Can You Think Like A Product Manager?
Can You Think Like A Product Manager?
Do product managers think differently from other high tech professionals? As more products become a service or Software as a Service (SaaS) and projects turn into products, you might hear "Think like a Product Manager". There can be a few ways to follow through when you are asked to think like a product manager. The major thinking tasks of a product manager are:
Customer conversations
Business cases
Product strategies
Of course product managers have many other key tasks! This list makes up the key thinking projects that fill a product manager's head.
Customer Conversations
Driving to meaningful customer conversations takes a good bit of thought. The major steps to a valuable customer conversation are:
Prepare a list of compelling questions for discussion: Open ended questions are best to get a busy customer and sales team to spend time with you on a feature or product discussion.
Request a customer discussion of your questions: Unless you know the customer, then your request goes to an account team, a partner or other person who is a trusted advisor to the customer. Pretty often, your request is met with silence or the response is "not now". This is when persistence can be helpful because busy people want to check that you are making a serious request.
Take notes during the customer conversation: The notes from the customer conversations are helpful in many follow on activities:
Writing requirements
Prioritizing ideas for further investigation
Estimating business cases
Updating product strategy
Competitive analysis
Customer references
User experience and workflow improvements
Additionally, other product team members can make use of the customer conversation notes.
Update your list of compelling questions: Keep updating the compelling questions as you learn more about the major customer drivers that you are considering for your product manager thinking projects.
Business Cases
Knowing your product's business case and your customers' business case is a key area for your thinking-tasks as a product manager. Each internal and external conversation fills in gaps in your understanding. A few questions that need product manager thinking are:
What are the key investment areas of your customers? What do these investments mean for your product?
What is driving customers to make these investments? Is your product relevant to these investment directions?
How long until the product team can take on a new project? What is the next deadline for planning a new project?
What takes up most of the product team's resources?
Which product use case is the most profitable? Which use case is least profitable?
What changes in the market need further evaluation?
As you think through these questions, the business case in your mind takes shape for both your customer and your product.
Product Strategies
The best product strategies have a good bit of product manager thinking as well as product team thinking. When thinking about the product strategy, the following is helpful:
Customer conversation notes
Deep understanding of the internal and external business cases
Getting the cross-functional product team involved in the strategy
Each of these needs your product manager thinking time for relationship building, evaluation and communicating about the strategy. Also disciplining yourself to limit time in email and meetings helps free up thinking time.
Conclusion
The next time someone tells you to "think like a product manager", you have a few ways to show you are already thinking like a product manager.