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We are doing the hard work of rounding up the funniest product tweets that have caught our attention this week so that you can have 2 minutes of light relief.

Here’s what caught our eye this week:

Every Product Manager has had that one demo where the stakeholder wants to see a fully functioning product, but you’re not quite there yet…

“When your product isn’t ready, but an important stakeholder wants a demo!”

When your product isn’t ready, but an important stakeholder wants a demo!#productmanagement #meme #prodmgmt pic.twitter.com/16Ih3gvYTJ

— Moe Ali (@ProductFaculty) April 27, 2022

Speaking of stakeholders, we know they love outputs but how can you convince them that outcomes are the way to go…?

In #prodmgmt, there’s always that one stakeholder that just wants to keep going

In #prodmgmt, there’s always that one stakeholder that just wants to keep going pic.twitter.com/E2sdZRVQ54

— Jason Knight (@onejasonknight) May 2, 2022

We know that Product Management is often misunderstood, and we know what you’re thinking…

What a Product Manager thinks when they hear…

I know I’m not the only one with these deeply rooted, totally unfair, completely hilarious biases. #prodmgmt #productmemes #tech #agile # pic.twitter.com/JnnzWGsFoH

— Phil Wolpers (@phamousphil) April 25, 2022

But we also know that this is true, are we right?

Agreed! Project Manger vs Product Manager #projectmanagement #agile #productmanagement pic.twitter.com/VtnP11G77G

— Abuzar Mehdi (@zarmehdi) May 2, 2022

Finally, we know this one has been doing the round on LinkedIn, but we just had to give it a mention here. We’re not sure an edit button will cut it, sorry Jira…

@elonmusk, this would make developers’ world a better place. #Jira pic.twitter.com/fGAHA4iBIO

— Matteo (@matticala) April 29, 2022

Until next week, keep fighting the good Product Management fight!

The post Funniest Product Tweets of the Week appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

What are product management roles?

There are many product roles that contribute to the PM discipline, from the more junior Associate Product Manager through to the more senior role of Chief Product Officer, as well as those that contribute to a cross-functional team.

Each has a different part to play in the overall product organization and contributes something individual to the success of the teams and products they lead.

We take a look at each of the roles in product management in more detail here.

Product management roles and responsibilities

Let’s unpack the different roles of product management and their responsibilities from more junior to most senior, as well as looking at a couple of other roles that fit into the product world:

Junior / Associate Product Manager

If you’re looking to make a start in the world of product management then the Junior / Associate Product Manager role can be a good place to start. This is an entry-level role that suits those who have some experience working in product management or product development, or who have come from an adjacent or complimentary discipline, such as UX, Product Design, Product Marketing or similar. Graduates may also be eligible for Junior / Associate Product Manager roles if the hiring company has enough support in place. This type of role is often supported by a more senior Product Manager in the team.

Why do you need a Junior / Associate Product Manager

There are a number of reasons why a company might hire a Junior / Associate Product Manager. The main ones include opening up the opportunity to start a career in product management to those with limited experience, hiring additional support for an existing product and training people up to become the future Senior Product Managers and leaders of the business.

Junior / Associate Product Manager responsibilities

A Junior / Associate Product Manager will be responsible for many of the things that a fully-fledged Product Manager is, but on a much smaller scale and normally without the responsibility of making any major decisions. Responsibilities include:

• Managing a small feature or part of an existing product
• Prioritizing validated work
• Collaborating with internal teams
• Interacting with and learning from users or customers
• Gathering data and insights 
• Contributing to problem-solving

Product Manager 

Once you have mastered the Junior / Associate Product Manager role, you can take a step up to become a fully-fledged Product Manager. The role of a Product Manager comes with much greater responsibility and decision-making needs. At this level you will need to have a deep understanding of your user or customer needs, the business and the domain in which you are operating.

Why do you need a Product Manager?

A Product Manager is ultimately responsible for delivering value to both your users or customers and to the business by delivering products and services that solve key problems. They are the go-to person for everything to do with that product, and in many respects, they are the gate-keeper that ensures only validated ideas and product features get worked on by the team.

Product Manager responsibilities

• Leads on all elements of the product lifecycle – including building new, iterating on existing and retiring old products
• Defines the product vision and strategy, product roadmap and product positioning
• Leads the product team to discover and deliver features, products and services that solve key user, customer and business problems
• Sets outcomes, goals or OKRs for the product team
• Gathers key research, data, insights and customer feedback
• Identifies user or customer problems to solve
• Defines opportunities to improve the product
• Collaborates with Product Designers to generate ideas, prototypes and experiments
• Analyses experiments 
• Prioritizes validated work for the team to deliver via a backlog
• Collaborates with other key areas of the business to understand constraints and risks
• Monitors the health of the product (and of the team!)
• Tracks product performance metrics using data analysis
• Analyses competitors and the market to spot gaps / opportunities for improvement
• Communicates progress and impact of product work with key stakeholders in the business
• Collaborates with key stakeholders on product discovery work

Senior Product Manager

Once you have mastered the ways of the Product Manager role in depth, you are ready to step up to a Senior Product Manager role. This position encompasses everything you were doing as a Product Manager but you are now responsible for managing more senior stakeholder conversations and more major product decisions, as well as mentoring some junior members of the product team. You might be venturing into more depth on things like financial modelling and pricing, problem-solving in more detail with Legal, Sales teams and other departments around the business and being more customer or forward facing to represent your product externally. You may also have responsibility for defining a wider-reaching vision and strategy that covers multiple products or services and assisting with hiring new Product Managers onto the team.

Why do you need a Senior Product Manager?

Senior Product Managers really provide the glue between Product Leads / Group Product Managers (see below), more senior stakeholders in the business and more junior members of the product organization. Their level of experience means that they are adept at solving more challenging situations with senior leaders, able to look more holistically at what is needed to help a product (or team!) to succeed and are able to act as a guide to help develop more junior members of the product team. 

Senior Product Manager responsibilities

• All existing Product Manager duties
• Potentially leads on more than one product at a time
• Assists with the hiring process for new Product Managers
• Mentors more junior members of the product organization
• Sets the long term vision and strategy for the product(s)
• Models revenue or other financial strategies related to the product
• Represents the product or business externally – e.g. at conferences or trade shows
• Liaises with both internal and external customers of the product
• Interfaces with senior stakeholders at all levels – e.g. Legal, Sales, Marketing teams, Data Privacy etc

Product Lead / Group Product Manager

Many companies have multiple products to manage, and while each of those is likely to be led by an individual Product Manager, a Product Lead / Group Product Manager is there to help with teams, people and alignment. This role is much more about being a product leader and working on people management and improving team performance – you will have much less involvement in the day-to-day running of a product. You will likely have multiple more junior Product Managers reporting to you and will also be responsible for helping them to develop their skills and capabilities.

Why do you need a Product Lead / Group Product Manager?

Product Leads / Group Product Managers help support and lead in many areas including spotting opportunities or risks across the portfolio, improving team performance, communicating and aligning with senior stakeholders around the business, as well as optimizing processes and ways of working. They also support more junior members of the product organization in career development and day-to-day problem-solving.

Product Lead / Group Product Manager responsibilities

• Fosters a strong product-led culture both within the cross-functional teams as well as the wider business that values evidence through customer research and data
• Has a deep understanding of customer needs and problems across the relevant part of the  product portfolio
• Establishes priorities, business goals and outcomes across the product group portfolio
• Spots risks and dependencies that may affect multiple team and resolves them
• Prioritizes team health and performance by seeking out and resolving people issues and challenges
• Hires, develops and promotes product team members
• Motivates, manages and mentors junior members of the product group
• Conducts team performance reviews and seeks out ways to improve performance
• Looks for ways to optimize team performance and enhance product processes
• Collaborates in depth with other departments around the business to build consensus and trust
• Defines team members needed to fulfil a given product strategy to ensure appropriate allocation of time and effort

Director of Product / Head of Product

The next step up from a Product Lead / Group Product Manager is the Director / Head of Product. This step up is also a move further away from the day-to-day running of a product. You will be expected to manage a portfolio of products or product groups and define a high level product vision and strategy that looks across the entire product set. There may be multiple Directors / Heads of Product positioned in a product organization.

Why do you need a Director of Product / Head of Product?

Directors of Product or Heads of Product can be really useful in organizations where there are many products to manage and product teams to look after. Additional layers of management structure are needed to keep the product function running smoothly and high-performing.

Director / Head of Product responsibilities

• All Product / Lead Group Product Manager responsibilities
• Defines a high-level product vision and strategy for the portfolio that supports the business vision and strategy that looks out quarters or even years ahead
• Communicates and evangelizes the product vision and strategy both to the product teams and the wider business
• Coaches and develops direct reports in the Product Lead / Group Product Management team
• Have a deep understanding of the wider domain in which their products sit and be able to spot opportunities in the market
• Managing the budget for their specific product portfolio

Chief Product Officer / VP of Product

Once you get to the level of Chief Product Officer / VP of Product, you have truly left the world of day-to-day product work and your main focus is on the success of the wider scale of the product organization and operation. You will likely be reporting out and collaborating with board members and the CEO of the company. If you’re working in a business that is on a journey to become product-led, it will be up to you to lead that vision and necessary change.

Why do you need a Chief Product Officer / VP of Product?

Until more recent times, the Product discipline has not had a seat at the “C” table, so part of the reason for having a Chief Product Officer (also sometimes known as VP of Product) is to elevate the status and importance of Product within an organization and to allow for collaboration with CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, CMOs etc. This position is much-needed in a world where many companies are challenged with how to get set up in the right way when it comes to being product-led.

Chief Product Officer responsibilities

• Sets the high level product vision, strategy and direction for the entire product organization
• Communicates and evangelizes the product vision, strategy and direction both to the product organization and the wider business
• Leads on any product-led change journeys (e.g. from feature teams to product teams)
• Liases and collaborates with the “C” Suite on progress and performance
• Develops forecasts and budgets for the entire product organization
• Sets product org level objectives and key results
• Manages, hires and develops Directors or Heads of Product

Product Designer

The role of Product Designer is one that you find on a cross-functional product team and this person works very closely and collaboratively with the Product Developers (see below), the Product Manager and any User Researchers on the team. They are responsible for many things including deeply understanding the user / customer needs and problems, the user experience of the product or service they’re working on and helping to ensure that the solutions they help deliver are valuable and usable. Increasingly, in some companies, they are also responsible for the visual design / UI of the product or service.

