Top 4 Cause of Product Failure - Ignored by Product Managers

Product Managers work hard for product success but often end-up wondering what went wrong and what could they have done better to achieve the product market success. Here are four areas which I often see product managers overlooking during initial efforts of shaping ideas into a product. One or more of these often cause failures that otherwise is so manageable.

Product success is not about how many things you do correct but is all about how do you ensure that you do not go wrong at any aspect. Failure is the proof of attempt and it rewards in experience but do not fall in for obvious reasons of failure as it will be an attempt wasted. 

It is important to learn, and more important to learn from others mistake simply because you are not going to get so many chances to fail and learn all that requires to make success. Your amazing and beautiful ideas requires more than just your hard-work and as the picture above says, focus on these four causes of product failures that derails most product success stories.

@mathurabhay

Product Managers, assess yourself

Every individual on some or other occasion works in one of the four working modes. Practically it looks impossible to just stick to one of the working modes but it is of paramount importance to know the most commonly operating mode of yourself. This plays decisive role in your professional growth and hence it is important that you keenly observe yourself and ensure that you do not heavily incline towards any one of these modes.

Product Managers will find themselves working almost all of these modes, however before one of these gets dominant factor in your character it is important that your keep assessing yourself and figure-out right mix of working modes that fits best to your personality and to the organization where you work.

@mathurabhay

Product Management, in-bound and out-bound activities

@mathurabhay

UX for New Product

Quick one for this month. Once again from my personal experience. A well defined UX can hide poorly defined workflows, on the other hand, a bad UX may raise serious doubts on even a optimally defined workflow. Cutting the short the long story, focus on user experience as it matters most when it comes to acceptability of your product. 

In this post I have covered some simple steps that from my recent experience of designing and developing something out of nothing, in other words, developing a new product from zero base. 

There are simple points to keep in mind while designing for 

1. Scope out purpose
2. Define flow
3. Design HTML
4. Visuals
5. Actual pages

at each step, have multiple rounds of feedback session with key stake holders, user groups and engineering team. It is always good to have mock-ups, a flash demo, or clickable visuals etc to help stake holders understand the flow.

everyone will have a brilliant idea on how to improvise a HTML, do not run like a headless chicken, draw lines and take calls when you want to say enough of inputs. The message is simple, if you are someone who is working on a new product than make sure you have taken care of all your UX needs.

@mathurabhay

Where is Product Management placed?

Once again quick one, this one is again from my experience of working as product manager in various organizations. While the role has been of product manager, responsibilities and priorities varied depending on where the product management was hooked.

Yes, this often looks like a bad joke but it remains a fact that product management is often ping-ponged between various departments of an organization. 

Product management key focus areas.....

1. as part of marketing team
1. Responsible for market success of the product
2. Largely work as strategic arm, supporting sales and marketing
3. Reports in-to VP marketing
4. Driven by sales priorities
2. as part of engineering team
1. Responsible for engineering success of the product
2. Works with engineering on release strategy
3. Reports in-to head of engineering
4. Driven by technology
3. as an independent organization
1. Product management is product owner and is responsible for both engineering and market success of the product
2. Product strategy is the primary responsibility
3. Reports in-to VP Product Management
4. Driven by market research

@mathurabhay

Product Manager: building blocks

Unlike marriages (as many say), product manager evolve from experience. So here are some running thoughts on what constitute a good product manager or what really helps in building a strong character of a product manager.

