What is all this product management stuff, anyway?

1. What the f*ck is product

2. What is product, really? What does managing
product mean?
What do Product Managers do?

3. product
noun
something that can be offered to a market to satisfy
a want or a need

4. Product Managers make sure that the right thing
ships.

5. Product Managers make sure that the right thing
ships.
Are we solving a real problem?

6. Product Managers make sure that the right thing
ships.
Are we solving a real problem?
Is our solution the right one?

7. Product Managers make sure that the right thing
ships.
It doesn’t matter how great an idea is if it’s never
built.

8. Product Managers make sure that the right thing
ships.
What’s between us and shipping?

9. 1
synthesis

10. Building products involves a lot of people with a lot
of different viewpoints.

11. user needs stakeholders
technology org needs

12. user needs stakeholders
technology org needs
product lives here

13. user needs stakeholders
technology org needs
Product Managers take input from many directions
and turn it into a point of view.

14. 2
strategy

15. time
uncertainty
listen experiment refine

16. time
uncertainty
listen experiment refine
Every product starts with uncertainty. Asking
questions and running experiments brings clarity.

17. Every product starts with uncertainty. Asking
questions and running experiments brings clarity.
Clarity becomes vision.

18. 3
vision + execution

19. Where are we going?
How do we get there?
vision
execution

20. vision
execution
Where are we going?
How do we get there?
Vision without execution is a daydream.
Execution without vision is wasteful at best, actively
harmful at worst.

21. Product Managers connect the vision to the
execution of a project. They anchor the team around
the end goal while building momentum towards that
goal.

22. This type of context switching is not an easy thing to
do.

23. 4
accountability

24. Product Managers own the quality of the product.
They define what it means for the product to be
good.

25. If the product doesn’t solve the right problem, or
solve that problem well, or work reliably, the Product
Manager is the first person to question.

26. Managing the quality of something that is being
built by other people is not an easy thing to do.

27. 5
the full cycle

28. 1 What’s the problem? Is it worth solving?
2 What’s our impact?
3 How do we do it?
4 Is our solution good?

29. And then constantly communicate that outwards to
keep everyone on board.

30. *
thanks