Why do you need a Product Designer?

Product Designers are a key part of the product development process – from helping understand and map user / customer needs during the product discovery journey to translating those needs into opportunities or problems to be solved, leading on prototyping ideas and experimentation. The role is also vital during the product delivery phase to ensure that the solutions that are delivered are easy and simple to use and are solving the user / customer need in the right way. There are also many areas of overlap with Product Manager responsibilities.

Product Designer responsibilities

• Identifies target users, needs and jobs to be done
• Gathers data to help make informed design decisions
• Leads on identifying user problems to solve, ideation and experimentation definition
• Collaborates on user research
• Leads on creating wireframes and prototypes to bring concepts to life
• Conducts user interviews on value and usability
• Create user journey maps to help spot opportunities
• Collaborates closely with the cross-functional product team on all aspects of work

Product Developer

One of the core responsibilities of a Product Developer is to support the cross-functional team in understanding what is feasible from a technology perspective and to find solutions that help solve the needs of the validated ideas from the product discovery process. In addition to shipping validated features you may be identifying and fixing bugs, helping to improve the product’s performance, setting up live experiments and contributing to making development practices the best that they can be. You will likely be working as part of a development team of multiple Product Developers.

Why do you need a Product Developer?

Without Product Developers there is no tech and therefore no product! Product Developers are an essential part of any cross-functional product team to ensure that new products can be built and existing products can be maintained and  improved upon.

Product Developer responsibilities

• Find technically feasible ways to solve for validated ideas or features
• Ship working software to end-users / customers
• Monitor the technical performance of the product
• Help manage tech debt on the product
• Collaborate with Product Managers and Product Designers on product discovery
• Communicate issues, bugs and fixes to the product team and wider organization
• Set up live experiments and A/B tests
• Pull data from live experiments and A/B tests
• Implement and improve on development best practices

Key takeaways about product roles

We have covered a broad range of the roles that you might find in product organizations here, with a particular focus on those pertaining to the PM world. There are many crossovers and nuances between the roles and every company sets the responsibilities slightly differently – so what a Director of Product does at one company might be very similar to what a VP of Product does at another. Whichever role you are interested in, we hope our guide has offered you some clarity on what to expect.

The post Product Management Roles & Responsibilities Guide appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

We take a look at the what and why behind customer feedback and explore some example types and strategies for collecting it.

What is product feedback management?

Product feedback specifically refers to the information that customers provide in response to your idea or product feature. This can come in many forms, both solicited and unsolicited, from responses in customer interviews to ratings and reviews online.

Product feedback management looks at the different ways this key information can be collected and analysed in order to help you create or iterate your product in a meaningful way that adds value for your customers.

Why is collecting product feedback important?

Putting customers at the heart of what you do as a Product Manager is key, so hearing from your customers on a regular basis should be an essential part of your work. There are many reasons why collecting product feedback is important, let’s take a look at some of those here.

Identifying customer problems and the “why”

In order to build a great and value-adding solution for your customers, first you need to have a deep understanding of the problem or problems that they are facing. Is there a particular job to be done that they are stuck with? What kind of progress are they trying to make in their lives?

Do other products not meet their expectations at the moment or lack a good way to solve their problems? The answers to all of these questions lie in collecting user feedback and really understanding the “why” behind the answers – something that is very difficult to obtain without communicating with your customers.

Measuring customer satisfaction

There is a very close relationship between customer satisfaction and product and business performance. Customer satisfaction can be directly related to metrics such as lower churn, higher revenue and increased customer retention and market share, among other things.

Obtaining product feedback is the first step on the path to keeping customers satisfied. NPS or CSAT surveys can be a good starting point for understanding customer satisfaction.

Helping to make data-driven decisions

In order to make data-driven decisions, first you need that all-important data! Product feedback from customers forms part of that data picture – qualitative feedback can be great for prioritising which direction to take with an idea or iteration on your product, pinpointing customer customer satisfaction issues, uncovering usability concerns and more!

Validating ideas or solutions

Before investing time, money and resources into any new product ideas or solutions, it’s key to validate those ideas with real-life customers in your target market. Ideally using throwaway prototypes, you can engage with your customers and gather insights on what’s working or not working before moving forward with further investment in an idea or solution.

7 different types of product feedback

There are many different ways to collect product feedback – some are more useful for deeper dive insights while others can be quick ways to gather useful data to help you make a decision on your product development work. Here are some of the different types of product feedback.

Customer interviews

Face-to-face (or via Zoom!) interviews with customers can be a really great way to dig deep on both the context in which a customer might be using your product as well as the “why” behind everything from choosing your product over another to how they use it.

Customer interviews also provide an opportunity to put throwaway prototypes in front of your target audience to get feedback. Seeing how customers use your prototype or product can provide valuable insight that you may not see via feedback surveys – so often people say one thing and do another!

Customer surveys

Surveys can be a great way to gather continuous feedback at scale on an existing product that you are working to improve on, or to quickly gather feedback on a particular feature or area of your product.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) or CSAT rating surveys are commonly used to “take the pulse” of customer satisfaction and can be sent on a regular cadence to observe the measurement over time. One-off customer surveys can also be useful if you want to ask a specific question to learn more about your product.

Ratings and reviews

If your product is a digital one, it’s highly likely that customers will find a way to leave you ratings and reviews online. If you’re product managing an app, check app store feedback regularly – customers often point out bugs and other usability issues, as well as leaving ideas for improving your product!

TrustPilot, Amazon and Google are other places where customers often leave product feedback (and potential customers go to read it!) so it’s worth keeping tabs on what’s happening if you find your business listed on there.

While this feedback is unsolicited, it can provide some valuable insights that you may not have found via other product feedback routes.

Customer service / support team

If your product is supported by a Customer Service team then it’s worth discussing any valuable customer insights that they may be collecting on a regular basis. Customers might pick up the phone, use live chat, raise a support ticket or even Tweet your CS team when they need support. This information can be useful to understand not only what’s not working so well with your product, but also the parts of your product that people really care about.

Social media

Most businesses have some form of social media presence, whether that’s a Facebook or Twitter page or even a page on Google Maps. Facebook explicitly offers ratings and reviews as part of their business pages (although you can choose to turn these off) and Twitter is awash with people’s views on products and services.

While you might have to spend some time looking for the useful information customers have left on social media, it can also be a helpful place to gather product feedback.

Forums / community

Online communities and forums, when not set up by your business, can contain a lot of unmoderated conversation about your product or service. Think: Reddit or Discourse.

However, this kind of conversation can be useful when customers are either pinpointing a specific issue with your product (and you might observe that multiple people have this issue) and / or finding a collective solution to specific issues, which in turn can save you customer support time.

In-product feedback

You might have an open feedback loop with your customers directly from your product – think Intercom or a similar integration that allows users to contact you with bug reports, ideas, or any general thoughts or questions they might have about your product.

This can be another valuable way to collect customer insights that may differ from other formats as users will be providing feedback in the moment while using your product.

6 strategies to collect product feedback

There are many ways to collect product feedback – and some strategies can be more useful than others, depending on what you are hoping to learn. We take a look at some examples here.

Conduct in-depth interviews

In-depth interviews are useful for understanding what customers think about something or to get a general sense of their needs, wants and problems. It’s important to speak to the right mixture of people who make up your target audience so that you can understand their specific needs and ensure that any product discovery work you do is solving for those needs.

Get outside and speak to people

While speaking to customers in your target market is ideal, there can be a lot of cost and effort involved in getting this set up. If you’re looking for a lower-cost and fast way to simply understand how people are experiencing a new feature or part of your product then you can always pop out to a Starbucks or the local mall and ask passers-by for their input. This is often known as Guerilla Research.

Conduct diary studies

A more in-depth strategy for collecting product feedback is something known as a diary study. This method of collecting insights often runs over a period of days and participants are asked to log information and their experience about the activity being studied.

This information can help you to understand how your product or service fits into customers’ everyday lives over time as well as the context in which they choose or need to use it. WhatsApp can be a great way to collect this daily information from participants as text, voice messages, photos and videos can be shared to enhance the insights.

Run usability testing

If you’re purely looking to test the usability of a product or feature, there are different kinds of tests you can do to get feedback. In-person usability testing with your product or a prototype is ideal, but where this isn’t possible, you can get quick insights by using a remote testing tool such as UserTesting.com.

Set up a dedicated inbox

A quick, simple and cheap way to invite product feedback is to set up a dedicated email address and inbox for customer input and place a link to it on your product. You may want to set up filters on the inbox for common themes or keywords to make analysis a little easier!

Run one-question surveys

For fast insights on a single topic area, one-question satisfaction surveys can be really useful for providing feedback at scale. Tools that enable feedback forms such as Typeform or Google Forms are great for enabling this quickly and cheaply. NPS surveys or CSAT one-question surveys can also help you to build a picture of customer satisfaction over time.

How to analyze product feedback to get insights

Once you have gathered your product feedback it’s time to organise the insights and turn them into actionable items! So that you don’t get lost down a rabbit hole of information, here are some ways that you can run your analysis.

Turn qualitative insights into quantitative data

If you have a high volume of qualitative insights coming in via email, or in-product, you might consider looking for emerging themes and creating tags so that you can bucket similar items together and extract them as quantitative data that can be more easily analysed. Don’t be tempted to create tags before you have seen the feedback coming in, to be sure that you keep biases out of the process!

Look for themes with affinity mapping

If you have been running customer interviews in person or via Zoom / similar, it’s likely that you have an abundance of virtual or real post-it notes with information collected from those sessions. You can organise these by creating an affinity map that clusters similar responses together visually so that you can find the similar themes.

Map themes to assumptions

Before running customer interviews, it’s possible that you have collated a series of assumptions that you want to test during those sessions. If so, you can also map responses to relevant assumptions as part of analysis following the interviews. That way you can see if your assumptions are true or false more easily.

Connect product feedback to behavioural data

Product feedback in isolation can be very useful for setting a direction but it can be made all the more powerful when combined with behavioural data. Quantitative data gives you the “what customers are doing” and qualitative data gives you the “Why they are doing it” – when brought together, powerful decisions can be made.

