Industry Example interview of Software product management review and metrics

It is very important that a product manager have in-depth knowledge of?the software development life cycle.?Now that we've described how industry heavyweights delivered the right product,?let's have a look at how product managers use product strategy, lifecycle?management and market intelligence to identify and achieve the right product.?

My name is Scylla Costa (Charecter ) , I'm a producer,?which is the equivalent of the product manager for the video game industry.?As a product manager I need to take care of the three pillars for the product.?One being the strategy for the product so I need to understand a bit about what?the vision should be for the product and make sure that the team understands that.?I also needed to take care of the development of the product itself.?And also how are we going to make the product reach the consumers so?also the distribution of the product.??Software product managers need to be able to communicate really well.?They need to also be able to understand really well the trends in the market.?They need to understand also the strengths of the competitors,?so you need to be really good at understanding what's out there.?And you also need to be very strong at understanding how to create software.?So the better you understand how to create software, the better you can help to?get to that vision that you had before for the product.?And finally, but not last, I think you need to understand the business, as well.?The business side of the product.?What kind of business models are you going to have??How are you going to reach the consumers at the end??Are you going to have, like, digital distribution or is it going to be retail??So all of that combined makes a good software product manager.?Market intelligence is the ability to understand what's out there.?Who are your consumers??What is your audience??Do you have retails in between the consumers because they may be?your clients as well.?What kind of trends you have in the market right now in terms of technology or?in terms of distribution or business models, etc.?Also, it's the ability for you to understand the needs. What kind of a need??Is there a gap in the market right now that no one is actually catering to??So can you actually reach that gap and be stronger than everybody else??That's what I call Market Intelligence.??I think it takes a lot of research.?You have to invest yourself also in understanding the market, so?you need to read a lot.?You need to, in the case of like software development you need to play the other softwares?as well. Use the other software as well, so?that you can understand what are the strengths of the competitors.?You also need to read magazines or blogs or?sites about specifically about your area. So in my case video games and?I read a lot of video game articles and video game blogs.

And also you need to understand how to reach the consumers as well.?Now, you have social media nowadays.?You can reach directly to the consumers and?ask what they're looking for in a specific product.?Why do you think that these competitors are good at? or what they’re not good at that?you can actually go and fill the gap for the market.?You have to use a lot of the software that is out there in the market.?So you need to, in your own software, you need to understand really well. You need to have lots?attention to detail and understand really well what your software actually delivers to the market.?But you also need to do the same with all the competitors out there.?At the same time,?you also need to speak. You need to come up with a way to speak straight to the consumers.?There may be a focus test.?Maybe you're using social media.?But you need to understand also if there is a gap, if there is a different?need that came up or maybe a weakness of the leader in the market, that actually?he doesn't do very well, and that you can actually fulfill and do better than that.??So for demographics usually what we do: we think about archetypes and personas.?So you're going to try to understand, in the specific case of?video game development, we have a really broad audience and?we need to understand the segments that we have and then we create personas for?each of those segments.?So for example, this is going to be Bob,?the 21 year old college student that is studying medicine, for example, but?he wants to play video games and he wants to do it, because it's escaping for him.?The other one maybe an entertainer or a mom that has some free time.?So you need to create those personas and?once you have those personas now you're going to see how your features for?your software, they do align with those personas.?Are you actually reaching the needs for those personas.??So product strategy is the ability to understand first what do you need?to build?

What does your software has to have in order to beat?the competitors in the market??That's one of the things you need to do for product strategy.?The other thing you need to understand, you need to also work on the business?models for your product, and how you're going to sell your software. Is it?going to be subscription? Is it going to be a flat fee? Is it going to be some sort?of freeware that after 30 days then you sell the other part of the software??There are many different business models and it really depends on your market,?it depends on your competitors, what they're doing as well.?So you need to understand, what you need to build, how you're going to sell it and?how you're going to actually reach the consumers,?how are you're going to distribute it as well.?The product manager needs to create the vision.?So he needs to be the bridge between the consumers and the development team.?So he needs to be that bridge.?And he needs to create that vision that, in a very succinct way,?in a very simple way, tells the team what they need to do.?And why this is important, and why this is good enough to actually?beat all the competitors you have in the market???Your vision for the product can have what we call unique selling points.

If you do have, let's say, five unique selling points hopefully your product is?going to have strong features that relate to those pillars as well.

