Accidental Product Manager's worst nightmare?

Have you ever gone through a phase where you felt that you were failing as a Product Manager and were unsure about what to do next?

May 11th, 2019, at around 1:30 PM, after finishing my morning macroeconomics class, I was having lunch with a group of friends at UCB, Haas Business School's "Cafe Think", when my phone rang. Normally, when I am at school, I keep my phone on silent mode. I do not like people disturbing me in the middle of my classes, but that very day my mother , for some strange reason, had asked me not to keep my phone on silent mode as she might have to call me for something important.

When the phone rang, I immediately thought it must be my mom. To my surprise, it was a good friend of mine who, a month back, had gotten into a product management role at one of the top tech companies. He had recently transitioned from engineering role to product management role. We started to chat, we talked for a while and then I asked him "Hey, is all good, you seem a little worried about your work". My friend replied, "No, its nothing much, just trying to get hold of being a Product Manager". I ended the conversation by replying, "Do not worry dude, it is not rocket science.. you will do awesome".

Three days later on Tuesday evening, the same friend messaged me "Hey Prerit, could you give me a call back whenever you are free". I called him on my way back home and he said, "Prerit, I do not believe that I am able to get a grasp of what am I supposed to do as a product manager. One of the engineers on my team has complained to my boss that I am not able to define the problem and the product properly. I am not sure what to do or how to go about it."

As a Product Manager, there is nothing worse than knowing that your team does not have confidence in your abilities. I recalled my starting days when I had just started as an associate product manager, I really wish someone had been there to guide and help me. We talked for an hour or two and that is how I decided to write this post because I am sure there are many more people out there who are struggling to understand, but their pride does not allow them to ask for help:

(At the end of the article I will provide an update on my friend's current state)

So...

1) How do you really start building products/features?

2) How to answer any product design related interview questions?

I am surely not an expert and I know that I have a lot to learn but based on my personal experience and the knowledge that I gained through reading product related books, I decided to create a cheat sheet for Product Managers.

For now, I would focus on the bottom-most layer of the pyramid i.e "Target Customer". I believe understanding the target customer and figuring out the underserved needs are the most important steps in building a product. The question is who is the target customer for my product? In order to answer the question, we would need to follow the below-mentioned steps.

Understand the problem

People are in a hurry to jump to solutions, DO NOT MAKE that mistake. Force yourself to keep digging into the problem. Thinking about the problem would help you understand the user and their needs better.

Let's take Netflix as an example

So let's backtrack. If we were to build an online Netflix portal as it exists today (assuming nothing of the sort existed earlier), how would we go about understanding the problem? I am not claiming this is how Netflix went about finding the problem but it's just an example to illustrate the importance of understanding the problem

(Remember that a problem could be anything. It could be an unmet need, a paint point, a job to be completed, etc )

• Why do I have to spend a lot of time to go to a theater to watch a movie? (think more)
• It is hard for me to find old movies in the theater, so I have to go to the library to rent a movie and many times my closest library does not even have the movie I want. (think more)
• I was born in India and I am living in the U.S, I like watching Hindi movies, but not all U.S theaters showcase Hindi movies. (think more)
• I can only go out for movies on Friday because I come home from work at around 8 pm and I am tired after work. (think more)
• It is expensive to pay for each and every movie. I cannot afford it. (think more)
• I have many movies on my hard-drive but I do not remember which all movies are there on my drive and I own multiple hard-drives. It is very hard to keep track and keep buying a new hard-drive and carrying those with me. (think more)

Now let's see if we can expand the problem... (How about TV shows ?)

• It is hard for me to find old TV shows in the library (expand more)
• I come from work at around 8 pm and always miss my favorite episode of "Friends", I always have to wait for the re-run of the episode on Sunday. (expand more)
• My kid only eats food while watching his/her favorite cartoon show "Marsha and the Bear". Unfortunately, I do not have saved episodes of the show. (expand more)

Can we expand it even further...

• I would like to watch Live concerts and games, it is very expensive to buy game tickets for TV subscriptions for those.

As you can see the objective is to list all the problems and try to expand the problems. DO NOT try to find a solution, simply keeping thinking about the problem. By enlarging your problem space it might help you create new ideas while thinking of the solution.

Problem hypothesis: "How to enable people to watch local and international Movies/TV-shows/Live concerts etc anytime and anywhere at an affordable price"

Defining our competing market

So based on the above problem statement, who is Netflix's competitor?

Is it the theater industry? Is it the legacy television/media industry? Is it a CD/DVD rental store? A clear understanding of the problem helps a much better understanding of the market in which the product will truly compete.

What does a target market would look like?

By defining the problem, we identify our target segment. In short, we have to answer the question: "What kind of target market would be benefited by solving the above-mentioned problems?". It is always possible that different people have different needs and even people with the same needs could have a different priority for those needs. In order to define the target market, we need to define all the attributes of the persona who would be in your target market.

Persona: You can create a persona by using a 1:1 interview or surveys. If you are building a new product in a case where the market does not exist, you will first need to create a product hypothesis based on judgment and then talk to consumers to validate the hypothesis.

Persona Example

Age Group: 20 - 55 years

Gender: Both male and female

Professional Level: In-college, College graduates, professionally working

Other Attributes:

• Enjoys watching 2-3 movies every week within the comfort of home.
• Spends approximately 10-20 hours every week watching television or 4-6 hours in the theater.
• Has a long-standing student debt and therefore is not motivated to spend more than a couple of dollars for each movie trip. Does not wish to spend too much money on entertainment etc.
• Is married and likes to spend quality family time, but due to the long travel time to/from work is unable to spend a good amount of time with family.
• Has a huge backlog of TV shows that they would like to watch but unable to do so spend much time to find the collection in the local library.

One can add more and make the persona richer. Above mentioned is just an example, one can always do sociography segmentation based on attitude.

Validate product hypothesis with the target customer

A user might not always be able to express their needs very well during the survey or interview. In that case, we can let the user play around with design mock-ups or provide some prototype. Customers are always better at giving feedback when they have something tangible to work with, but are not very good at giving feedback on abstract ideas. The feedback you get from a customer could then be used to modify the initial product hypothesis. The BEST way to test the product hypothesis is to get out and talk to the end customers.

Other Important Notes

• Do not expect customers to provide you with solutions. Show them the design/prototype and observe their behavior.
• Many companies these days follow the idea of inside-outside development approach i.e two or three influential people within the company come up with an idea that they believe is good and have teams work on the idea. They never like to consult with the actual customer. Stay away from such people and try to follow the outside-in approach.
• There is a possibility that after you interview the target customer you might realize that your product is meant for a different target customer and that is fine too. Go back and change the product hypothesis and persona.
• You will never truly know what your target market really is until you launch a prototype in the market and test the deep waters.

Update about my friend: He is still struggling to find his groove. He believes that things have surely improved and his thought process for product/feature development is much more structured.

I recall a quote from Albert Einstein "If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions."

Source

• My personal experience
• Lean Vs. Agile Vs. Design Thinking - Jeff Gothelf
• The Lean Product Playbook - Dan Olsen

https://medium.com/@uppal.prerit/accidental-product-managers-worst-nightmare-750694e71090