), that’s when things finally become clear and quality feedback is collected. upGrad’s Exclusive Product Management Webinar for you – How to craft GTM Strategy for a Product? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/panel-discussion-on-crafting-gtm-strategy-for-a-product.mp4   Analytical skills (As) A Product Manager must be good at handling and inferring data. In fact, a crucial part of a Product Manager’s day-to-day life is studying data around customer behaviour, revenue growth, etc, and trying to decipher all sorts of patterns from this data, to guide the product better. Top Essential Management Skills to Learn SL. No Top Management Skills to Learn 1 Consumer Behaviour Online Certification Financial Analysis Certification FinTech Certification Online 2 HR Analytics Certification Online Communication Courses Online Effective Communication Certification 3 Research Methodology Certification Mastering Sales Certification Business Communication Certification 4 Fundamentals of Journalism Certification Economics Masterclass Online Certification Communication skills (Cs) Effective presentation, team management, and goal-setting start with being good with communication. A Product Manager has to lead without authority and so these skills become even more important for a Product Manager.  You might be a whiz kid, but not having good communication skills will neither make you popular among your engineers nor the decision-makers in the company.   Mental models Frameworks to keep in mind AARRR (Ar) AARRR or (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) is a framework for the customer lifecycle.   Agile Methodology (Ag) It describes a set of principles of software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organising cross-functional teams.   Network Effect (Nw) It is a phenomenon whereby a product or service gains additional value as more people use it. Understanding this is crucial to building good products in today’s world.   Technology Adoption Lifecycle (Li) The technology adoption lifecycle is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups.   Economies of Scale (Es) A proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.   Product Market Fit (Pmf) Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. Our Top Management Articles Top 7 Career Options in Management To Choose [For Freshers & Experienced] Online Product Management Courses to Kickstart your Career Top 10 Career Options in Business Management in India 8 Crucial Business Management Skills Every Manager Should Have Future Scope of Management: Scope, Salary, Career Opportunities Career Options After MBA – Highest Paying Management Jobs 5 Key Skills Required for Successful Management Career & How To Achieve Those Skills? What is The Nature and Scope of Management? Importance of Management in Every Organisation – [A Complete Guide] Books Books to develop deeper knowledge The Lean Start-up (Ls) The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ht2) Inspired (In) Design of Everyday Things (Det) Don’t Make Me Think (Dmt) The Mythical Man-Month (Mm) Sprint (St) Hooked (Ho) The Four Steps to Epiphany (Fse) The Product Manager’s Survival Guide (Sg) The Product Manager’s Desk Reference (Dr) Traction (Tr) Cracking the PM Interview (Cpi)   Newsletters Subscribe to these newsletters to stay in touch with the latest and learn from the best Hacker News (Hn) Product Hunt (Ph) Ken Norton’s blog (Knb) Mind the Product blog (Mtp) Silicon Valley Product Group newsletter (Sv) Product Management HQ newsletter (Phq) Online Courses Some of the curated online courses that are relevant for Product people Post Graduate Certificate in Product Management– UpGrad Product design by Google – Udacity Agile development by University of Virginia – Coursera Interaction design by University of Southern California – Coursera Become a Product Manager by Cole Mercer – Udemy Product Management: Career preparation for success by Felix Thea – Udemy Intro to Product Management – Highbrow   Terminologies Search these on the internet to familiarise yourself with Product jargon Voice of customer (Vc) Scrum (Sc) Sprint (Sp) User story (Us) API (Ap) High fidelity mockup (Mo) UI (Ui) A/B Test (Ab) MVP (Mv) NPS (Np) Landing Page (Lp) USP (Up) Persona (Pe) User journey (Uj) PRD (Pd) Product Roadmap (Ro) Wireframes (Wf) Epic (Ep) Churn rate (Ch) Hypothesis validation (Hv) Bug (B) Acceptance tests (Ac) Onboarding (Ob) Referral (Rf) Viral (V) Conversion funnel (Cf) Performance optimisation (Po) Vanity metrics (Vm) Core metrics (Cm) Throughput (Tp) Go-to-Market (Gm) Alpha test (At) Beta test (Bt) Usability testing (Ut) User experience (Ux) Feedback loop (Fl) Product Management Tools In place of Poor metals (15 elements) Invision (Iv) – Design prototyping tool for basic to interactive prototypes Asana (Aa) – Easy project management tool Hotjar (Hj) – Tool for visitor recordings, heat maps, etc JIRA (Ji) – Popular issue tracking, bug tracking and project management tool Zendesk (Zk) – Used to track, prioritise and solve customer support tickets Zapier (Za) – ‘If this, then this’ tool for business that integrates various apps MailChimp (Mc) – Email marketing software Typeform (Tf) – Engaging online forms, surveys, quizzes, etc Webengage (We) – On-site customer engagement tool Intercom (Ic) – Customer messaging app for sales, marketing and support Google Analytics (Ga) – Web analytics service by Google Unbounce (Un) – Create landing pages and website overlays without the help of developers Mixpanel (Mx) – Mobile & Web analytics tool for tracking users Zeplin (Ze) – Collaboration tool between designers and developers Moqups (Mq) – Wireframing tool Freshdesk – Improve customer experiences and business processes People to follow on Twitter In place of Lanthanides (15 elements) Josh Elman – @joshelman Hunter Walk – @hunterwalk Julie Zhou – @joulee Ryan Hoover – @rrhoover Ken Norton – @kennethn Jake Knapp – @jakeknapp Marty Cagan – @cagan Steve Blank – @sgblank Eric Ries – @ericries Ben Horowitz – @bhorowitz Martin Erikson – @bfgmartin Nir Eyal – @nireyal Roman Pichler – @romanpichler Dan Olsen – @danolsen Paul Graham – @paulg   I hope this summarised set of information will help you focus on the more important thing – learning what needs to be learnt, and not waste time on finding what needs to be learnt. Featured Program for you: Design Thinking Certification Program from Duke CE

by Pranay Bhardwaj

19 Jun 2017