Product Manage: Building blocks

Level 1: Fundamentals:

1. Project intrinsic: Aspects of project management like development process, project RAID, critical path, resource optimal utilization, release milestones etc. These are important to judge the feasibility of timelines and deliverable.
2. Stamina: ability to put in long hours and does not constraint to 9 to 6 / business hours. For a product manager there is no stat or finish line, life moves in circles with new milestones in each lap. Another way of stating this is leading by example on how hard (detailing) a individual can work and how much could he/ she deliver.
3. Articulation: One of the most desired aspect or quality that is expected in a product manager is the ability to express oneself easily in clear and effective language. This is aspect that has maximum influences on effectiveness of a product manager. Remember effectiveness of a team directly depends upon the effectiveness of the product manager. Also, good articulation requires good observation skills and this is what helps in drafting clear and elaborated requirements.
4. People management: Critical and most challenging aspect of product management. A product manager must learn to get the work out of a team that does not report into him. Influence  or use authority or may be by showing some carrot, whatever it takes get the work done.

5 quotes for product managers

In their role, product managers perform many important tasks, they interact with almost all the functions within the organization and deal with customers and competitors in the market place. 

A product manager is expected to drive product strategy that will help accelerate new customer acquisition and in retaining the existing customer, in-turn improvise top and bottom line. In a nutshell, their performance matters a lot when it comes to success of the product. Person performing this role must have strong character and must always focus on strengthening it further. Here are 5 quotes that a product manager can work on to be on the top.

1. Precision and not approximation is what should drive your decisions.
   Taking decisions in favor of product is top priority of the product manager. Product success and failure depends on decisions that a product manager takes throughout the life-cycle of the product. It is his decisions that would influence  product success or failure in the market place. So why take a chance, work hard on collecting data points, process them to get right information, and analyse the information accurately to take a wise decision.
   
   
2. Suggestions are welcome, for considerations and not as direction.
   Everybody has ideas, mostly from their experience and pain points. Product Managers are often bombarded with such ideas with expectations that they would be implemented on top priority. Listen clearly, understand nicely and follow wisely. Listening is important and so as it understand. However, 'I understand' does not mean 'I agree' and 'I agree does not mean 'I am on action'. Do not set wrong expectations in your discussions and do let yourself be driven by someone else's sentiments. Be open to hear but be strong to disagree.
   
   
3. Surprises are not good for owners, be prudent in knowing what else.
   Count the number of times you were surprise to learn something post event. For example, we lost the customer since we did not build something that they were looking for, or how could I know that this was needed. These are signs of bad habits that you have started nurturing in you. Situations like this are alarming bells that you have started your end as a successful product manager.
   
   
4. Choice of words are reflection of character and not merely your vocabulary.
   Being product owner is a serious business and one of the ways in which your seriousness about your profile is sensed is by your choice of words in your talk. For example, on learning expectations from some body in executive team, you may chose to respond as, "I will do that" or "I should have done that, how could I miss it". Confidence, sincerity and most importantly reliability is often judge by such simple choice of words. They reflect your attitude towards the situation, something no one should take lightly.
   
   
5. Ideas alone do not work, excel in execution as well.
   Ideas are good asset with notional value. Product managers are expected to materialize this notional value by executing a well defined plan. Ideas can be copied but what cannot be is the effectiveness of your execution. So beyond thinking, efficiency is what a product manager must focus on. Knowing what to do is not just good enough, how to achieve is of equal or greater importance. This is where most failures happen and as you grown in experience this where you must continuously improvise on.

@mathurabhay

First 3 steps towards product management

Aspiring to become a product manager and don't know where to start from? Wondering if a post graduation or Masters in Management will help you get your dream profile or should it be a professional certificate? These are some of the questions that I often hear in conversation with young professionals who see product management as a good career option, but have no clue about the starting line. If you are one of such individuals hunting for start line than you are at the right place.

Journey of thousand miles begins with a single step, and to speed up this journey I suggest first 3 steps towards the successful career in product management. While there are many more such steps, I have put down first 3 which I believe are most essentials for succeeding in the role of a product manager.