5 product feedback questions to include in your customer interviews

When conducting customer interviews, it’s important not to ask leading questions (questions that lead people to give a specific answer – e.g. “Now that you’ve seen the app, would you be ready to sign up now, or do you need more information?”). Instead, aim for open-ended questions that help to uncover what the customer is thinking. Here are some examples.

What…?

During customer interviews you might be showing your existing product / user experience or a prototype to gain insights. Good examples of open-ended “what?” questions in this scenario are things like:

• What is this? – can be used to understand if a feature or idea is clear to customers
• What is this for? – can be used to see if customers understand what the feature or idea
• What do you think of that? – can be used to gauge customer interest / value
• What do you expect that will do? – can be used to understand customer expectations around the feature or idea
• What would you do next? – can be used to see what customers might like to do next / if it’s easy to see where to go next in the user flow

When…?

Understanding when a customer might use your product can be a valuable insight when looking for context around its usage. Try to uncover the triggers, you might ask:

• When would you use this feature / product / service?

Where…?

As with “When?”, “Where” is also useful information – are customers using your product at home, work or on the go? Where specifically are they using it and why is that? You might ask:

• Where would you use this feature / product / service?

How…?

There are also many open-ended “How?” questions that you can ask to uncover more insights – some example are:

• How would you improve this idea / feature / product? – this can provide you with some potentially useful ideas about what is valuable to your customers and help shake out any detractors
• How would you feel if you could no longer use this feature / product? – this can give you a sense of how important your feature / product is in someone’s life

Why…?

“Why?” can be a really valuable question on its own in response to any answer that you receive during a customer interview that you need more explanation on.

Customers might say “I use this product at home in the evening” – you might ask “Why?” and the response might be “It’s the only time I have to myself when the kids have gone to bed and I get some ‘me’ time” – which gives you that extra layer of insight that can help you design a better solution. Always ask “Why?”!

Key takeaways

Collecting product feedback is an essential part of great product management – and there are many methods for doing this, depending on what you are hoping to learn. Always remember to ask “Why?” and be inquisitive when it comes to customer interviews and find a way to analyze your insights that works for you and your product team. Good luck!

The post Product Feedback: 6 Strategies To Collect & How To Analyze appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

To do this, they need someone well-versed in both data and product development. Enter: the data product manager.

Data product managers can help businesses leverage data at scale. They might use this data to personalize user experiences, recommend relevant products, increase retention, and identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities. They might also spearhead new product development that uses data to serve customers (think: Amazon’s Alexa or Spotify’s recommended playlists).

What is data product management?

Data product management is a function that collects, organizes, stores, and shares data within an organization. This data is used to inform product and business decisions.

In many product organizations, individual product managers are responsible for collecting and synthesizing insights related to their product. While this remains part of a PM’s role, a data product management function allows an organization to centralize the collection, storage, and use of data.

This reduces inconsistencies in how data is tracked and reported on—and allows organizations to derive insights at scale. This centralization of data allows your typical product manager to focus more on strategizing and working with their team to bring new features and products to market. It also helps them feel confident that the data they’re referencing is accurate and complete.

What is a data product manager?

A data product manager is primarily responsible for finding ways to use data throughout the product lifecycle. However, much like a traditional product management role, the responsibilities of a product data manager can differ from company to company.

The data product manager (DPM or data PM, for short) may be skilled in machine learning, data science, or data programming languages—and so their role may largely leverage those skills as part of product development.

In other organizations, the DPM may serve as a dedicated data resource for the product team. Rather than owning a product, they may own the data that informs other product decisions. In this case, they support the product team in understanding what’s happening in the product so they can fix problems or build new solutions.

Like other product managers, data product managers must be skilled in communicating across teams. They must be able to facilitate conversations with executives, engineers, analysts, product managers, and external customers. Because of the diverse groups of people the DPM connects with, they must be adept at context-switching and communicating both high-level concepts and technical details.

Why does a product team need a data product manager?

Product teams need a data product manager to centralize product data across teams and turn insights into action. While every product manager needs to know their way around data and be comfortable with it, it’s not the core responsibility of your typical PM to own data collection and analysis. Data product managers spend a lot more time thinking about the best ways to gather, analyze, and distribute data to inform product decisions.

If you think about your average product manager, their job description includes writing stories and epics, planning roadmaps, meeting with stakeholders across the organization, speaking with customers, and validating work.

Any product manager would tell you: that’s a lot of work for one person. Add to that finding ways to track events in-product, connect disparate data, and report out on product and feature adoption, and you can see why having a dedicated data resource is invaluable to a product team.

Beyond simply tracking and reporting on product data, DPMs often have deeper knowledge of things like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). These skills allow them to process larger quantities of data faster—driving more valuable insights for the team as a whole. For organizations with a large volume of data, a big data product manager can help process more complex data sets to help you address business problems you wouldn’t have been able to tackle before.

5 main responsibilities of data product managers

Data product manager job descriptions vary depending on a company’s needs. Here are some of the types of data product management work a DPM would typically be responsible for.

1. Lead a cross-functional team.

Product managers are a lot like conductors in an orchestra. They have to know who’s involved and at what time to successfully develop a product. Data product managers work closely with data scientists, data engineers, and architecture leads, as well as partners in marketing and design.

2. Oversee and report on the data management lifecycle.

A large part of the DPM’s role is collecting, storing, organizing, and analyzing data. The ideal candidate for a data product management role is someone who’s confident wrangling large data sets, writing queries, and communicating out their findings.

3. Leverage advanced technical skills in product development.

Most data product managers are proficient in programming languages like SQL and Python. And many have advanced skills in machine learning and big data management.

4. Create and maintain a product roadmap.

Like your average product manager, a DPM needs to develop a product roadmap. This roadmap will include innovative ways to leverage real-time data to create successful products and features.

5. Understand customer needs.

Just because a data product manager is tech-savvy doesn’t mean they’re disconnected from consumers. DPMs stay close to the voice of the customer to understand their needs—so they can identify ways they can use data to solve those problems.

What is the difference between a product manager and a big data product manager?

The biggest difference between a product manager and a big data product manager is their understanding of data. Product managers need to have an understanding of key business metrics and KPIs related to their product, and they often partner with a data analyst to create dashboards that help them track these metrics.

Big data product managers do a deep-dive into data on a day-to-day basis. They streamline data collection and analysis in a way that allows them to gather real-time insights.

Another difference is that big data product managers are actively building ways to collect and manage data. So they’re not just using data to build better products, they’re responsible for capturing and organizing all that data.

How does a data product manager benefit the product development cycle?

There are several ways a data product manager benefits the product development cycle. Here are a few of the top reasons:

Product teams have more visibility into product data.

Product management data isn’t always readily available. Depending on how a product organization functions, they may require the support of a data analyst, product operations manager, or business intelligence team to tag and report on product events.

Data is no longer siloed with analysts.

With data management in the hands of another team, it becomes more difficult for product managers to have ownership of and visibility into insights that can help them build better products. A data product manager puts data into the hands of the people who will use it as part of their decision-making process.

Data is clean and current.

When data is owned by different teams around the company, the likelihood that data is unclean and out of date increases. Many organizations struggle to accurately report on product metrics because there’s no clear ownership of how events are tracked, and the information product managers need is found in different softwares. This requires a lot of manual reporting, which consumes time and often gets put on the back burner.

Product teams can create more sophisticated, data-driven products.

When product managers have actionable data in hand, they can build products that are more useful to users. Take, for example, navigation apps. When navigation apps first launched, they plotted routes from Point A to Point B. That’s it. Now consider Waze, a crowd-source navigation app that gathers real-time data from drivers about traffic, accidents, police cars, and more. Waze uses this data to provide users more accurate information on travel time and the best route to take to avoid delays.

FAQs

You might have a few questions following that data product management summary. And we’re happy to answer them! Here are some frequently asked questions about the role of a data product manager.

Why is data important in product management?

Data plays a critical role in product development. Without data, product managers can’t make informed decisions about what to build, fix, or sunset. Most product teams have a long backlog, a list of product features they’d like to work on someday. Data helps with opportunity prioritization so they know what to work on first, second, and third—as well as what to scrap altogether.

Data comes in many forms, both quantitative and qualitative. This can include customer feedback, support tickets, NPS, industry trends, and user activity. Each of these data sets provides insight into what your customers are doing and what they find valuable. All of this data is useful in driving product decisions.

What makes a good data product manager?

A good data product manager has strong communication, leadership, problem-solving, organization, and analytical skills. They’re comfortable navigating high-level conversations with senior stakeholders, then transitioning to much more in-the-weeds discourse with developers and programmers on their team. Good data product managers are proficient in data programming languages and data extraction tools.

As product managers, DPMs are also responsible for communicating up and out about their product. This means a good DPM needs to be able to summarize and communicate about the data and their projects to stakeholders, senior leaders, and others on the product team.

How much does a data product manager make?

Data product managers make an average of $111,140 a year. Their salary can range from $71,000 and $175,000. Keep in mind that salary can vary depending on experience, education, location, and advanced skill sets. The best way to determine what you can expect is to use a site like Salary.com or Glassdoor to see what data product managers with your experience and in your location are earning.

How do you get started as a data product manager?

While there isn’t a dedicated degree program to help you launch your career as a data product manager, there are ways you can start to gain the experience and skills necessary to become a DPM. People with experience as a product manager, project manager, or business analyst could be great candidates for becoming a product data manager.

Many DPM jobs do require a degree to apply. A Bachelor’s degree in a related field, such as information management, engineering, or data analysis, would increase your chances of landing a role as a data product manager.

As many DPMs have product management experience, you may find it helpful to pursue a product management certification. Joining a professional network—like the Product Collective community or LinkedIn—can also help you connect with job opportunities.

The post What Is Data Product Management and What Does a Data Product Manager Do? – Product Collective appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

What is a prioritization framework?

When thinking about product management, a prioritization framework provides a way for you to evaluate and organize the relative importance of customer problems, ideas, product features and other potential solutions or requests.

As a Product Manager, it’s important to keep focussed on the highest value work that is going to provide impact for your customers and your business, as well as taking care to minimize waste during product development. Prioritization frameworks can help provide a strategy for all of this.

