"No one asked you to show up." Every experienced product manager has heard some version of those words at some point in their career. Think about a company. Engineers build the product. Designers make sure it has a great user experience and looks good. Marketing makes sure customers know about the product. Sales get potential customers to open their wallets to buy the product. What more does a company need? What does a product manager do?
Recently, I switched my Consultant role to a Product Manager role. Even though the role intrigued me, I still had a lot of confusion regarding what do PMs actually do, are they even needed? Everyone I talked to had a different definition with similar confusion.
So, for my clarity, I decided to read “The Product Book by Product School”
The Book in 3 Sentences
The Product Book is a comprehensive guide to product management, covering everything from understanding the customer to launching a product.
It consists of 12 chapters that cover multiple PM functions, such as product strategy, road mapping, and working with cross-functional teams
We take real-world case studies and apply to a hypothetical company, take decisions for it in a structured manner.
What I learned from the book
Even though the book covers a lot of topics, and I am sure everyone might find different things relevant. The things that were most relevant to me
Who is a Product Manager? How are they different from Project Managers & Program Managers - The simplest way to define it is, Product Manager represents the customer. They have to provide clear communication to all stakeholders while keeping their end goal, making the customer experience awesome in mind. Project and Program managers on the schedule and ensure that the project is on defined timelines. PMs manage products, not people, so they must achieve everything using soft influence, effective communication, leadership, and trust—not orders.
Understanding how to prioritize - There are always many things and features and fixes we can focus on. To understand what we should prioritize. We can assign values to each task. In regards to assigning value to each task. Use an exponential series rather than a linear one—i.e., use 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 rather than 1 through 5. Next, for each opportunity, figure out a score using score = value/cost. Focus on the highest-scoring opportunities first, as they provide the most value for the lowest cost. Example: Value = 10, cost = 5, score = 2 — do first Value = 5, cost = 10, score = 0.5 — do second
Writing a Product Requirements Document & a Press Release - Even though PRD was mainly required when you are following a Waterfall model of development, having one is a great way everyone on the same page and understand, with what we are building, not building, for whom we are building, and can act as a source of truth. Sample Structure of a PRD
Title: Give this project a distinct name.Unique code name or something like “Moover Web App” for the first version
Change history: Provide a description of each important change to the PRD, including who changed it, when, and in what specific way.Wiki tools provide change history automatically
Overview: Briefly, what is this project about? Why are you doing it? Objectives: What will this let the customer do? What are our high-level internal goals for doing this project?
First paragraph from internal press release
Bulleted list what we want the customer to get out from the project
What internal goals we want to achieve
Success metrics: What are the success metrics that indicate you’re achieving your internal goals for the project?List of the most important metrics you will need to be able to measure to figure out if you’ve achieved our goals. Example: increase our user base by 10% (or add ???)
Messaging: What’s the product messaging marketing will use to describe this product to customers, both new and existing?explain the product to a current or new customer in a short sentence
Timeline/release planning: What’s the overall schedule you’re working towards?Rough estimates. Ask marketing sales team.
Personas: Who are the target personas for this product, and which is the key persona?define them here so a reader understands what the eventual customers will be like, and their goals.
User scenarios: These are full stories about how various personas will use the product in context.
Combine personas, customer development, and empathy
NOT bullets of text BUT story. This helps to build stronger empathy among the team
Focus on customers underlying needs and motivations
How will a customer first encounter this product and learn to use it?
Be realistic: instead “after using the product she tell all her friends and they buy the product too” use “Because this is an ongoing problem and the customer was so happy with our trial product, she signed up for the monthly plan.”
do not define in too much detail — leave the PRD focused on goals and requirements rather than specific solutions to a problem. Example: rather than describing how a customer turns a doorknob on a restroom door to leave, describe how the customer exits the restroom with clean hands
Following this up with a sample Press Release, before starting to build a project, would be a great help in setting up final expectations. Amazon’s template is a great reference
What do customers actually want - This is a point that I actually realized I was doing wrong. Understanding what features customers would actually want is extremely important. If we , or any of our customers do think a feature will help them, it is important to corroborate if it’s actually needed or not. Surveys and Focused interview can help a lot to understand. One thing to understand is, if we just ask a customer that “Do you think feature A would solve your problem X”, they might say yes, but when you build it they would not take it, because even though X is a problem, Y is a much bigger problem and a priority for them. Hence we should always confirm if there is any other problems that customers are facing as well
Who should read it?
If you are interested in learning more about product management, I recommend reading The Product Book. It is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn the fundamentals of product management or become a product manager, or even understand the role of PM a bit better.
What can be improved
It sometimes feels like a collection of Google Search based on FAQs, so a lot of topics are missing some depth since it’s quite generic in nature.
How I came across the book
Somebody actually asked me about resources that would help them improve as a Product Manager. This is when I stumbled across this book and I am happy I did.
Some other good resources
I found a great example of leadership recently in a Traffic Jam in Bangalore.
Much more comprehensive summary for an in-depth understanding
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