Product management best practices for early stage product development. This presentation is based on a study I mad in the company I work for "Arkony" to try to fix things after I finished reading "Inspired" book.

1. Product Management Best Practices For
Early Stage Product Development

2. Goals Of This Presentation
• Know the most important best practices for
product management in the early phase of product
life, right before starting development
• Common mistakes
• How to fix or improve?

3. Methodology
How I prepared this, What is the effort behind?

4. INSPIRED
The most recommended
source of knowledge for any
software product manager
@cagan

5. Best Practices

6. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

7. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

8. Opportunity Assessment
Why?
Prevent company from spending time
and money on poor opportunities
OR
For good opportunities; focus the team
and understand what will be required
to succeed and how to define that
success

9. Opportunity Assessment
What?
Answer these questions for every opportunity;
1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. Fro home do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. How will we measure success? (metrics/revenue strategy)
5. What alternatives are out there now? (competitive landscape)
6. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
7. Why now? (market window)
8. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given the above answers, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

10. Opportunity Assessment
Note that..
None of these questions speaks to the actual solution;
it is discussing the problem, not the solution

11. Opportunity Assessment
Common Mistakes
Answering some of the questions, not all.
Not communicated/ documented very well.

12. Opportunity Assessment
How to fix or improve?
Quickly answer these questions, It will give you deeper
understanding for the problem you are solving, and will keep
your team on the same page regarding what you really should
pursue with the solution/product

13. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

14. Minimal Product
What?
Product manager should think of the
really MINIMAL things that solve the
problem, things that if one of them
removed it’s like a leg taken out
Definitely, we will use the output of
opportunity assessment here; deep
understanding of the problem is
essential

15. Minimal Product
Common Mistakes
Do not think minimal.
Add things/features that appeal to you that will give
your product market advantage not really solve the
problem minimal way.

16. Minimal Product
How to fix or improve?
Rethink the really CORE features to
solve user’s problem, focus on them,
polish their UX and make them at the
front

17. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

18. Product Council
Purpose
Set the strategic product direction and allocate
product resources and investment

19. Product Council
Membership
• CEO
• Head of Product Management
• Head of User Experience Design
• Head of Marketing
• Head of Engineering
• Head of Development Operations
Product manager for every product should represent his
product to the council

20. Product Council
What they do?
• Review opportunity assessments, and issue go/
no-go decision to begin discovering a solution
• Review product prototypes, user testing results
and detailed cost estimates, and issue go/no-go
decision to begin engineering
• Review final product, QA status, launch plans,
and community impact assessment, and issue
go/no-go decision to launch

21. Product Council
Note that..
• There is no need to review minor updates and
fixes
• There are not product design work, if there are
issues then the team should work on them and
return with solution
• Council should meet regularly; depending on
product efforts going on
• Product managers should work with their
teams, then he should represent his product to
the council for go/no-go decisions

22. Product Council
Common Mistakes
Product decisions takes too long to be taken
Not all should-be-involved roles are represented
while taking product decisions, sometimes even
the assigned product manager is not involved
(may happen in large/complex organisations).
Meetings are not regular, being held upon need

23. Product Council
How to improve?
Form a company product council, consists of available
people according to your organization structure
Product council meets every week for 1 to 2 hours to take
decisions for all products
Assign Product Manager for each product, giving him full
control over his product
*This may appeal more to early stage startups and small teams*

24. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

25. User Personas
What is it?
Identifying and understanding the different types
of people who will use the product, and
capturing the important learnings (behaviors,
attitudes and goals) from interviewing users

26. User Personas
Why?
• Prioritize which feature is important for who
• Unifying product vision around imaginary
targets “personas”
• Help separate user experience for different uses
• Prevent product and design team to make the
mistake of designing the product for themselves

27. User Personas
Common Mistakes
Do not take time thinking about your real users
Dot not document them well
Even worse, do not have documented personas at
all :|

28. User Personas
How to fix?
Quickly define users “personas” who may use
your product and define their needs, behaviours
and goals, document them, and define the target
persona by each feature you introduce and its
importance to this persona

29. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

30. High-Fidelity Prototype
R.I.P. PRD
No more product requirements documents PRDs,
if you want to communicate/document a
definition of a product, make a fully functioning
prototype

31. High-Fidelity Prototype
What is it?
A realistic representation of the proposed product
and its user experience. a full functioning app
with fake backend simulation
All pages/screens and all different use cases
should be covered

32. High-Fidelity Prototype
Why?
A high-fidelity prototype can be tested; you can put it in
front of users to see if they can use it (usability) and if
they care to use it (value)
Also, engineering team can fully understand the idea,
user experience and information architecture
Significantly reduce time to market, and can be used
solely to lay down investment or crowdfunding

33. High-Fidelity Prototype
Common Mistakes
Starting development right away, the worst thing can
happen in your product development process
Make a semi-functioning prototype. A prototype that
do not have all actions, did not cover all use cases,
or did not mockup backend; so user testing on it is
not so much useful

34. High-Fidelity Prototype
How to improve?
If you already started development, there is no
way back :(
BUT
Lesson learned; never start a new product or
introduce new feature in existing one without
proper prototyping

35. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

36. What is it?
A group of users from our target market, people
who believe in the problem that product solve is
exist and really need to solve it
Normally 8-10 people, and the goal is to have at
least 6 of them happy with what we are offering
whether it’s a new product or a new feature
Charter User Program

37. Benefits
• We have a set of users available for ongoing
questions
• We have a close and timely feedback from them on
test versions, per-beta even and prototypes
• Serve as public reference customer if they are
happy with our product
Charter User Program

38. Charter User Program
Important Notes
• Do not include in this program more than 10, you can not
handle them
• Take care from early adopters, they are easy to manage and
can lead you to product for early adopters only. You need real
users
• Beware of customization; do not customize too heavily for one
user
• Consider them as development partners, they are part of the
team

39. Charter User Program
Common Mistakes
Gather feedback from close friends, but it ends there.
Not having a close set of real user as part of the team
working with them on a regular basis on product
concept or new features

40. Charter User Program
How to improve?
Start searching for users with proper criteria, and try to
bring 8 to 10 users and set the way of communication
with them
Set internal rules and process for collaboration and
feedback

41. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing

42. Prototype Testing
Testing ideas with real users is the
single most important activity in
product development

43. Prototype Testing
What?
Testing your product with real users should be really focused
and close, That’s why focus groups are not so much useful
You need to pay close attention to every action user take, his
feelings, eye movement, emotions, and be really close to him
You need to watch and understand the user and his behavior
Usability testing is a critical task, and should be done with
caution, focus and care

44. Prototype Testing
Note..
Because Usability Testing is the most important activity and it’s all
about product or feature validation, the book gave it the biggest part
(actually it was a HUGE chapter) with A LOT of details on how to
conduct it
It also recommends that two guys should do the test with each user,
one to drive, analyse and understand and other to take notes and
document in real time
Sometimes also include one of engineering guys in the session to
understand user
It may take from one to two hours for each user for the first time on
the product

45. Prototype Testing
Common Mistakes
Do some focus groups, have some feedback from them,
then go and implement them.
Do not understand your users well, WATCH them closely,
so, you do not know much about their experience with
the product expect what they TELL you

46. Prototype Testing
How to improve?
Read more about usability testing.
Also you should make use of Charter User Program users,
they are there specifically for this

47. Opportunity
Assessment
Product
Council
Charter User
ProgramUser Personas
High-Fidelity
Prototype
Minimal
Product
Prototype
Testing
Now go for development and
make it happen