Why is it important to use a product prioritization matrix?

Product prioritization is an effective way for busy Product Managers to understand what the next most important thing to work on might be. This work is not done in isolation – there will likely be a lot of collaboration with other parts of your organization and a lot of requests and ideas coming your way which need to be effectively organized for maximum impact.

In short, prioritization matrices are great time savers and provide a way to have meaningful conversations with other people in your cross-functional team and business

Product prioritization matrices can provide you with a set of principles, which can help you to form a solid strategy on how to develop your product over time. They should also help you answer questions such as:

• Are we working on things that will bring the most value to our users and customers?
• Are we operating in the realms of feasibility, with regard to time and effort required?
• Are we contributing to the wider business objectives?
• Are we working on things that are possible within the constraints of our business?
• Will this work help us move closer to our product vision?

Well executed product prioritization also provides transparency for your team and stakeholders, enabling them to understand the process that has taken place when it comes to organizing requests, ideas and potential features and as a way to show that focus has been put on the work that has the most impact for the business and your customers.

8 best product prioritization frameworks

With so many product management prioritization frameworks to choose from, we help you understand what some of the key ones are and the main pros and cons of each.

User story mapping

Hopefully your product team is all about user-centricity, and if so, user story mapping is a great framework. It involves working as a team to map your users’ interactions with your product (e.g. sign-up, add a product, add to basket, checkout etc) and identify which parts of the journey provide the most benefit for your audience, as well as any pain points they may currently be experiencing.

Pros

• • Heavy focus on customer needs and benefits
  • High value / impact work is prioritized
  • Collaborative process with your team

Cons

• • Other factors such as effort, feasibility and business viability may have less weighting in this framework

RICE

Popularised by customer communications platform, Intercom, the RICE scoring system focuses on generating impact for any given product goal. The acronym stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort.

When considering reach, you’re thinking about how many customers will this particular idea or feature affect within a given timeframe.

Impact considers how much users will be impacted by your idea or feature – this is measured on a scale from 0.25 (minimal impact) to 3 (massive impact).

With confidence you are thinking about what level of certainty you have on your reach and impact data and metrics (above) – where 50% might equal low confidence and 100% would mean high confidence.

Effort looks at what investment of time might be needed to realize any particular idea or feature – considering product, design and development.

Finally you can take all of the above information and calculate a RICE score using the following formula: Reach x Impact x Confidence Effort.

Once you have scored all of your ideas and features, you can rank them from highest score to lowest.

Pros

• • Encourages product teams to think about SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant) metrics – as seen with the Reach element – thinking about both how many users and during what time frame
  • Removes inherent biases in the prioritization process by focussing on relative confidence

Cons

• • Less weighting given to factors such as cross-team dependencies or viability
  • Calculations will never be completely airtight as the framework is based on the confidence the team members have on its estimations

Kano

This framework is heavily focussed on improving customer satisfaction and looks at 2 key axes: the horizontal looks at to what degree a customer need is met and the vertical maps the level of customer satisfaction.

When considering to what degree a customer need is met (horizontal axis) you focus on 3 key levels:

• Table stakes / basic features – without these your customers would consider your product a poor solution to their needs or problems
• Performance features – these are things that sit a level about basic features and the more you invest in these, the higher your customer satisfaction levels will be
• Delighters – these are features that your customers may not expect to see and that result in moments of delight

In order to measure customer satisfaction you will need to run a Kano questionnaire with your users to understand how they would feel when provided (or not) with a given feature. Customer feedback is key!

Pros

• • Encourages product teams not to overfocus on delighters or under focus on basic features
  • Helps balance good product planning and decision-making with customer expectations and satisfaction

Cons

• • Running the Kano questionnaire can be time-consuming as you will need to get a fair representation of your customer base
  • Customers may not fully understand the features you are surveying them on, which can skew results

Value vs. effort

This prioritization framework pretty much does what it says on the tin – take your list of ideas or features and plot them on a chart with value on one axis and effort on another.

When considering value you might want to consider benefits to current customers, benefits to potential customers, business value (revenue etc) and impact on strategic outcomes or goals.

Effort criteria may encompass things like cost, risk, complexity, development or operational effort.

Pros

• • Criteria for defining value or effort is flexible and can be tailored by what’s most important to your team or business
  • Lean and simple to use – no need for complex calculations
  • Collaborative process that provides alignment for teams

Cons

• • Room for cognitive bias as there’s a lot of estimation and guesswork involved
  • Levels of effort can be difficult to agree on (e.g. development effort)

Opportunity scoring

Originating from Anthony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven Innovation concept, this prioritization method focuses primarily on scoring opportunities based on satisfaction and importance. When you have your list of ideas or features, you can run a survey with your customers to understand:

• How important is this idea or feature? (Ask customers to rank them)
• How satisfied are your customers with your existing solutions?

Once you have gathered these insights you can plot them on a graph with importance on the horizontal axis and satisfaction on the vertical axis to see whether your customers are overserved, underserved or appropriately served.

Pros

• • Heavily focussed on customer satisfaction
  • Simple framework for plotting opportunities
  • Easy to visualize on a graph

Cons

• • Customers may over or underestimate the importance of a opportunity

MoSCoW

Dai Clegg developed the MoSCoW framework in 1994 during his time at Oracle. The acronym stands for “Must-Have”, “Should-Have”, “Could-Have”, “Won’t Have” – the two “o”s were throw in to make the acronym more memorable!

More commonly associated with project management (as opposed to product management), MoSCoW helps you to organize work to deliver into 4 unambiguous buckets:

• Must Haves
  • Non-negotiable, must be worked on first
  • Without these, the product is not viable (could be Legal restrictions / other)
  • Part of your MVP feature set
  • Value / impact cannot be achieved without these

• Should Haves
  • Important items, but not vital for success
  • Solution is still viable and valuable without these
  • May cause some pain / negative results but workarounds are possible

• Could Haves
  • Items still desirable but not as important as Should Haves
  • Can be tackled if there is extra time

• Won’t Haves
  • Out of scope this time around
  • Nice to have but no real impact or value

Pros

• • Good way to eliminate any pet projects or work that won’t have any impact for users or customers
  • Range of criteria to organize features
  • Works well for single time-boxed release

Cons

• • Not always clear to stakeholders what happens to the “Should-Have” and “Could-Have” features
  • No clear ranking within the “Must Haves”
  • Too much time can be spent on separating “Should-Have” and “Could-Have”
  • Sometimes time and budget are used as criteria as opposed to value or impact
  • Doesn’t scale across multiple releases or product roadmaps

Buy-a-Feature

Perhaps a little less conventional than some of the other prioritization techniques we have discussed so far, Buy-a-Feature is a great technique for getting stakeholder input and understanding the value that they place on particular ideas and features.

The concept is based around “placing your bets” where each stakeholder or participant has a set amount of poker chips/similar with a set monetary value. Product Managers can then take it in turns to describe the feature or idea that they are putting forward (be sure to keep it to a sensible number so as not to overwhelm people taking part).

Then your stakeholders can use their chips to “place bets” on each feature or idea – the higher the monetary value they place, the more important that particular item is to them. At the end the chips are added up and participants can see which ideas or features are the “winners”.

Pros

• • Great for involving your stakeholders and other parts of the business in prioritization
  • Generates good discussion about what your stakeholders see as valuable and why
  • Can help untangle long “wish lists” or requests from other parts of the business

Cons

• • May set expectations that “winning” ideas or features will be delivered
  • Only takes stakeholder opinion into account
  • Less focus on effort, viability, feasibility and customer value

Cost of Delay

his prioritization framework places a heavy emphasis on revenue-generating ideas or features and the time it takes to deliver those. The basic premise is to assign a monetary value to each feature you might build and to also quantify the amount of time it would take to deliver. You can also assign monetary value to features, imagining they have already been built.

This technique encourages you to consider questions such as:

• If the product had this feature, what would it be worth right now?
• How much would our product be worth if we delivered this feature sooner?
• How much would it cost if we delivered this feature later than planned?

Pros

• • Allows you to assign monetary value to product work
  • Focuses on business value and financial return

Cons

• • Less emphasis on customer value, feasibility and viability
  • A lot of guesswork involved to assign monetary values
  • Can result in long discussions to agree on assigned monetary values

How to choose the right prioritization framework for you?

When it comes to choosing the right prioritization framework for your product team, it can be a total minefield with so many to choose from (there are nearly 40 out there!). So how do you go about finding what works for you, your product and ultimately for your business? Here are some themes to consider.

Data-driven

If you’re the kind of Product Manager who understands the world through cold, hard data then you might consider prioritizing using the RICE framework. There is little room for objectivity and the use of weighted scoring also plays into the preference for arithmetic, if that’s how you best make sense of things.

The output of this framework is also very unambiguous – there should be a clear priority order of ideas or features, ranked from most important to least.

User / customer-driven

While all good prioritization frameworks take customer value and impact into account, there are some that focus more heavily on it. If you’re the kind of Product Manager who prefers to put your users or customers at the centre of all you do, then you might consider using the Kano Model or Opportunity Scoring frameworks.

Both put heavy emphasis on customer satisfaction and also consider implementation effort. However, there is less focus on business viability and feasibility in these techniques, so something to watch out for!

Collaborative techniques

When it comes to prioritization, the “how you get there” can be as important as what you end up with at the end of the process. Close collaboration with your cross-functional team and stakeholders can result in a much richer set of prioritized ideas and features.

You might consider the User Story Mapping prioritization technique where you can co-create a map and have your users / customers front and centre. The MoSCoW method can also be a collaborative exercise, encouraging discussion about how to organize your features into the four different buckets.

Resource-driven

Sometimes there comes a crunch point in product development where you need to make trade-offs based on how many people you have available to work on your product. If this is the case then the simple Value vs. Effort prioritization framework could be the one for you.

Focussing in closely on these two factors can help ensure you keep user, customer and business value front and centre but also sharpen the conversation about who you have on hand to do the actual work.

Time-driven

What do you do as a Product Manager when you have a huge wish list or set of requests from stakeholders and not a lot of time to sift through them and have conversations about why each is/isn’t important? Play a game, of course!

Buy-a-Feature is a really fun and engaging way to involve your stakeholders in the prioritization process and the time-boxed exercise means you can collect a lot of insights from your colleagues without having to set up tons of meetings individually.

