What’s Important Now
I had a great dinner with a friend of mine this evening - Stewart Rogers from Ryma. Our conversation covered a wide-range of topics, but there was something that I felt worth mentioning.
I’ve written before on why I think product management is easy. Sometimes, it takes a while to apply what you have learned / what you know and really hone in on what’s going to work for your specific organization and situation.
The tricky balancing act really comes in to play when you don’t know. Nevermind about what to do next - but about how to actually do your job.
There are several great PM training courses out there - some completely designed by great individuals I’ve had the pleasure of sharing meals with and for whom i have a deep respect. Not only in their breadth of knowledge on Product Management, but also their passion for the role itself.
But where does it come from?
For most, it’s a difficult thing to find. I think we all know that more often than not, people are jettisoned in to this job thinking that it sounds cool and their boss asked them to do it, saying “we really need product management.” This makes the learning curve for the position an extremely difficult thing to overcome. Where do you start?
It’s very, very easy to feel completely overwhelmed at the start, but also even more so when you get a few months in to the gig. I think I’ve written a post about that before too, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me.
In any event, this relates to that feeling and how to overcome it.
The thing Product Managers of all shapes and sizes have to realize is that they must focus on what’s important to them now. Not 6 months from now, not 3 months ago - but right now.
Do you really need to write an MRD? Must you really perform hardcore market research right away?
I can safely say that you must do certain things to build products successfully. And usually, those things are common sense to folks who are familiar with what they are and why they exist. But that’s the problem.
If you have been thrown in to the deep end and essentially told to sink or swim, it can be near impossible to expect fruitful results. You must use your head, know when to ask for help and read, read, read.
Don’t get hung up on every little thing you are not doing - chances are, they don’t matter. In fact, chances are your boss doesn’t even know what product management really is aside from being something he or she knows they “need right away.”
So, let’s take a look at how I would consult technology organizations. Maybe they just put product management in place, maybe they didn’t. But I am willing to bet (based on personal experience) that over 80% would fail this short, quick litmus test.
And remember, this is regardless of whether there is a fully staffed Product Management group in the company or just one person who is a former Sales rep.
Adam’s Patent-Pending Product Management Consultancy - Question 1: “Can you print me a copy of your product definition?”
It’s all about alignment folks - right up and down the stream. I don’t need complicated processes and roadmaps and extreme product management to acknowledge one simple fact: KPIs are great, and numbers are great. But unless they are aligned with how you defined your product, they suck and don’t mean a thing.
Would you ever say, “my Web-based product is super successful because we got over 150,000 page views last week!” Maybe. But when I ask you to print me out your product definition, you better be able to. Otherwise, you are not doing your job and are ill-prepared to answer my second question.
Adam’s Patent-Pending Product Management Consultancy - Question 2: “How do {insert some killer KPI / metric here} contribute to you solving the problem your product has been created to solve for {defined market segment Y}?”
Eek. I’d bet there might be some blank stares and tears in the room at this point. OK, I embellish a bit - but you get the idea.
But like the title of this post says - know what’s important now. For your product. For your users. For your organization.
You are never going to be able to succeed by working Product Management in a strictly serial manner. Sometimes you have to write requirements before you do market research. That’s a fact. Don’t let someone tell you it’s wrong to do it that way - it’s not if you feel you know it’s important now.
Use some common sense, and please (if not for you, for me) - define your product. You never know when I’ll stop by and ask you this very question.
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Oct 29, 08 at 6:23 pm
[...] comment a relatively new product manager named Jeff Wright just left on one of my previous posts just gave ...