You can now, once you have a prototype of your software, or maybe if you already?have a beta version or alpha version of your software, you can create focus tests.?So you can reach through specific segments of your users and?actually test how they're receiving your software.?How did they like this new feature??Is that compelling enough??Is it better than what's out there in the market??And that's one way to do it so you can get that feedback.?And if there are friction points, for example,?you can reduce the friction points.?And change the feature and make it better, and then you take it to the market again.?If you keep on doing that, by the end of the cycle, the dev cycle,?you should have a much stronger product to be released.?I think that the first step to differentiate your product from the other?ones in the market is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses.?So in our case our company has the strengths in a few areas that other?competitors don't and we try to emphasize that.?So we try to make sure that our products, they come with a signature.?So that our consumers know this is a product from our company.

So basically understand your strengths and weakness first and understand also how?they play in regards of the needs of the market, because if you are really strong in?one area that the market doesn't actually need, so it's not helping you.?But if there is a gap here, if there is a demand in the market and?you're strong at it, then that's where you can actually make a difference.??So monetization models for a product, for a software product,?there are many different ways now and the market is changing quite rapidly.?You can go from a traditional retail, you can have a box that you sell at a store.?You can have digital distribution where the user only downloads your software.?You can have a subscription based,?like many other software are doing so now.?And you can have a mix as well,?as you have like some sort of free to play version of your software.?That the consumer can download it for free.?But if you want the advanced features,?then he needs to either subscribe or pay a full price.?Or pay a different type of price for certain parts of your product.?So there are many different business models right now on the table.?It really depends on the market that you're trying to act on.?It really depends on the consumers of your market, of your specific market.??At a start-up, a product manager has more flexibility.

He has to wear many different hats as well.?He doesn't have the luxury of having usually a lot of money but?he does have a small team that can be very nimble and very iterative.?So those are things that I see as positive for a?startup if you're a product manager. But you need to be very persistent and?you need to be resilient as well because things are not going to be easy because?you have a very small team and usually small resources as well.?At a big company you have the advantage of having more resources available so?you can do better research or broader research, different types of surveys.?You can also, specifically you can travel to a specific place in the world?that you have consumers and actually speak with them if needed be.?So you have better resources but at the same time you may have to go through more?lengthy processes to get things done.?You have to sometimes combine and?coordinate many different teams within the organization.?So it can be more difficult for a product manager because he needs to convince way?much more people in order to get something done.?A common lifecycle for a software product would be: you would have a preproduction?phase where you would understand what your product needs to be.?Maybe you call it idealization phase in different industries.?So you're going to understand what you need to build and?why that product is better than what's out there in the market.?So that's where you have your vision set that's where you have your team aligned?around a vision that is strong enough to beat everybody else in the market.?You also need to make sure that in the preproduction phase you have enough?funding to go through and you're going to try to iterate and?create prototypes as well to validate as quickly as possible if the features?that you have are actually as strong as you think that they're going to be.?After the preproduction phase, you go to the production phase.?That's when you know; already you know what you need to build and now it's about building it,?it's about scaling it up, and making sure that you can make everything

under whatever constraints you have in terms of budget or time.?So you're going to work on the production phase and necessarily develop the product,?after you develop the product, you're going to reach what we call a finaling phase.?The finaling phase is where we actually polish the product as much as we can.?So we're going to try to take all the bugs out.?We may even have a beta version of the software that we actually release?to thousands of consumers so that they can play it, they can use our software and?they can come back and tell us what's working really well and?what's not working in the software, what they like and what they don't like.?So that we can fix it even before the release of the software.

After releasing the software, we jumped to the release phase after the finaling phase,?we go to the release phase where you're going to have to distribute your software.?You're going to have to make the software actually reach the consumers.?Make sure if you have a digital distribution or you have retailers,?make sure that everything is working, that the consumers know about the software and?that they can have a way to actually buy it.