Key takeaways

In short, there are many different ways to prioritize product work and ultimately you have to find what works best for you. Some teams prefer to more heavily focus on users and customers while other businesses may demand a more weighted approach that also incorporates business value, effort and viability. We hope you have found something useful here to help you on your product journey – good luck!

The post 8 Product Prioritization Frameworks & Which One to Pick? appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

What is user onboarding?

When people think of user onboarding, their first thoughts might be the screens you have to swipe through before you can use a new app or a set of instructions to guide you through using the product you have just signed up for. While these might be valid ways to execute user onboarding, the true goal is much more about customer value, and specifically, making sure that your new users understand what problem your product solves for them.

User onboarding definition

In short, user onboarding can be defined as the initial experience with your product that leads to the internalization of value by your customers.

Why is the user onboarding so important?

User onboarding is important for a number of reasons. When users first use or install your product there is a window of opportunity to capture them and help them understand the value that they can get from your product, which will hopefully translate into return usage, revenue and other high value actions.

The onboarding process doesn’t just stop at first use, there is also a period after the initial phase where you can continue to take your users on a journey that continues to help them realize value from your product – this can take many different forms, some of which we will discuss later on.

How to measure new user onboarding effectiveness?

There are many ways to measure how effective your new user onboarding is and some of this will come down to individual product and business goals. You might consider qualitative measurements which look at things like how useful new users found your onboarding flow or more quantitative measures such as % of users who took an action (e.g. signed up to something / created an account etc) and later, what % of those users turned into more loyal customers who return regularly or make a purchase.

Any good onboarding flow will give users a way to exit out of it – this can be a really effective way to measure whether you’re succeeding (in the first instance) to capture new users and show them value or whether you’re having a negative impact with the wrong kind of messaging. Measuring the % of users who close out your onboarding flow and at which point they do this can help you to refine your messaging and content.

6 elements of the best onboarding flows

Onboarding flows can contain many different elements and not all are restricted to using the product itself. Notification or email flow onboarding can also factor here, as well as different content formats, such as video. Let’s take a look at some of those different elements.

Sign-up / create an account form

Capturing user data upfront can be very valuable for your product and business as a way to keep in touch with your customer base, but you have to consider the value exchange for the user also – what do they get by signing up or creating an account? Consider if this is the most important action you want your new users to take during onboarding.

Initial login screen

If you have successfully signed up a new user then it’s important to consider what they see upon first sign in. What’s the next most important action you want them to take to help them understand the value of your product?

Email communications

Email can be a powerful medium to engage your new user base with. How might you use a welcome email in the initial stages of your onboarding flow? Could you leverage email newsletters as educational aids to help users take actions to solve user needs? Perhaps you have a set of milestones that help users to realize value from your product that could be communicated via event-based emails – so many possibilities here!

App notifications

In a similar way to email communications, app notifications can be used to engage new users early in their onboarding flow. There are plenty of whizzy technologies that can help you to personalize individual experiences for new users based on their behavior in your app, which can increase the likelihood of success when it comes to your user onboarding goals.

Empty states

Perhaps a less obvious element is empty states, or what the user sees if they hit a screen or page on your product that doesn’t contain any content until they take an action. These spaces can be used in powerful ways to give guidance in context – for example a page which shows who you’re following which is initially empty could be used as a space to show how to follow someone or to make suggestions about who to follow.

Product tutorials

Sometimes new users can benefit from product tutorials and these can take different formats – everything from a short video explainer through to a guided product tour that encourages new users to set something up or take particular actions while using the product itself.

8 best practices when creating an onboarding flow

There are many things to consider when creating an onboarding flow – here are some of the key factors to bear in mind.

Understand what user problem(s) you’re solving

The number one thing to consider when creating an onboarding flow is to make sure you have a deep understanding of what problem or problems your product is solving for your users. This is so important because you need to be able to demonstrate the value you are providing to your new customers via your onboarding flow in order to capture them during their initial use of your product. If users can’t see how your product is solving their problems the likelihood is that they will churn or choose a different solution.

Set success metrics and iterate

The ability to measure the success of your onboarding flow is key to getting it right (and don’t expect to get it right the first time!). Once you have established the baselines for success you can see what’s working and what isn’t and iterate your flow accordingly. You might consider things such as user activation, retention or revenue.

Ask users to take an action

An important part of your onboarding flow will be the action you ask your users to complete – this should be something that helps users to understand the value of your product. This could be anything from asking them to complete a simple task on screen to offering them a way to sign up for relevant notifications or emails.

Include a moment of delight

Moments of delight, or aha moments are often overlooked when it comes to product development. These can be moments of surprise, delight at something fun in your flow or a real lightbulb moment where they realize exactly how your product is going to solve their problem. Incorporating one into your onboarding flow can really help you to establish and emotional link with your users

Keep it ‘on brand’

Perhaps something less obvious to consider is the branding of your onboarding flow. You want to make sure that the overall tone and visual design is in-keeping with the rest of your product as first impressions count when it comes to look and feel.

Make progress clear

How many times have you used a new product, been excited to try it out but had to swipe through endless screens with no end in sight? Users like to know where they are and how much progress they have made through your onboarding process and when they will be getting to the really meaty part – using your product! This can be simply achieved by using a progress bar or numbering the steps in the experience.

Keep the flow going

Just because your initial onboarding sequence and users have started using your product, it doesn’t mean that the onboarding journey has to end there. Consider what kind of follow-up actions you might want your users to take or what further information they might need to enhance their use of your product. Examples might be in-product demos, emails or notifications.

Give users a way to exit

Perhaps a less obvious consideration is the scenario where your onboarding flow doesn’t hit the mark or your new users just want to get straight into using your product. Always consider giving your users a way to exit the onboarding process – this will increase the chances of retaining them and lower the risk of irritating them – after all, they are keen to use your product as quickly as possible!

5 mistakes to avoid when designing your user onboarding experience

There can be many pitfalls when designing your onboarding experience. Here are a few key things to consider on your journey to better user onboarding.

Forgetting that user onboarding starts early

The majority of user onboarding occurs once a user gets into your product – from the “getting started” phase onwards. However, it’s important to remember that onboarding actually begins further up the funnel, really from when users start interacting with your brand. This could be on social media, search results page or other advertising. It’s never too soon to be thinking about onboarding when it comes to your funnel!

Asking users to take too many actions upfront

In the initial stages of onboarding with your product, it can be too overwhelming for users to be asked to take multiple actions – for example: signing up for an account, signing up for email newsletters or cycling through multiple actions in the interface. Instead try to focus on the single most impactful action that helps your users get the job done.

Overloading your flow with too much information

As you might imagine, users are keen to start using your product and may be put off if they have to cycle through too many screens or take in too much information from the get-go. You don’t need to walk your users through your entire product – instead focus on quick wins that help them realize core value upfront.

Leaving a value gap

When we talk about the value gap we are thinking about the potential delta between the value a user perceives that they will receive from your product vs the experience that they actually have with your product. You want to make sure that your onboarding walkthrough closes that gap as much as possible so that you can retain those users in the future.

Spamming your users with email

Email can be a powerful tool for communicating with your user base, however, you don’t want to irritate them with endless spam once they have signed up to use your product. Be considerate about when to send email – always make sure that the content helps to build on their existing experience.

3 great user onboarding examples

We’ve spoken a lot about the dos and don’ts of onboarding – now it’s time to take a look at some great user onboarding experiences. Here are a few of our favorites.

Netflix

Most of us probably have a Netflix account and have successfully passed through their onboarding journey at some point. Their onboarding flow has really evolved over the years to ensure that they capture and sign up as many customers as possible. How do they do this? Let’s take a look.

The first screen that you see when you hit their homepage is this one – nice and simple with a very clear, single call to action – just pop in your email and you’re on your way to having access to unlimited content that you can watch anywhere. It’s also clear that you can cancel any time. The value exchange is very transparent:

The next screen you see is this one which prompts you to finishing setting up your account – it’s clear here that this is step 1 of 3 and the messaging continues to build on the value proposition – now we see that not only can we watch unlimited content on any device, anytime, but that the experience is personalized:

The next screen asks us to create a password – the messaging is re-assuring that we don’t have many steps left to take and empathizes with us about the need for paperwork – again, each screen is only asking us to do one thing at a time and the UI is very clear:

Step 2 of 3 is asking us to choose a plan – again, there are simple reminders of the value proposition here:

The next screen is once again reinforcing the value exchange and now we have the added message about advert-free. The options are clearly laid out with the highest value option highlighted – you simply have to pick an option and press “Next” – again, a single action per screen:

Finally, step 3 of 3 is onto payment – a super simple screen to pick the best payment option for you:

Slack

Another product that many of us are likely to use is Slack. They have taken a different approach to onboarding as they allow free use of their product functionality in the first instance.

Their goal is to get you set up and using the product as quickly as possible, so their onboarding flow focuses on getting you to create your first workspace and channel, as well as inviting some colleagues. Again, they have clear signposting on the number of steps left in the flow as well as a single call to action per screen:

Canva

For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create visual content for social media, presentations and posters, among other things. They have a diverse range of users so they have chosen to focus their onboarding on getting a personalized experience set up to ensure that their users get the most out of their product experience.

The onboarding flow includes delightful touches like a real-time updating example of what your workspace will look like when you add your team information (as well as that all-important “Skip” button!):

They have also snuck in an upsell for their Pro product and the offer of a free trial – but again, you are able to easily skip this step:

Similar to Slack, you are invited to add team members and there is also some nice messaging on the value exchange – share designs, keep branding consistent and cut down on email feedback:

Key takeaways

Overall, there is a lot to consider when it comes to your onboarding flow and the success of your product can be very reliant on getting it right! Remember that the all-important starting point is really understanding your user problems, use cases and jobs to be done so that you can tailor your messaging and actions and really hit home the value exchange you are providing for them. Onboarding is not a simple set it and forget it piece of work – it is an evolving experience that will need to be continuously iterated until you can find what works best for your users and for your business.

FAQs

What is the goal of user onboarding?

The main goal of user onboarding is two-fold: the first part is to ensure that your users understand and experience the value that your product features can bring them and the second is to fullfil your business success metrics, whether those be retention, subscription or something else.

