Sr. Director of Product Management and Head of UX at Questions every product manager should be able to answer
Attended an interesting talk at P-Camp this weekend. The talk was about the essential qualities of a product manager.
As Product managers, we should be able to answer the following questions, and more importantly, make it a point to revisit these questions time and time again, (especially as your product undergoes multiple iterations).
- Who is your customer?
- Who is NOT your customer? (this is at least as important as #1)
- What does your customer want, and why? What does the market of customers want (as against just one customer)? Here, you have to look at patterns in customer requests in order to gauge the market.
- Who is your competition?
- How should features be prioritized?
- What problem are you trying to solve? How would you solve it? (Problem definition and solution)
- How does the solution fit with your corporate goals? (the point here is that you have to be aware of your company’s corporate strategy, and to communicate with the executives as to whether or not that strategy is a good one.)
- Will the customer pay for your solution? What will the customer pay for?
- What do the quiet 80% of your customers think? How many of your customers have not logged into your website in the past 30 days? Which of your customers haven’t called in the past 30 days, and why?
- Why are you winning and losing deals?
- What is your NPS (Net Promoter Score)? How would you improve it?
- How has your product improved the life of your users?
- What messages resonate with your customer?
- Why are non-customers not even looking? What are your barriers to adoption?
So, what do you think? Is there anything that was missed that you would add to the list?
Introducing Connecteev
Welcome to my brand spanking new blog! I started this blog for a couple of reasons:
1. To get better at writing – As a child I always thought I’d be a good writer, but I never took the trouble to try it. I guess now’s my moment to shine.
2. Branding – Frankly, I’ve heard SO many people tell me (and I’ve read in so many places) that I need to start a blog if I’m serious about my career, that I finally decided to bite the bullet and start one. So yes, I’m hoping this becomes another personal-branding-success-story (think Gary Vaynerchuk, or Tim Ferris)
3. To Learn – I have a few ideas on what I’m going to write about, and I’m curious/excited to see your reactions, read your comments, and virtually high five you.
4. Discipline – I figure that if I make a commitment to post regularly (or worst case scenario, semi-regularly), it will teach me a thing or two about discipline, sticking it out to the end and finishing what I start.
So what will I be writing about?
Hopefully a lot of different topics. Business. Product management. Usability and User experience design. Last but not least, Technology. And a couple of other things thrown in. I’ll try to keep personal minutiae to a bare minimum as much as possible. If any of these topics interest you, subscribe! I’m probably going to put some serious (and God willing, consistent) effort into making sure the content is interesting and original. Use the ‘Subscribe’ box at the bottom right of the blog to have new blog posts delivered to your inbox as and when they get published. Look forward to seeing you on the other side!