One_1: It is little rare that a technical professional or a fresh out of collage management graduate gets into the role of a product manager without any mentoring. Understand, product management is a specialization and to succeed in this role you should have prior experience or exposure of business process. While it may be possible to get a break-through in product management without understanding of business process, it is extremely difficult to excel in this role without the experience or exposure of the business critical functions like sales, marketing, operations, engineering,  finance and customer support. These experience provide individuals a holistic view of business functions and ability to understand customer better. So role up your sleeves and get ready to hit the road to get real first hand experience of business functions. Remember one of the critical aspects of product management is to simplify and improvise these business critical functions. 

Two_2: The greatest ask for being a product management professional is the shift in mindset. Ability to see what many tend to overlook. Whenever you see a successful product or service, or a feature being implemented, ask yourself, 'what problem will this solve?'. Anything around you that you see has been devised and designed to solve some problem, simple or complex but they are in existence because they solve some good problem. Spend more time on problem and less on discussing solution or how well is this implemented. Nurture the habit of getting down to the root cause, the problem. Remember it is solving problem that leads to making profit, so more you understand them better you solve them.

Three_3: Start valuing return on investment. Understand one thing, "A great technological invention is of no use unless it can be monetized." Why should we do this? What if we don't support this? As a habit, try and seek profit and loss for doing or not doing any feature implementation. Product managers are responsible for improving market success of their product which is measured in terms of cash that your product makes for the company. Measure efforts by answering questions like, What will increase sales, bring in productivity, reduce calls to customer care or reduce overall cost of delivery? Why should I take cost of adding 4 new features when 2 are good enough to give me a competitive edge? Remember to link all you see happening to overall profitability of the business.

Well begun is half done, take care of first three steps and you are ON for a wonderful career in product management. Steps mentioned above are simple to understand but tough to follow unless you  practice regularly.  One of them has to do with skills (understanding business critical functions) and other two are habits, and none of the two come easy. While skills comes with experience, habits needs to be nurture. Both of these requires extra effort and time, but once you are into this you will experience a snowball effect in your understanding of the essence of product management, and then it won't be long before you get to hear 'Welcome to the product management'.

@mathurabhay

Top 3 Priorities of a Product Manager

Once again, quick one from a discussion had with someone walking down the aislel.

Product managers do too many things for success of their product. They work with cross-functional teams, do competitive analysis, author PRDs etc . While all these are important and must be done on time, there are certain aspects of a product manager's life which should always be on the radar of a wise product manager. These are 3 simple things that a wise product manager should always observe and improvise on. 

Understand the market / opportunity

What is in it for me? Knowing market and keeping oneself up-to-date with the developments in the market space is of paramount importance for a product manager. What is your customer doing? how are his / her needs changing? any new technology that might bring in new competition? any significant move in government policies that might impact your business or any change in compliance norms etc.

Evaluating New Job Offer

Time for some quick thoughts, this time on what is a good job offer? As a product manager, how do you evaluate the worthiness of a new job offer beyond remunerations.

While the answer to this question will have lots of 'Depends' and ultimately boils down to the choice of individuals, there are certain aspects that a aspiring product owner must not overlook on. These are must to have as part of product managers profile and a product manager must insists on owning these responsibilities. If the new job offer does not include even one of these responsibilities then it becomes easy to take the decision and the decision is a big NO. 

Product Managers avoid taking job offers that does NOT include

1. Market exposure (instead limits you to engineering environment only)
2. Customer interaction (instead asks you to depend on internal stakeholders only)
3. Opportunity to work on problem (instead asks to work on predefined solution  only)
4. Responsibility for market success (instead asks to own engineering success only)
5. Access to user community (instead asks to focus on technology aspects only)

@mathurabhay

Interview Strategies - part II

This is going to be a real short one. This post is in continuation from my earlier post (interview strategies - part I), wherein I shared my experience and methods of shortlisting candidates for the post of product manager. In this post I would like to caution interviewers of some Don'ts of telephonic round.

Objectives of telephonic round is to ensure that candidate meets all prerequisites of the role. Telephonic round is like running a small software utility before installing your software to ensure that computer has necessary environment to support your complex product.

