Product Management Playbook — 6 Part Series

A successful product requires exceptional strategy, efficient execution and timely communication.

A good product is the one that solves a real problem of your users, in a way that meets the needs of your business. Creating a product your users love is actually not too hard. However, doing it in a way that works within your business model and constraints (technical, staffing, financial, …) — that can be pretty tough.

Being a product manager can seem like a gambler at a roulette table. You know you need to place bets to win, but you have no idea where to put your chips. Product management requires big and bold commitments in the midst of uncertainty.

Product management requires the product manager to make tough decisions, which involve hard trade-offs that it is tempting to ignore, defer, or rush into. Yet knowing which decisions to prioritize and how to implement them can make the difference between a successful product and one that struggles.

This Product Management Playbook will be your guide to creating successful products that your users will actually love and use. Product management essentially occurs in six phases:

In each of these areas, the product manager has a lot of things to do, from empathizing with users to delivering a product that actually meets user needs or solves user problems. But this article focuses on some of the big decisions product managers need to make, and how they can go about making them. Based on my experience, I believe these six phases are the most important ones.

Phase 1 — Identification

This is the foremost phase of product management, which can seem overwhelming. In this phase, we want to identify the users and their problems and needs. A disciplined framework is needed for understanding the users. As a starting point, I recommend job shadowing, user interviews, thoughtful review of knowledge available inside (management, sales, marketing and service teams) and outside (market reports, industry journals, analyst reports, …) the organization. Finally, we need to validate our findings on whether the problems or needs actually exist for our users.

Learn more about the Identification phase

Phase 2 — Definition

This is the most important phase of product management. Once we have an understanding of users and their problems and needs, we need to define and document them in a standard organizational format so that all the stakeholders understand the same thing as you understood. Definition of the problem or need will include the following — Business problem, SMART goals, Product scope, Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, Timelines, Milestones and Success criteria.

Learn more about the Definition phase

Phase 3 — Ideation

Ideation is the mode in which you concentrate on idea generation. We all know that there are almost always multiple ways to solve a problem or address a need. In this phase, we ideate on how best the user’s need can be addressed or user’s problems can be solved. Ideation provides fuel for building prototypes through an iterative process. Popular ideation techniques include Brainstorming, Mindmapping, Storyboarding and SCAMPER.

Learn more about the Ideation phase

Phase 4 — Development

Development is the phase where the product is actually developed. You work with cross functional stakeholders, including designers, developers and testers to build the product in the intended way. Product managers should focus on iterative prototypes to quickly gather feedback from users and finalize the product. Inputs to engineering team includes the following — Business requirements, User requirements, Functional requirements, Non-functional requirements and System requirements. Inputs to design team includes the following — Wireframes and Storyboards.

Learn more about the Development phase

Phase 5 — Launch

Launch is the phase in which the product is made aware to your users. Before the launch, product managers need to work on the value proposition the product brings to the users in comparison to the competitive products. Also, the product managers must work with internal sales and marketing teams to build product documentation. Post launch the product managers should support the sales team and the marketing team in their sales pitches and marketing campaigns respectively. Most importantly, the product managers should keep gathering the feedback on the newly launched product.

Learn more about the Launch phase

Phase 6 — Optimization

Once the product is in the market and is being used by the users, the product managers are responsible for the growth and death of the product. Based on the stakeholder feedback, service tickets, usage patterns and metrics, the product managers need to decide on what part of the product should be grown while deciding on what parts of the product should be discontinued to improve user experience.

Learn more about the Optimization phase

As you can see, there are a number of nuances to consider when building a product that your users love and use. Obviously, the above steps can be applied across industries and company types for product management.

“A good product manager is the CEO of the product. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. They are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. Bad product managers have lots of excuses.” — Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz

What am I missing here? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to share your ideas too!

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