How do you improve your product management framework?

To assess your current framework, you can review core areas like leadership, collaboration, customer satisfaction, and strategy. Use effectiveness models such as the strategic constituency model or stakeholder approach to gain different insights. A detailed organizational assessment, including goal achievement and resource-based approach, will provide detailed insights. Remember, the process is ongoing and involves adjustments for continual improvement.

Effective product management relies on continuous improvement, fueled by a strong feedback loop. Feedback from customers, team members, and stakeholders is invaluable for identifying areas of improvement. Embrace all feedback, positive or negative, as an opportunity for growth. Take customer reviews, for example. By examining what your customers love and what they find frustrating, you can pinpoint what needs to be enhanced in your product or service. Likewise, paying attention to your team's feedback can provide insights into internal processes that may be hindering productivity or creativity

One thing I found to be an overlooked secret weapon, in product management is leaning into emotional leadership. Great communication and understanding of the needs of the team and stakeholders are at the foundation of all "hard" PM skills. In Product, we talk about the vision, OKRs, KPIs, surveys and retrospectives, but Product Management is foremost a people's job. "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Understanding the viewpoints and emotions of stakeholders can help you break through, gain invaluable insights, and gather the troops around the vision and shared goals.

Creating a user focused culture has helped a lot. Personally found it very effective. Few ways to make culture more user focused : - Require PMs to answer support ticket occasionally - Put up a team leaderboard to track the number of customer visits -Put a customer insight section in the spec template

Absolutely, assessing your product management framework is like maintaining a car. You wouldn't keep driving without checking if the engine, brakes, and tires are working well. Similarly, you need to regularly evaluate how your framework is driving your product. Surveys and interviews are like checking the engine and brakes, getting insights from your team and customers. Retrospectives and audits are like looking under the hood, finding areas that need a tune-up. And measuring against KPIs is like tracking fuel efficiency – ensuring your framework gets you to success. Just as a well-maintained car runs smoothly and efficiently, a strong product management framework keeps your product on the road to success!

Post-assessment, your improvement goals for the framework should be in the SMART format (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). Depending on your priorities, goals can be customer-driven, market-driven, or business-driven. For instance, if you aim to streamline your prioritization process, a SMART goal might be: "Decrease decision-making time for prioritization by 30% in the next quarter". Align these goals with your product vision, strategy, and ensure they're prioritized based on their impact and urgency.

Adopting Lean principles into your product management framework can drive efficiency and effectiveness. Lean principles focus on delivering value to the customer through continuous improvement and elimination of waste. Implementing these principles can help streamline processes, reduce cycle times, and improve overall product quality.

Once you know where you are, decide where you want to go. Set clear, realistic goals. Whether you want better teamwork or clearer data, knowing your goals will guide your actions.

Frameworks are a great way to look at problems at hand from different perspectives. Sometimes a small quadrant will create a unique SMART goal and help you think of the problem from a new angle. At the end, only you can understand what's important and these frameworks are simply allowing you to create the wisest decision possible.

Improvement means we want to fix something which is not working as expected. Laying out the potential reasons, verifying them with feedback loop from users and stakeholders lay out what’s the plan going forward. It’s that simple. No fancy framework is required, it’s more of mental model to solve problem from first principles.

Also keep in mind that each organization is diferent from each other so, what works in one might not work in another. This said, the best practices can be combined to get a solution that fits your organization today. The future is uncertain, so what works today is not a recipe for years and yeards and needs to be reviewed constantly.

If your objective is customer-focused solutions, consider Amazon's working backward method, which uses a press release to address customer problems and envision solutions[1]. For product development, leverage frameworks like BCG Matrix, Product Vision Board, AARRR Framework, or User Story Mapping. Prioritization can be improved using the RICE or MoSCoW frameworks. The HEART framework is an excellent choice for goals linked to user experience. Remember, don't blindly follow these methodologies. Validate what's effective in your context. Continual adaptation, learning, and teamwork can yield repeated success, strong brands, and dedicated customers.

I’ve also found great success in reviewing recommended changes with my development team for feedback and overall buy-in. If we’re all on the same page, making changes feels much more like a partnership than a directive.

Incorporate Cross-Functional Collaboration Consider integrating strategies that foster cross-functional collaboration. This can involve setting up routines for regular communication between different teams, promoting transparency through shared digital tools, or conducting co-creation sessions that bring together diverse viewpoints. Such collaboration can lead to more comprehensive solutions, quicker problem-solving, and stronger team cohesion.

It's also important to clearly document all iterations, rationale, and context. This helps if there are new team members who onboard, you leave the team and someone else PMs, or even to share across the wider business so other teams can learn. For example, when I shipped Audio Events at LinkedIn, we used a certain channel to help raise awareness for the launch. We had multiple iterations and learned a lot, so we clearly documented this so that other teams could learn, new people could learn, and when I transitioned teams, the new leaders had context.

Create a Clear Implementation Plan Having a detailed plan can help ensure that the implementation of improvements is smooth and systematic. This plan should outline the changes to be made, the people responsible, the timelines, and the resources required. It can serve as a roadmap, helping everyone involved understand their roles and the expected outcomes.

Building up on Devin's great insight. In documenting the process, iterations, rationale, and context, I found that sharing the stumbles can be more valuable than sharing the wins. Documenting what didn't work and why helps other people in the business avoid the same old traps.

Make the changes and keep everyone in the loop about them. Set up regular check-ins to see how things are going. Stay flexible and adjust if something isn't working.

As long as you're communicating the goals and impacts to your team, you can make sure they're on track and in fact, happy. Check-ins are great ways to remind the team what you're doing what you're doing.

Improving product management entails several steps: Evaluate Current Framework to understand strengths and weaknesses using surveys, interviews and KPI analysis. Set and Execute Goals by establishing SMART goals after evaluation, aligning them with the product vision. Select Appropriate Methods for example pick Agile or Scrum methods aligned with your goals. Follow best practices such as aligning vision with goals, user feedback, customer interviews, usage analytics, and prioritizing backlog. Implement and Monitor Improvements by tracking results & maintain an improvement-oriented mindset and continuously review the framework. Avoid Overload and Inertia Constant feedback, monitoring, and adaptability for effectiveness & efficiency.

Maintain an Improvement Mindset Maintaining a mindset of ongoing improvement is crucial. This approach fosters an environment that not only accepts change but also actively seeks it. Remember, your framework is a tool that's meant to serve your team and your customers, not the other way around. It should evolve in response to changes in business objectives, customer needs, or market dynamics.

Your approach should change as your needs do. Every so often, take a step back and see if there's a better way. Keep asking for feedback and be ready to make changes.

A growth mindset will serve you well as you will enjoy the process and value the learning of what fails as much as what succeeds. Remember, research tells us what we know and don't know. That is valuable knowledge for how you move forward.

There are always new ways of doing things. The thing I ask myself when I'm doing a routine work is that: "Can I do this smarter? Can AI help me with this?" And most of the times, there is a better way. Always look for better solutions and work smarter to out-pace your competitors.

What I have found is both the PROSCI model of change management and the PMI model of project management help me significantly in the ability to manage the change process. Product updates, new product development, and aspects of different programs around the products can be managed more easily with these skill sets in hand.