After the release phase there is a phase what we call live service,?in our specific case we have a service that we run which means that we have to?create a roadmap of everything else that we're going to do for?the software after the release of the software.?And maybe around patches or bugs that we're fixing on the software.?It can be around like new expansions for the software with new features because?we're receiving that feedback from the consumers and?also from the video game journalist as well.?And once we get that feedback, we prioritize everything we need to do with?the team that we have and then we'll create a roadmap and?the product manager will lead that roadmap development.?After the product is released, you need to understand. The first thing you need to understand is how your?product was received by your consumers, right.?So you need to quickly analyze what went really well,?what went really wrong from the perspective of the consumer.?Some of the things that went wrong, you may be able to patch it as a software, and?you may be able to fix it.?It may be a bug or it may be a feature that you need to add quickly so?you can create an extension, and update for your product as well.?If it's necessary.?Another thing you need to do,?depending on if you have a product that becomes a service, as well.?So if it is a service, you need to have that constant communication with?the consumers about what's going well, and what they don't like.?So that they can help you to create a better roadmap for your product or?over time.?There are many different ways to measure the success of a software product.?You may have. It really depends on your industry.?You may have the number of units sold, you may have your revenue,?you may have the profit margin, that you have. It may be the quality of your product,?which can be measured depending on your interest.?You may have some sort of a score that measures and?compares your software against other ones. But usually,?you'd always go back to the consumer satisfaction.?You need to understand how the consumers received your software.?A good product manager needs to understand really well, analytics.?How are you going to use your telemetry for your software to?actually get important and data about things that need to be changed.?So usually a good product manager is going to try to create first the key?performance indicators that what we call KPI. And once you have your KPIs, and?it really depends on the industry that you're working on,?then you can start measuring if you're software is being successful or not.?Internally, let's say you might have KPIs for?the developments team, you may have how many crashes per hour, or?how many hours your servers are up or down, the other way around.?You may have some other metrics around,?like, how many people are actually accessing the server at the same time.?So what is the “peak simultaneous users” that you have right now.?There are many different metrics that you can use to help the development team to?understand if your service, if your product is working really well.?Externally there are some other factors that we measure.?Usually we have a funnel that we call AOEM.?So A for acquisition, O for onboarding, E for engagement, and M for monetization.?For acquisition, we have metrics like how many people are actually downloading your?software or actually bought your software, how many people are playing everyday,?what is the number of daily unique users that you have.?In terms of engagement, you have how many sessions per day your?users are playing your software, using your software.?How many. For how long did they play your software, did they use your software.?We also have other metrics in terms of engagements like?are they likely to recommend your software to another friend.?That's another metric that we can have, we call it NPS or net promoter score.?In terms of monetization,?we have metrics around how much money they are spending overall.?On a daily basis over a lifetime what is the value of the user lifetime as well??So if he spent $60 in the product in the beginning and?over the lifetime he spend another $20 so he’s worth $80, for example.?What is the average revenue that you have per spender??What is the average revenue that you have per user as well??What is the percentage of spenders that you have??There are many different KPIs to measure monetization and?I skipped one which was Onboarding.?Which is you may have, specifically for your software, you may have to?teach users how to use your software, so that's what we call onboarding.?And for onboarding you may have also metrics like did they go through the whole?tutorial process.?Did they stop before or not??And then, in terms of analytics you can actually use that information to see how?successful those users are if they went through the full funnel of onboarding or?if they didn't.?Let's say did they skipped the tutorial completely and?are they having more issues??Are they reaching to the consumer service?more often because they don't understand how to use the software.?And you may notice that the ones that went through the tutorial,?they actually grasped the key fundamentals of the software.?And therefore, they need less assistance.??I think a successful product needs a successful product manager behind.?It means that you're going to need someone that is?going to be that important bridge between all the consumers,?all the millions of consumers that you have and the development team.?It needs to be someone that not only is going to do that bridge but?also it's going to understand, from a business perspective,?what kind of business models you're going to have, how you're going to distribute?your software, how they're going to reach all the consumers that you have.?So you kind of need to work with around those three pillars?let's say the business model side of things, you also need to understand really?well about the market and?you need to understand really well about the development process, as well.?If a good product manager can work, really well on all those three pillars,?it's very likely that he's going to be successful?I think that new product managers, the first thing they need to do, is to have?passion for software, passion for the product that you're trying to work on.?Like, if you already do, the chances of you being successful are much higher.?That's the first one.?The second one is being very curious.?You need to be very curious and?you need to try to understand what's out there in the market.?You need to play or use the software from the competitors as much as you can.?You need to have the curiosity inside you.?And also you need to ask the questions why and like why are they doing that??Why can't we do it this way or why can't we do something better that way??I think that's one thing.?The other one is of course I'm like you have to study a lot,?regardless of your market, you need to study a lot your market.?You need to understand really well how your market works.?And finally, I think it's super important also for?the product manager to know how to relate with people.?You don't make software alone, you don't make the product alone,?you have a team and they need to know how to communicate really well with the team.?And with different teams within the team, as well.?How can we make sure that everybody is align under the same vision,?under the same goal.

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