Lessons in early-stage Product Management.

1. WIN,
LOSEOR
Fail
Lessons in Early Stage Product Management
Prioritizing Product Ideas

2. Recipe for a Winning Product
• Meets customers’ needs
• Is better than other alternatives
• Is easy to use
• Has a good value/price

3. What does a Product Manager do?
Product Managers help companies build better products
by bringing the following expertise to the early-stage
product development process:
– Knowledge of how to ship higher quality products so that
customers are happy
– How to determine what features to put in those products, so that
you don't under-engineer or over-engineer a product
– How to spend the right amount of money on a marketing plan
that ensures the highest amount of profitability
– How to plan and operationally support a product pre- and post-
launch

4. Problem vs. Solution Space
Problem – customer
problem, need or benefit that
the product should address;
or a product requirement (ex.
ability to write in space)
Solution – A specific
implementation to address a
need or product requirement
(ex. NASA space pen $1M
verses Russian space pencil)

5. “Make it easy to
share a link with my
friends.”
“Allow me to re-use
my Facebook
contacts.”
Facebook
Importer
Design 1 Design 2 Design 3
Design Preview with
checkboxes
User can edit
before import
#1 No No
#2 Yes No
#3 Yes Yes
Problem Space Solution Space
User Benefit Feature
VS

6. User benefits
• Functional Benefits
– allow user to do something they couldn’t do before
– deliver a benefit more quickly, conveniently, or
cheaply (ex. browse the web for less money; finding
information quicker; read news on my own time)
• Emotional Benefits
– Control
– Feeling informed (context)
– Enjoyment
– Self-expression

7. Prioritizing Benefits vs. Features
• Need a framework for prioritization
– What user benefits should we address?
– Which product features should we build or improve?
• Importance vs. Satisfaction
– Importance of user need (problem space)
– Satisfaction with how well a product meets user’s
needs (solution space)

8. low
-
-
-
-
-
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
high
high
high
high
high
high
Prioritizing User Benefits
User
Benefit
Importance
to User
Current User
Satisfaction
Upside
Potential
Benefit 1
low
Benefit 2
low
Benefit 3
low
Benefit 4
low
Benefit 5
low
Benefit 6
High
High
Low
Medium
Low
Low
Wow!
Opportunity?
Wow!
Opportunity?
Doesn’t
Matter

9. Prioritizing Product Ideas
Idea D
Idea F
Idea C
Idea BIdea A
?
Return(ValueCreated)
1
2
3
4
1 2 3 4
Investment (developer weeks)
Idea C
Idea B
Idea A
Return(ValueCreated)
1
2
5
8
1 2 3 4
Investment (developer weeks)
3
4
6
7
5 6 7 8

10. Simple things should be
simple, complex things should be
possible.
- Alan Kay
“
”

11. Usability: Hard to Use Product
NumberofClicks/Complexity
1
2
5
8
3
4
6
7
Frequency of UseUse often Use rarely
Threshold for easily finding a feature
Makes frequent use of
features harder to learn and
painful to use
Causes accidental use of
lower frequency features
Usability scorecard: Hard to use product

12. Usability: Easy to Use Product
NumberofClicks/Complexity
1
2
5
8
3
4
6
7
Frequency of UseUse often Use rarely
Threshold for easily finding a feature
A more even spread allows
for adaptive learning
Usability scorecard: Easy to use product