Every decision a Product manager makes, shapes the future of a product in a subtle or direct way.
In the next article from the series, I will dive into the intricacies of Product operations:
From forging strong partnerships with tech teams to mapping pains and gains of your target audience – all with the goal to ensure seamless conversion of information into revenue (i.e Product strategy).
| WHAT’S THE ARTICLE | WHY YOU NEED IT |
| The Discovery Plan | Being at ease with ambiguity is one of the most useful traits of a Product manager. You should be comfortable with not knowing something, as long as you know how to find out. Discovery is the way to do so and presenting a Discovery plan to a wider group in your organization, helps everyone align on your work and contribution. |
| Opportunity canvas | Learn where features actually live. That they don’ live in minds of: 1. CEO 2. Sales 3. CTO They actually come to life via a multi-disciplined approach, led by Product manager = You 💪. You have the power to re-shape an organization. Steer its course into a new directions. A big part of your job is to articulately communicate and persuade your colleagues from different roles to follow your direction. These people come from different spaces of business/technology, so you have to understand what is important to them and not be selfish but actually speak their language. Btw you have an hour to do so. |
| SQL for beginners | By now, you’ve learned that data is power. Data is also all around us, and through this series, you will learn how to identify which data you need to drive growth. Before this, in order to be independent in analysing data (you don’t want to bother developers with things you can do yourself), check out this simplified course on SQL. Pro tip: You can use Bard or ChatGPT to write queries for you, although I’d still recommend learning the fundamentals of SQL. |
| Partnership with The Architect | Along the journey you’ll meet some unique friends. Building deep trust in each other takes time, but relieves everyone from a huge amount of managerial effort as the only way to scale is through honouring clear lines of authority. I hold vast respect for technical team members and their work. My job is inextricably linked and dependent on theirs. This is why my key goal is to drive pride and ownership in individual and shared work, as only via actual joint work done we can make these lasting bonds. |
| Product metrics | Behind everything you build, there are hundreds of decisions on what NOT to build. Focus is more about saying NO than yes. If you don’t trust me: listen to this guy. In this article, through a step-by-step process you will learn how to identify the things you should be focusing on. |
| The Alternative to Roadmaps Strategic intent | The beauty of your role lies in the spectrum of different fields you touch. In order to get your messages across, you need to speak the language of your listeners. This article will give you new directions to explore when you want to align different stakeholders around your goals. |
I hope you’ve grasped the importance of understanding where features truly live, the power of doing your own data digging, the criticality of measuring the impact of your work, as well as the huge potential unlocked by building strong partnerships with tech teams.
In the next instalment of this series, we’ll delve into User Research. A place we will be uncovering methodologies and techniques for gaining insights into user needs and behaviors which basically help you end any argument and vague feature ideas coming your way.
