What to expect in different phases of Product Management

I came up with an acronym of 5 Ds as I was thinking about the different phases in Product Management. The PM's role really starts with the idea of a product or a solution that a customer will use and interact with; and ends with the evaluation of the product’s success.

 The first phase, Discover, is when you are exploring ideas – you don’t really know if there’s value or a real need

The second phase, Define, is when you rationalize - you ensure that there’s a business case here, a real problem you’re trying to solve which matters to your users, and a very clear ROI – return on investment. There are many problems we could solve, but as a PM you need to ensure we're solving the most impactful problems. You should be very clear about the outcomes you are driving and keep that in mind all along

The third phase, Design, is where you get concrete about how you are going to solve the problem, in what order will you release features so you can validate your hypotheses, and here’s where you work with engineers and UX on defining an execution plan. You want to make sure you build your plan so you can validate key hypotheses early, and you can measure signals that drive confidence that you maximize your changes to achieve the outcomes you were after.

The fourth phase, Do, is when you build - this is mostly your developers building to spec. You are working very closely with them to drive clarity on requirements, and working closely on the user experience you're looking to deliver.

The final phase, Drive, is when you drive usage and adoption and you get to see your users using your product and learn how it meeting their needs, understand their feedback. This is where you evolve your product as you measure task success and collect feedback.

Underlying these 5 phases is really a mindset that is very important for PMs.

• “Own it” – the buck stops at you – be the CEO – you can't do everything on your own but you think through everything, delegate what you can and should, work with others but own pulling together the story
• Test early and often – whether it is your idea or concept, or your prototype or UX, or your hypothesis. You are creating the backlog for your team – the sooner you make sure it is going to drive results you were hopeful about, the better for everyone
• Adapt and be willing to pivot – Keep listening and watching for signals and when you need to change something from the original plan, adapt and think how you can pivot the direction – just don’t be stuck