Twitter’s Product Manager
I read some articles this week coming up with cheeky ways to mention that Twitter is finally going to star “making money.” How, oh how, are they going to do this? Well, of course - by hiring someone. A product manager, in fact.
Har har har.
This really goes to show just how little people understand the role of PM’s in the tech space.
Twitter’s job description on the other hand is bang on. But honestly, people - do you really think they would hire a PM if they didn’t already have some idea of what they were going to do? Come on.
The senior managers / founders / VCs already have at least some idea (if not a very strong idea) of the business model they are going to put in place. They only need a PM to help them validate the vision and carry it out. Maybe recommend some new opportunities along the way / think outside the box. But actually make it come to life.
PM’s aren’t “moneymakers.” They can be. But I guarantee you - in this situation, they are looking for someone to come in, research and think the market opportunities they have already identified and then follow through on my favorite term - “productization.”
So, really - before writing all these crazy articles about how “Twitter has no idea how to make money - so they need to hire someone!” You should actually understand what it is PM’s do and how they work in start-up environments.
Do you think super smart people like Fred Wilson would have given them another 11mm if Ev and Biz and the rest of the folks didn’t already have some clue about how they were going to generate a positive cash flow?
Growing
Short post — but just an observation too long for Twitter.
You know what’s better than actually pushing an initial product out the door after its inception? Watching it grow — the actual “management” part of product management. This is where you learn how users react to it, and where you see the market inputs you’ve setup start to fill up with ideas and opportunities.
And when you start to see common themes across different inputs you have setup, that’s when you know you are going in the right direction.
There will always be critics and naysayers. And you can always get better.
You will always need to enhance, tweak — and generally make things better.
That’s the fun part of product management to me, because it’s when you see the whole product really start to come together. At least in Web start-ups, at the beginning, cross-functional teams are very loosely defined and may (or may not) really know how to work together.
But as you fight the battles, and take the wins and the losses with one another, that’s when you all start to build a product that’s really awesome.
I’m in the early days of this stage of a product right now (moving away from the introductory cycles and in to the growth stages, where the stakes are higher).
The business will transition along with the product (if the product is the business, which is common in start-ups) and you need to learn to roll with it.
It’s never perfect. It’s never done. Things always need to change and get better; just so long as you maintain focus and have the confidence you are moving in the right direction (and keep everyone informed and open to receiving input) you are doing all that you can to grow that product in the right direction.
How Product Decisions Work
It’s all very simple.
But I thought I would write-up a quick post in case there are those of you out there struggling with how to either a) make product decisions or b) think a PM you are working with is taking too long.
The bottom line is this: product decisions are highly complex. In some organizations they take months to make - in others (start-ups for example) days or weeks. But that’s because they are hard choices to make and require gathering consensus. You can’t spitball your way to a successful market-driven product.
You also can’t play pump & dump strategies with features - it doesn’t work long-term (even if it you think it will) and it creates far too much make work for all of those involved.
You will end-up with a product that just is an amalgamation of cruft from all those failed attempts (regardless how small and meaningless they seem - this is a very slippery slope and once it starts) unless there are appropriate reasons in place for each of them and strategies to deal with them when they work and when they don’t work.
There is no argument with this. It happens all the time - so just stop it if you see it happening or starting to happen. It always, always ends badly.
Product decisions, when the inputs have been built up and are being used effectively take everything in to account, have the full benefit of the user in mind while still taking alignment with the overall problem and vision in to account.
The product definition, corporate strategy, user feedback, competitive analysis, analytic data, metrics, win/loss, industry research, and just ideas that are floating around in general, etc, etc… These all need to be consulted as you go. It’s the product manager’s job to track all that data and use it to make effective choices.
Again, trust me - you can’t rely too heavily on one or the other - they will always lead you astray when it comes to product. For example, if you follow what users say exactly you will end-up with features that dead-end because user’s won’t think things through entirely.
A great example is internal ideas. Everyone always knows what’s going to make the product successful - and they are always highly passionate about it. But remember, while they idea may make sense and see really great at the outset, once you start to attempt to map it against other market data, it may not align with what the market tells you.
And you ALWAYS trust the market before co-workers and yourself.
Another example is analytics. You look too hard at where users are clicking, and you may miss the underlying fundamentals - for example, maybe you have no value proposition. Analytics won’t tell you that and you could arrange a page and bucket test it now until the cows come home and it still won’t work.
When you are assessing a priority to give to something, or how to make something better, you need to take all these factors in to account.
Yes, there are circumstances where slapping stuff together may work - but ad-hoc product development, the further you go in the lifecycle, just doesn’t cut it. If it did, everyone would be able to make these decisions and know how to filter out all the noise from the data that has been gathered.
Everyone doesn’t.
So, there is an easy fix to all of this - just talk before taking action. It doesn’t have to be day long meetings - just 5-10 minutes. You’ll be amazed at what you discover is actually being done behind the scenes to improve a product when you have a PM who knows what they are doing.
Vote for PM Bloggers
My good friends Saeed, Alan, and Ethan over at On Product Management are up for a Best Professional / Career Blog award.
Make sure you swing by and vote for them - they run a great blog and always have outstanding posts!
PM Book Store
You may, or may not, have noticed that I have setup a book store on Amazon.com. This is intended for all product managers out there that are looking for some great things to read.
Most of these books I will have read - some I haven’t, but want to read. I will try and review all those that I have read so you get some idea (either on this site or on Amazon) - feel free to send in your own reviews to me if you want me to post them here so folks get a sense of what to read first / what can wait / etc…
And of course, if you have any suggestions for books I should add to the store, let me know!