Is sign up part of user onboarding?

Sign-up can be a part of user onboarding if you deem it necessary to fulfil the goals described above. As long as users can understand the value they get from signing up, it can certainly be included in user onboarding.

What is progressive onboarding?

Progressive onboarding is all about users learning by doing – so if you’re using a new mobile app, for example, information might be presented to you as you use it via tooltips, rather than having you cycle through it upfront before you have experienced the product.

The post What Is User Onboarding? Examples, Best Practices & Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

What is product roadmapping software?

If you work in product management it’s likely that you have tried out some of the product roadmapping software available on the market. Product roadmap tooling helps PMs to plan and communicate what their team is going to be focussed on in the coming quarters.

Product roadmapping software can be used to map out vision, outcomes, themes, goals, workflows and problems that will be solved over time – and help to visualize all of this in a way that makes sense for both cross-functional agile team members as well as key stakeholders in the business. Some examples of product roadmapping software are ProductPlan, Roadmunk, Asana, Aha!, Productboard and Wrike.

Who can benefit from roadmap tools?

When thinking about product roadmap tools, it’s important to think about who your audience is and how the tool will be used. Is it mainly for your cross-functional team or will stakeholders also be accessing it? What kind of roadmap is it? Who will maintain it? What will it show?

For Product Managers, roadmap tools can be really beneficial for organizing your product thoughts and plans and showing how your team will be adding value and impact over a period of quarters. Roadmap tools can also provide a place to detail key themes and customer needs you might be solving in the coming months as well as a way to identify dependencies with other teams.

For your cross-functional team, having the right roadmap tool can mean the ability to communicate product priorities more effectively and serve as a single source of truth to keep coming back to for clarification on what will be worked on next.

For your stakeholders, using the right product roadmapping tool means you can share key information about what your team is planning to work on quickly and easily and in a format that is easy to digest in order to align your goals.

For your customers, roadmapping tools can even be places where they submit ideas and feedback to help you to flesh out your jobs to be done and opportunities.

Why do product development teams need product roadmap software?

Often as a Product Manager, you will have many documents, notes, and lists that describe the work that you are doing and it can be hard for your cross-functional team to keep up with the overarching plan for your product. You might find yourself having to explain or present the same information multiple times, so having a single source of truth in the form of a digital roadmap can be really helpful as a document to refer back to when needed. Having roadmap tooling to create your product plan is a useful way to communicate current and future priorities to your team.

What does a roadmapping tool help you with?

Product roadmap software can be really helpful on a number of levels – not only for you as a Product Manager, but also for your team and the wider business. Here are some key benefits of choosing the right tool.

Organize your thoughts and plans

On an individual level as a PM, you are likely to have all sorts of documents containing potential OKRs, themes of work, feature ideas, tech debt and customer problems to solve. Having the right product roadmap tooling at your disposal can really help you to organize your thoughts and map out your plans for your product over the coming months and quarters.

Direction for your product team

Once you have your own thoughts organized using product roadmapping tooling, your cross-functional team is your next port of call when it comes to sharing your product plans. Having all the key information in one place can make it easy to communicate priorities and also enable your team to return to your roadmap at any time to get a reminder of what the next most important thing to work on is.

Communicate with your stakeholders

Stakeholders always want to know what your product plans are so that they can plan for their individual goals and activities and offer their feedback where appropriate. Having the right roadmapping tooling provides you with a single place to direct your stakeholders to these plans as well as a way to talk through your roadmap in key meetings. Your stakeholders can then feel part of the process and the profile of Product within your organisation can be elevated as you have a clear plan of action to hand!

Transparency with your organization

It might be that your roadmap is shared widely around your business, and if so, having a roadmapping tool that enables this can be very beneficial for achieving transparency around your product plans. Having a single source of truth that you can keep up-to-date is definitely a helpful aid for Product Managers.

6 essential features of a great roadmap software

When thinking about choosing software roadmapping tools, it’s important to consider the features and functionality you need in order for the tooling to be useful to you, your team and your stakeholders. Here are some key things to consider:

Access options

What kind of permission levels do you need for your roadmap? This is an important question to consider as many tools offer access on different levels and for different pricing brackets. Are you, as the Product Manager, the only person who needs editing access for example? Do multiple stakeholders need viewing access? In all likelihood, being able to give access to a number of people will be useful, so this is something to bear in mind when making your choice!

Clear visualization

Having a clear and simple layout for your product roadmap with all the necessary information displayed is a key factor when considering roadmap software tooling. The layout might make sense to you as a Product Manager but it’s likely that other people at other levels, from your immediate team through to senior stakeholders, will be looking at it, so it needs to make as much sense as possible. Considerations here might be things like color-coding, timeline and grouping options.

Easy to use

Your roadmap is something that will be constantly evolving over time, so ensuring that it’s easy to manage and update is an essential feature to consider when choosing your product roadmapping software. Does it have drag and drop? How easy is it to add or remove new sections or to color-code? Does it auto-save your work? These are all good questions to ask yourself.

Different levels of viewing

It’s likely that you will want to show your roadmap to people on all different levels within your business – whether that’s a more detailed plan for your immediate product team, a high-level view for more senior stakeholders or something to show your potential investors if you’re in the startups business. Considering which levels of information you might need to show and when can help you to decide which product roadmapping software is right for you.

Ability to create multiple roadmaps

There may be some scenarios where you need to create multiple roadmaps or other Product Managers need to create separate ones. Considering how many you might need per user of the tool is a useful thing to think about to ensure you make the right software selection.

Importing / exporting capabilities

Many Product Managers and teams find it useful to be able to import work items from other product development tools such as Jira (think: user stories) and GitHub, as well as having the ability to pull in feedback, notes or ideas from places like Slack and Intercom. Some companies may even find API integrations with Salesforce useful for managing customer inputs – definitely something to consider when making your product roadmap tooling choice.

4 benefits of using a product roadmapping tool

There are many benefits of using a product roadmapping tool to create your ideal product plan – here a few positives:

Speed of creation

Having a product roadmapping tool at your disposal can really speed up the efforts of creating product plans and visual roadmaps. Some even allow you to import from spreadsheets, lists or other development or project management tools and drag and drop items into place to build up your roadmap. Gone are the days of multiple tabs in spreadsheets!

Efficient to switch between views

As we talked about earlier, it’s likely that you will want to switch between views of your roadmap depending who you are talking to. Imagine you’re in a meeting with senior stakeholders – you’ll be able to press a button and turn off any noisy detail that might distract from the high level plan they are hoping to hear about. Likewise, when in meetings with your team you can dial up the details to discuss prioritizing the key items.

Ease of access

Most product roadmapping tools allow for multiple viewers and levels of access – this means your team, stakeholders and even your customers can access your roadmap (where appropriate!) if given the right permissions. Definitely handy if you want to encourage feedback and transparency!

Collecting feedback

Roadmaps are often collaborative so having the ability to collect feedback directly from your product plans can be very useful and time-saving. Rather than having everyone send you Slack and email messages separately, some product roadmap software collates the feedback for you so you can find it all in one place. If your roadmap is open to customers as well as stakeholders, some roadmapping tools allow you to take in ideas and feedback from them also, as external stakeholders of the tool. All very handy when you’re a busy Product Manager!

5 best free product roadmap software of 2021

There are plenty of free product roadmap tools out there for you to try before you buy, or continue to use on a limited basis if they work for you and your needs. Let’s take a look at the free roadmap software on the market here.

Trello

You might already be familiar with Trello as it’s a good way to organize lists or to-do tasks. Their free version allows you to create 10 boards with unlimited members and assign work with due dates. You can also try their Business Plan for free which also includes timeline and calendar views as well as additional roadmap templates.

Miro

You may have already used Miro to visualize other product work – and roadmapping is another thing that you can use it for! The tool has a set of product roadmap templates with swimlanes that can be customized and if you select the free version you can create up to 3 editable boards to share with others.

ProductPlan

Ultimately ProductPlan is a paid for product roadmap tool but you can try it out for 2 weeks before committing to any payment plan. Benefits include unlimited roadmaps and viewers, customizable views and export capabilities.

Aha!

You can try Aha! product management software for free for 30 days – key features include the ability to set your product strategy, organise your prioritization and capture feedback from stakeholders and customers.

Productboard

Handy features of Productboard include the ability to sync your product management tools with your roadmap, collect and organize customer feedback and the ability to create highly customized visual roadmaps. You can try it for free for 15 days to see if it’s right for you and your team.

Another 3 great product roadmap tools

Most product planning software have free trials so you can road test them before fully committing – here are another 3 that weren’t included in the “free” list but are worth checking out nonetheless:

Roadmap

Simply named, Roadmap has a bunch of integrations with Trello, GitHub, Slack, Intercom and more as well as allowing 500+ users to comment and leave feedback on your product plans. Also handy is the ideas backlog and email notifications for followers when ideas or stories they are following are progressing. You can get started with a 14-day free trial to test it all out.

ProdPad

With the ability to create unlimited roadmaps, ProdPad also enables you to integrate your OKRs into your product plans as well as keep tight control on user access and views. There’s also a free trial available so you can give it a test drive.

Airfocus

Offering everything from custom views to dev tool integrations, Airfocus is worth looking at whether you’re an individual all the way through to a large organization with custom security needs. They also offer a free trial for 14 days to new customers.

How to choose the perfect roadmap tool for you

When thinking about the best roadmap software for you, your team and your company it’s worth mapping out the goals you want to achieve by using any roadmap tooling. You can also start by noting down answers to the following questions:

• Who will be accessing your roadmap? How many people and what levels of seniority?
• Will you be presenting your roadmap around the business? How much flexibility do you need on different views?
• Is the ability to import / export items on your roadmap important?
• Budget – how much do you have available to spend on roadmap software?
• What level of customisation is right for you, your team and the business?
• What do you want to achieve with your roadmap? Is it buy-in from stakeholders? An understanding of upcoming work from your team? Something else?

Once you have a clearer picture of what you want to achieve with your roadmap you can test out some of the product roadmapping tooling out there to see which one most closely meets your needs and business goals. As we talked about, many roadmap software companies offer no strings free trials for 14 days or more so you will have plenty of time to put them through their paces!