Interview Strategies - part I

Recruiting a product manager is a big task, and a challenge that has taught me quite some interesting ways of assessing candidates and making sure that I pick the best fit candidate for my requirement. Going through large number of CVs, shortlisting and interviewing is a tiring processing and without having proper strategy, accuracy of judgement will be low.

How to I judge a candidate, how do I differentiate between what a candidate pretends to be vs how he is. From my recent experience, I have realized that having a strategy to interview candidates is non-negotiable. While I continue to learn and improvise on my strategies, here are some ideas I found useful to judge a candidate's fit into the role.

Start with yourself, have clarify in Job description and know your preferences before you start looking into CVs shared by recruitment team. Make sure you are clear of expectation from the candidate and are sure of candidate's growth path in the company. Interview is a two way process, while you assess candidate, candidate too assess company and people with whom he interacts during the course of interview. Be clear with what is that you are offering to a candidate and what is a good reason for him to join you.

Paradigm Shift

Product is a tool used to address a market opportunity. Idea of a product is conceived from the opportunity, and it (product) takes shape as it grows and as needs evolve. Keeping track of evolving needs and growing product is a function of a product manager. Product Manager makes sure that they keep track of the evolving market by uninterrupted communication with stake holders, customers, engineering and market. These needs are consolidated, filtered and refined to define product road-map and to draft requirements of every product release.

It is critical that a product manager understands the difference between managing product verses managing opportunity. A product manager should always look at product from the lenses of the opportunity.  How well does the product fit into the opportunity? , what are the improvements required? , Is my product aging and should I start looking at alternates? Which features would make product a better fit for the opportunity? Looking through the lenses of the opportunity, if a product manager sees a clear and sharp picture of the product then this justifies the very existence of the product.

The New Product Manager

A good start is half the success. and how do you ensure this at you new job? It's a serious challenge for product managers who are moving into a new job. The challenge becomes more stiff if you are moving into a newer domain, and are going to work with whole new set of professionals you never worked with.

From my experience I have coined down first few steps that a product manger should take as soon as he gets onto a new job. My fair assumption is that you would have learned and read enough about the domain in which you are going to operate, however knowing things from outside may not be as clear and absolute as you get to see when you get into the system.

Learning Steps

Evaluating a Product Manager

Quick thoughts on areas to assess candidates for product manager's position, once again from my recent and past experience of recruiting product management professionals for various organizations I worked for;

Evaluation Criteria 

1. Technology comfort: A candidates ability to understand technology is very important. Candidates shying away from technical terms, unwilling to learn technology trends is a definite NO for product manager's position. This does not mean that a candidate should be a engineer or techie, he should have an appetite for technology, this helps him to leverage upon technology strengths and also plan for  technology limitations.
   
   
2. Business acumen: have you ever heard of top line and bottom line? do ask this if the candidate comes from technical background, after-all all your actions (as product manager) must influence one or both of these lines in positive manner. A candidate falling short of expectation on technology front can still be consider, however a candidate falling short of expectation on business is big bold NO.
   

Product Managers, beware of fabulous ideas

Believe it or not, ‘fabulous ideas’ are the most scary part of a product managers life. I am talking about instances wherein  someone from some corner of the  office, raise hand and shout out ‘hey! I have a fabulous idea’ – this not only means that you listen to my already certified ‘fabulous’ idea but also do include this in the ongoing or worst case next sprint. Product managers are expected to listen and agree to such ‘fabulous’ ideas, after all its their duty to collect requirements and put them on the roadmap!! – but where is the filtering part? Listening is fine, collection is ok but adding is last step. All ideas, suggestions, improvements & corrections must go through a proper review cycle, and should be evaluated before they even qualify to be termed as ‘idea’. Before filtration process they are merely some thoughts which may or may not make a good product sense.

Start-up Product Manager

Quick thoughts on 'how a start-up product manager should be like'. From my experience and understanding, start-ups are best place for a product manager to test his/ her skills, so if a start-up experience is missing from your profile, get it now, but before that check your compatibility with start-ups here.

