Product Methodology

Why I love Product Management

Professionally, I 'grew up' in the niche industry of campsite reservation software. A camper myself, I enjoyed my summer job of taking campsite reservations for prospective campers looking to spend time in beautiful Ontario Parks. Over many years I was fortunate to have opportunities to grow and thrive at the same company, eventually finding myself in a Product role. As it turned out I was well suited for it.

I knew the software, the customers, and my collaborators. I could articulate the vision for the product. I could empathize with customers, I could dig up the underlying issues they were facing, and I could communicate those pains to a wider audience. I could lead by example with a positive, enthusiastic, and professional nature. And it turns out there's a discipline that combines all of these traits.

Since my first Product Owner role I've been actively growing in the discipline of Product Management and challenging myself by seeking out new opportunities to advance the product vision at the companies I've worked for. Below are some of the values I hold closely with respect to Product Management.


My perspective on Product Management Methodology

Validation

User Testing

Hypothesis Testing

However you want to frame it, the most important aspect of product management, at least in my opinion, is validating your ideas with real users.

I subscribe heavily to two influence contributes to the Product Management space:

  • The product methodology outlined by the Pragmatic Institute

  • Basically anything in Marty Cagan's book "Inspired"

The core perspective in either is the fact that if you're only building what you think you should be building, you're very likely wasting your time and wasting your organizations resources.

Areas I think PMs should be focused on

In no particular order, these are the areas I focus on in my role as a product manager. When done well, user testing is woven into each.

Team Culture

I'm not talking referring to the company as a whole or even the product team. Here, I'm referring to the Pod, Squad, Team, or whatever you want to call the product development team responsible for building the things.

In my experience this team has included one Product Manager, 2-4 Engineers (and ideally a Lead Engineer), a Designer, and someone from Quality Assurance. Ideally all of these people are dedicated members of the team, but often the Designer or QA are shared between teams.

I treat each individual relationship with a high level of importance, but the relationship above all others is between the Lead Engineer/Developer and the Product Manager. Any misalignment here will show exponentially the farther you go down the product development cycle. Every effort made to ensure alignment here will pay exponential dividends the farther you go down the cycle.


Metrics

Core metrics

"How often do you check in on your core KPIs?" This is a question I would love to be asked by a recruiter just once. I will talk a lot about qualitative feedback, i.e. why a user is doing what they're doing. But just as important is what they are doing.

I believe that every PDE (product/design/engineering) team should have one core set of metrics they are tracking on a constant basis - these should be on the PMs home screen. On a ticker in their office. On their phone. Somewhere where they'll see them at least once a day without ever needing to navigate to them. Live and breathe these metrics.

Project metrics

I also believe that every project should include a subset of metrics (KPIs or OKRs...I prefer OKRs as they incorporate a qualitative element) based on which a level of success can be measured.


Roadmapping

Discovery
This is the 'ground floor' investment opportunity. Time and effort here will pay off exponentially down the road.

Roadmap

I believe in the need for a thematic Roadmap that is unique from the Release Plan. A roadmap should not have specific dates, but rather areas or themes of focus, perhaps by quarter. A Release Plan should have dates that become more specific the closer you get to a given release that includes specific features that have found their origin in the Product Roadmap


Product Development

This is big. I've created a section on this below.


Communications

  • Release comms

Product Development Cycle

Many iterations and even more conversations have resulted in the below graphic - my perspective on a functional, sustainable product development cycle.

Note: Much happens before and following this graphic, but this is the point where the core PDE team get involved.

I would welcome the opportunity to walk you through my thoughts on this graphic.