Final points about roadmapping tools

Hopefully you have found some useful tips here for thinking about the goals you want to achieve with your roadmap and tooling, as well as how to select the right product roadmap software for yours and your company’s needs. Roadmapping tooling is useful for everything from visualizing your product plans through to switching views to something that makes sense for your audience – remember that you can try before you buy, so be sure to test drive a few different solutions before making a decision!

The post 8 Best Product Roadmapping Software of 2021 [Free & Paid] appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

What is product differentiation?

Differentiation is a word often bandied about in the product world – but how can we truly define product differentiation? At its heart, product differentiation is about competitive market advantage and describes the reasons customers might choose your product or service over someone else’s. This could be anything from your unique product features (USP) or functionality that better solve a customer problem through to delightful elements of your service that tempt users away from their existing service of choice.

Definition: product differentiation

In short, product differentiation refers to building a strong value proposition for your product or service that distinguishes your brand or business in the market, targets a specific audience or set of customers and has longer-term viability for your business.

Why is product differentiation important?

The market is awash with a myriad of different products and services that aim to solve customer problems in the world, so competition is stiff and there’s a need for successful product differentiation in order to stand out from the crowd. People can also form strong habits and emotional connections with the products that they use, so work to better solve customer problems or give them a reason to adopt your product or service can be key to winning in the market.

One of the pitfalls of competitive analysis is that companies try to emulate what others in the market are doing in the hope that customers will choose their product, but this is rarely a winning formula. Competitive advantage can be viewed in another way – 

People will often choose to abandon their use of an existing product and begin using another for many reasons. The Jobs to be Done framework outlines some of the thinking behind this, sometimes known as the “Forces of Progress”, which go hand-in-hand with product differentiation.

The Forces of Progress are loosely based around two areas: demand generation and demand reduction and really describe the “why” behind the importance of product differentiation.

Demand generation focuses primarily on:

• Push – when people are ‘pushed’ away from the current product or service they are using – this can be down to being unhappy with the way things are – e.g. poor customer service, the product doesn’t solve their problem anymore etc
• Pull – this is when customers are ‘pulled’ towards a new product or service and the thought of a ‘better life’ – they feel they would make progress in their life by switching to or choosing something different. It can also simply be about a more subjective preference for a different product

Demand reduction focuses primarily on:

• Anxiety – there can be an undercurrent of anxiety in customers when it’s not clear if the new product or service available, no matter how differentiated it is, will solve their problem or help them make progress
• Habit – understanding current customer habits can play a key role in whether they choose to move away from their current product or service  – “old habits die hard”, as they say, and this is a key factor when considering demand reduction

Companies often heavily focus on demand generation but forget to consider demand reduction and the important role that plays when considering product differentiation.

3 types of product differentiation

When thinking about product differentiation, there are 3 main sub-categories we can consider when looking at how customers might make their choices about which product or service to choose. Let’s take a look at those here:

Vertical differentiation

This type of differentiation is when customers make a choice between your product or service in the market based on an objective measurement such as price points or quality. Although the measurement can be something more tangible, customers will still use their personal or subjective needs to make the decision.

For example: there are two brands of peanut butter, one more expensive than the other – the cheaper one contains palm oil but the more expensive one does not – customers who place more value on environmental issues may opt for the more expensive peanut butter, despite the additional cost.

Horizontal differentiation

Sometimes customers make a purely subjective decision when choosing a product or service, because there is no objective factor to distinguish between best and worst. This could be a personal preference or something on a more emotional level.

For example: there is no qualitative measure to rank different kinds of chocolate – whether you prefer white, milk or dark chocolate is really a matter of personal taste.

If the products on the market share a lot of similar qualities and cost roughly the same, customer choice and purchasing decisions for similar products often come down to subjective factors.

Mixed differentiation

Customers making larger or more complex decisions or purchases may use a mixture of both vertical and horizontal differentiation factors to reach a conclusion. 

A good example of mixed differentiation is the thinking that goes into making a car purchase. Objectively customers will consider things like price, mileage and the quality of the safety features. Subjectively things like design aesthetics and feeling about each car brand will come into play. 

In a similar way to vertical and horizontal differentiation, customers will place more individual value on the different elements – some caring more about price and others caring more about design aesthetics, for example.

3 advantages of product differentiation

Building a differentiated product or service has plenty of advantages for your business, as well as your customers. Let’s take a look at a few of those here.

Building reputation, brand loyalty and habit

From a product perspective, building habits can be very challenging, but once customers have chosen to use your product or service and use it repeatedly, you can start to build an engaged user base. Product differentiation can really be the key to unlocking choice, and later habit with customers as you are providing them with a reason to both choose and continue using your product. 

Product differentiation is not simply a one-time exercise – good product teams need to continue to understand potential customer needs, and to iterate and evolve their product or service to ensure it remains valuable and differentiated. Over time this contributes positively to brand loyalty and the reputation of your business for putting out great products or services that people come back to time and time again. Your marketing strategy is also key here.

Honing in on your target audience

All good product development starts with product discovery, and part of that process is research and understanding who your target market is and what sort of needs they have. It can be challenging to get a really refined target audience defined right from the outset, but through experimentation and iteration of your value proposition and the way you differentiate your product, more can be learnt about who your exact customer base is or should be.

Increasing revenue

Having a differentiated product or service is partly about serving the unique needs of your customers, but of course your business has needs too and increasing revenue is likely to be one of them!

It goes without saying that positive product differentiation that really distinguishes your business in the market and solves those unique needs for your customers is likely to go hand in hand with an increase in revenue.

You may not have the most expensive product or service on the market but if people choose to use it in large numbers then your product differentiation strategy will have paid off.

3 product differentiation examples

We have touched on a few examples of product differentiation above but let’s take a look at some from the big brands out there who have succeeded in their strategies:

Apple 

No look at product differentiation would be complete without mentioning tech giant Apple and how they executed their strategy!

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple has had a huge impact on the computer software and consumer electronics industries over the years. Famous for their innovative products – the iPad, iPhone, Mac, and more – their “Think Different” approach to product development has successfully distinguished them from their competitors in the market.

How did they do this? It can be argued that they took a multi-layered approach to product development and innovation.

The first thing to consider is their iconic product design – the sleek, minimalist aesthetic of Apple products was a real standout feature from others in the market. The elegance and simplicity of their products is something customers place a high value on and are willing to pay a premium price tag for.

Some companies would be content with differentiation through design alone, but Apple went one step further and also offered its own unique operating system on its products that really served to distinguish the user experience gaps in its competitor’s products.

We have already touched on the premium price tags but Apple’s pricing strategy can also be seen as a differentiator where people associate high quality products with higher prices.

Emirates

While Apple is a great example of a differentiated physical product, Emirates is a great example of a successful differentiated service. Other airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet have chosen to differentiate on lower price, Emirates has approached their strategy by focussing on high quality service.

Emirates is a state-owned airline based in Dubai that operates over 3,000 flights per week to more than 150 cities in 80 countries.

Things that really help them to stand out from other airlines are their exceptional customer service, high quality Economy Class services and their adoption of new navigational technologies.

Economy Class seats are not known for their perks, but Emirates provides complimentary beverages, high quality in-flight entertainment, regionally-inspired meals, wi-fi and memorable customer service. They also received an award for their First Class service in 2020.

Hermés

Established in 1837, Hermés is a French luxury goods manufacturer famous for its iconic handbags, jewelery, watches, clothing and perfume. They have executed a powerful approach to product differentiation through a combination of exclusivity, storytelling, and high quality craftsmanship.

If we take a closer look at their strategy around exclusivity we will find a few different approaches:

• Scarcity of certain products – Hermés Birkin bags, for example, are crafted by hand and in small numbers due to the time-consuming process to create them, meaning you can own a bag that not many others have
• The waiting list – it’s not possible to simply buy a Hermés Birkin bag from their website or a physical store – you will need to join a waiting list to be eligible, and then there is the further waiting for your bag to be made!
• Lack of choice – if scarcity and the waiting list weren’t enough to make you want a Birkin bag all the more, the level of exclusivity means that you can’t even have a say in what your bag will look like – just consider yourself lucky enough to be able to get your hands on one!

The exclusive nature of Hermés handbags is such that they are not only used as accessories but also seen as investment pieces, some are so rare that they fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.

How do you develop a product differentiation strategy?

Understand your customers

Key to developing a product differentiation strategy is truly understanding your customers. What do they value? What are their needs? What Jobs to Be Done forces are at play (push / pull / habits / anxieties) that might influence their decisions to choose your product or service? Doing due diligence with your user research cannot be emphasized enough here!

Be aware of your competitors

As we mentioned earlier, awareness of your chosen market and competitive landscape is super important when it comes to finding how you can distinguish yourself from your competitors. Remember, it’s not emulating what they do that will lead to success, it’s finding your niche and the unique ways you can solve customers problems and add value. 

Identify your opportunity and market fit

Once you have a good handle on your target audience, their needs and your competitive landscape, you can use something like the Lean Canvas to flesh out your opportunity, unique value proposition and advantages as well as any revenue plans and cost structures. You’ll need to conduct plenty of experiments with any potential solutions in order to find product market fit.

Keep learning and iterating

Product differentiation approaches need to evolve over time because what someone finds valuable today might not be the case tomorrow if your competitors move in and disrupt the market. Keep aiming to learn about your changing customer needs, what they value and adjust your product or service accordingly.

Are there any disadvantages to differentiated products? 

We have spent a lot of time here focussing on why differentiated products are a positive thing, but there can be some pitfalls to look out for.

You may find yourself in a position where you have a really good grasp on customer needs, you have found a unique value proposition that really resonates with your target audience and you have evidence that people are willing to pay for it. However, it might be that the running or manufacturing costs for your product are too high and won’t provide a good return on investment.

Or you have been giving your highly differentiated digital product away for free but when the time comes to ask people to pay for it, they haven’t formed enough of a habit or don’t value your product highly enough to pay for it. It’s important to flush issues around cost out at the start of your product development journey to ensure you have good market fit and aren’t left with a highly differentiated product that isn’t providing good ROI or revenue.

Key takeaways

In conclusion, product differentiation is a key factor when it comes to building and launching a successful product or service. Taking into account customer needs and what they value, how they make their choices when it comes to switching to or buying a new product and planning to evolve your product or service to continue to meet these needs are all important parts of formulating a unique selling proposition.