Start-up Product Managers......

1. ....do not read job description in detail, but instead focus on domain, market & technology of job opening. If you are someone who reads job description 4 times before applying for the job then you may not be a good fit for Start-up kind of job.
2. ....read about founders, co-founders and the team they would be working with, and would least worried about organization structure, and job security. They spend time searching and reading about founders & co-founders, to understand their vision and ability to persist long with a business idea
3. ....do not look around for IT support when face an issue working with out-look, MS-Office or for that matter any software application, they just google their way to solution. If you are someone who rely on support staff for app support etc, you are most likely to runaway from the start-up job in first 6 months itself.
4. .... do not wait for QA to handover smoke test report, instead they download the latest dev release from build server, perform a round of testing and post results on the wall.
5. .... habitually do not use calender for booking meeting slots, they just go to concern person and pull him/ her into a room, talk and close the topic.
6. .... need to be reminded quite often of their loosely tighten shoe lase. if you are someone who finds it difficult to walk with lose lases, think twice before applying for a start-up position
7. .... are most likely to miss salutation and conclusion part in their emails.
8. .... put their priority in following order, productivity, people, and process. If you are someone who cares for process above productivity and people are most likely to fail miserably on your new job.

Working at start-up is litmus test of a product manager's ability to own a product. Working at start-ups is like stress, volume & regression testing of a product manager. Its tough, really tough to excel under extremely uncertain conditions, but if you manage it once it could be your 'Berlin-wall tear down' moment to glory.

more thoughts on this in coming months, but if you have something to share or add, do it now in comments section below.

@mathurabhay

Product Manager, heading for crash?

Product Manager Distractions 

Just like a car would crash when the driver shifts focus away from the driving, the product or / and product manager are sure for a crash  when product manager  shifts focus away  from the core deliverable.

Crash could be due to two reasons, one, you tend to do something you are not suppose to do and  two, you do-not do something which you are expected to do.

In example of a smoothly running car, the driver may get distracted by a beautiful girl walking on the street, or the driver ignores traffic lights. In both the scenarios, driver shifts his focus away from core responsibilities and ends up meeting with undesired consequence. When the driver sees a beautiful girl walking on street, he gets carried away by the beauty and gets lost admiring the beauty so much that he would realize this shift of focus only after car crashes. Ignoring a traffic light or taking it lightly could do the same to the car and to the driver. 

Success Mantra for Product Managers

Job of a product manager is strategic in nature where quality is of paramount importance and at the same time it (quality) is difficult judge on shorter duration. Product Managers run marathon and not sprint, it is important for him/ her to be focused for longer duration and deliver quality output consistently, a challenge I guess many struggle to deal with. That's where you see these Jumping Jack product managers who habitually stays for less than 18 to 24 months on a job (2 or more jobs)  or who have never experienced a complete life cycle of the product.

Is it that difficult to stay for 24 months, or experience a complete product life cycle. Wait and see what happened to the decisions that you made last year or in initial stages of product development. What happened to those critical decisions you made in growth phase of your product and how long did your product stayed in maturity stage. Product Managers who do not stay long, would never ever be able to experience these situations.

Product Managers, learn to listen

"To Listen" is very imported for a product manager. Listening is a skill, and for a product manager this skill is on the top of the skills list that a product professional must acquire. Effectiveness of core deliverable like identifying opportunities, writing business plan, collection requirements, PRDs, and release prioritization largely depends upon how well the product manager has mastered the skill of listening.

The purpose of listening for many as I observe is to reply. Start replying, even while the speaker continues to put his point or frame up reply while speaker is talking and start speaking as soon as he is done.

One of the major role a product manager (read expectations from product manager) is to consolidate inputs from various sources (read requirement gathering), compile them and take decision that would best benefit product & business strategy. It is hence imperative that product manager masters this skill of listening to its best.