a casual introduction to product management
TRANSCRIPT
A CASUAL INTRODUCTION TO
PRODUCT MANAGEMENTor,
All of the responsibility & none of the power…
Imperial College / May 2016
Randy Silver
A bit about me.
http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/well-i-was-born-at-a-very-young-age-and-me-too-70601
bbc.co.uk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5387961900
Where do we fit?
The essential quality of Product Managers
http://statement.sg/products/plays-well-with-others
Martin Eriksson / Mind the Product
We have 2 jobs…
http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/11/dinosaur-supervisor-demoted-after-letting-everyone-get-killed-in-jurassic-park-5241260/
• Figure out what to do
• Convince people to do it
What does a Product Manager actually do, anyway?
Feature Development
Putting out fires
Organisational process & analysis
Competitor research
Stakeholder & Customer management
User research
The dirty secret: for the
most part, we’re middle management
Staring into space
Prioritisation, Backlog & Roadmap
Essential skills
• Technical• Coding• Hosting & Delivery• Infrastructure• Mobile
• Marketing & Sales• SEO/SEM
• Business Management• Governance• Budgeting• Vendor Management• Stakeholder Management
• User Experience• Testing• Interviewing• Design
• Content Development, Management & Publishing
• Support• Data, Analytics & Reporting
Essential skills
(really)
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/55/c3/d6/55c3d6e553a7b53bd45cd849c3b9c16e.jpg
(possibly. obligatory
Einstein quote of dubious
provenance.
CEO of the product?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Customer-Fire-Everybody-Company/dp/B00MY1LQZQ/
Product vs Project Managers
“A Project Manager is like a midwife - he/she delivers the baby, hands it over to the mother and moves on.
The baby being the product and the mother being the Product Manager.”
-Derek MorrisonHead of Product, PracticeTesco
Portfolio management
https://www.flickr.com/photos/miajudkins/4124218980
Portfolio management
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/evildead/images/b/b1/Ash.png/revision/latest?cb=20140719001020
Product Managers and Product Leaders
Product leaders create the conditions for product managers to succeed.
We need to build strong relationships with Engineering and Marketing/Sales; craft sensibly lightweight processes; and help cut through the inevitable company politics.
We need to push our product managers to take strong action and defend them when they do. We need to keep executives focused on markets, value and problems to be solved.
-Rich Mironov
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-do-product-leaders-worry-rich-mironov?
A short aside about lean, scrum, agile, kanban or any other idealised process or philosophy.
Your company will never love you.
*unless you own it
https://xkcd.com/317/
Resources & Development
• Product Tank / Mind the Product• Blog, meetup, Slack group &
conference• Meetups• London Product Talks, London
Product Group, many more• Podcasts: • A16Z, This is Product
Management, Ready Product Radio, Product Hunt, UIE Brain Sparks
• General Assembly• Silicon Valley Product Group• Product Manager HQ• Many, many articles on Medium • Rich Mironov, Ken Norton, Melissa
Perri, Jeff Gothelf, Jared Spool and many many more
[email protected]@randy_silver