The post What Is Product Differentiation? Types, Advantages & 3 Examples appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Why does the product management methodology matter?

Although you might think of product management as a relatively new discipline, product management methodologies have been around for quite some time, and can be traced back as far as the 1970s!

As you can imagine, product management methodologies have really evolved, particularly over the past 20 years or so, with the rise of new technologies and ways of working.

Product methodology really matters in a world where companies are competing to discover and deliver the most valuable product that solves their customers’ problems in the best ways possible and take that share of the market.

In a world where new software and iterations of your product can be released every minute of the day rather than once a year (think: Microsoft’s annual release of the Encarta CD-Rom!), it’s important to ensure that the product management methodology you choose to use is fit for purpose.

4 main product management methodologies

There are many product management methodologies out there so let’s take a look in a bit more detail about what is involved with each of those:

Waterfall

You may not have heard of American Computer Scientist Winston W. Royce, but it is commonly noted (although possibly mistakenly) that his paper “Managing the development of large software systems” published in 1970 was responsible for the Waterfall methodology as we know it today.

Originally Royce envisioned the methodology as containing the following steps:

1. 1. Systems requirements
   2. Software requirements
   3. Analysis
   4. Program design
   5. Coding
   6. Testing
   7. Operation

As you can imagine, in the 1970s they didn’t have the luxury of being able to iterate on their work as the rise of the digital era was yet to happen, so each stage of development had a distinct purpose and had to happen in sequence. There is also nothing in this list about customer needs, problems, opportunities, or collaboration!

A more “modern” version of the Waterfall methodology can be seen as having the following steps, again each handled in sequence with a ‘hand-off’ and often rooted in project management rather than product management:

1. 1. Ideas
   2. Business case
   3. Roadmap
   4. Product requirements
   5. Design
   6. Build
   7. Test
   8. Deploy

Unfortunately, this “top-down” approach does not leave much room for customer needs to be considered (although there may be a one-off exercise of considering them as part of “Requirements”), collaboration or experimentation to happen which means that there is a high risk of delivering a product that your audience doesn’t find valuable or will not use. This is because it’s a linear process and once each stage has passed, there isn’t room to go back and make changes. The goal in Waterfall is to deliver products on time and to budget, not to focus on outcomes and customer value, which is where the methodology often falls down.

Agile

Fast forward 30 years and the digital revolution is in full swing, and with it, the need for a new way of working. In 2001, around the time of the dot-com boom, 7 software developers defined the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” and the Agile methodology was born.

There are 12 principles in the agile manifesto in total and in combination they guide teams to increase responsiveness to change, productivity and efficiency:

1. 1. Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
   2. Welcome changing requirements, even in late development.
   3. Deliver working software frequently (weeks rather than months)
   4. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
   5. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
   6. A face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
   7. Working software is the primary measure of progress
   8. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
   9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
   10. Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential
   11. Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams
   12. Regularly, the team reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts accordingly

The agile principles are where we really start to see the beginnings of collaboration as a key way of working and the ability to iterate on products come to the forefront of product development. The concept of self-reflection as a team also makes an appearance here as does the mention of customer satisfaction, something notably missing from the Waterfall methodology.
Kanban and Scrum are two frameworks you may be familiar with that have arisen as part of agile product management:

Kanban

Favored by some cross-functional teams for its fluidity, Kanban operates on the basis of limiting work in progress and Kanban boards often take the form of 3 columns: “To-do”, “In progress” and “Done”. There is less focus on the work being time-bound (unlike 2-week sprints in Scrum) and more focus on maximising efficiency in the team’s work.

Scrum

Still part of Agile thinking but quite different from Kanban (and a bit less fluid) Scrum teams commit to delivering set pieces of working software through “sprints”, which often last a period of 2 weeks. Team members adopt a number of different roles (such as Scrum Master) in this framework and there is a focus on ceremonies such as retrospectives (to ensure time to reflect on how the team can improve) and planning (to agree on the goals and work to be undertaken in the coming sprint).

Lean

A name you may be more familiar with is Eric Ries. His book Lean Start-Up, published in 2011, put a lot of emphasis on the need for customer-focused discovery and experimentation, in a way that perhaps hadn’t been seen before.

The Lean methodology has its origins in physical product development – namely the Toyota Production System (TPS) which focussed on reducing waste (hence the name “Lean”), improving processes and encouraging innovation.

The TPS is grounded in 2 main concepts:

1. Just in time – “Making only what is needed, only when it is needed, and only in the amount that is needed”
2. Jidoka – Autonomation – “Automation with a human touch” – a way to discover process abnormalities, stop your workflow to prevent quality issues, quickly fix identified issues and identify and remove the root cause of any process problem to ensure a continuous flow of work

Ries also popularized a concept called the “Five Whys” – a technique used to find the underlying causes or roots of a customer problem – originally created by Sakichi Toyoda as part of the Toyota Manufacturing process evolution.

The Lean methodology focuses heavily on the importance of product discovery – in particular customer research in the form of direct interviews, identifying a minimum viable product followed by quick testing and iterations to minimize waste in the development process.

Some of the principles that sit behind the Lean Methodology are:

1. Validated learning – a real focus on experimentation with the goal of quickly validating your ideas
2. Innovation accounting – a focus on measuring progress and prioritizing work
3. Build–Measure–Learn – turning ideas into products, measuring how customers respond, and learning whether to pivot or persevere – this should be a continuous loop of learning and iterating

Dual Track Agile

Around 2012, product gurus Marty Cagan and Jeff Patton coined the phrase “Dual Track Agile” after reading a paper on “Adapting Usability Investigations For Agile-Centred Design” by Desirée Sy. This methodology is also sometimes referred to as “Continuous Discovery and Delivery”.

In Dual Track Agile a team has two “tracks” of work – one where your team is figuring out what the right thing to build is (product discovery) and one where they are actually building it (product delivery). These two tracks happen concurrently and are continuous in nature with the product discovery track continuously feeding the product delivery one.

This product methodology really takes in all of the learnings and evolution of product management of the past 50 years to ensure that product delivery and discovery get their fair weighting when it comes to creating valuable digital products.

It can be argued that product teams who use Dual Track Agile are much more likely to deliver valuable products to customers because the methodology encourages only validated product ideas to reach their backlogs, which will ultimately result in only products, features and functionality being released that customers value and care about.

Splitting the work across two parallel tracks (one for discovery and one for delivery) also means that teams have a higher chance of getting a product or feature right with users within the first set of iterations rather than having to repeat a linear process many times. This can result in speedier development and release cycles with less wasted time and resources.

Product management methodology comparison table

We have discussed each of the main product management methodologies in detail above, let’s take a look at them all at a glance:

Which is the best product management methodology?

There are many views on this but from my personal experience I would have to say Dual Track Agile. Of course continuous discovery and delivery can work in conjunction with elements of some of the other methodologies such as Agile and Lean but the nature of Dual Track Agile is that it is a continuous process of learning, iteration, experimentation, collaboration and delivering value to customers. There is also a heavy emphasis on collaboration across disciplines, right from the get-go. For example: a Product Manager, Lead Developer and Lead Product Designer should be part of the product discovery process at a minimum, and ideally other team members and stakeholders are brought in at key moments to participate. The key to Dual Track Agile is that it’s iterative and cyclical as opposed to linear and finite.

Waterfall concentrates very heavily on delivery and lacks the key stages of discovery necessary to deeply understand core customer needs and find the very best solution for those needs. It is often focussed on a single solution (normally one that has come from someone senior in the business!) and the lack of collaboration in each of the stages leaves a lot to be desired as information and work is passed from one team to another. Writing business cases can be considered a waste of time when it’s your job as a product team to get out there and solve customer problems in the right way (that’s not to say that product recommendations shouldn’t be articulated, however, as long as they’re based on validation!).

Many implementations of “pure” Agile are too heavily focussed on delivery and not enough on discovery and customer value, which misses the mark. Sometimes Scrum can be implemented in such a way that product teams end up drowning in-process and measured on their velocity and volume of work delivered, rather than on the value they are adding.

Lean comes close to hitting the mark with its lightweight approach to testing and experimentation and a heavy focus on customer needs and solving for those. Lean and Agile can work well in conjunction with one another if set up in the right way.
Companies will often try to mandate a particular methodology but in my experience teams work best when they find what works for them.

Are product management methodologies and product development methodologies the same?

A lot of this comes down to semantics – managing your product and developing your product can be considered very similar things. Managing your product should encompass developing and iterating on it, as well as sunsetting it if it’s no longer providing value as part of the product lifecycle.

New product development and existing product management methodologies are very similar (product discovery/product delivery), possibly with the exception of the initial discovery phase for a brand new product where you are looking for a product-market fit and demand, whereas an existing product may already have this but customer value will still need to be added continuously to keep your user base active and engaged!

How to choose the best product development methodology for you

No matter which product development methodology you choose, your ways of working should always include the following considerations:

• Have you articulated your outcomes and what success looks like?
• How deeply do you understand your customers and their needs?
• Have you spent time identifying the right problems to solve for them?
• Have you explored the opportunity space to see if these are problems worth solving?
• Have you spent time brainstorming multiple solutions to these problems?
• Have you prototyped and tested those potential solutions with customers?
• Are you working collaboratively with your stakeholders?
• Have you taken the time to test the “4 big risks” (value, usability, feasibility and business viability?)
• Have you found a product-market fit or an MVP that works?
• Are you continuously learning about your customers and measuring how your product is performing?
• Is your team continuously improving their ways of working?

It’s best not to be too caught up in process and methodology and try to focus on the things that matter (the list above!). Of course methodology can be helpful in putting a bit of process in place where necessary but you shouldn’t feel too bound by it, or worse, add too many processes in place of collaboration or other key ways of working.

Key takeaways

Hopefully you have learnt something about product management methodologies here and how they have evolved over time. Focussing on customer needs and finding the best solutions for those through experimentation and collaboration are always key in product management – so ensuring that your methodology incorporates those things will remain important in this digital age. Remembering not to be too caught up with process and to keep things flexible and iterative is also important! Whichever way you choose to work, we wish you success!

The post The Best Product Management Methodology: Agile vs Waterfall vs Lean appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.