6 Mistakes I Have Made as a Beginner Product Manager

To err is human. And I should admit that like any other product manager, I was a noob once, too. And I have made mistakes, too. Were they stupid mistakes? Sometimes they were. Did they teach me something? Definitely! Because I believe that if you are making one and the same mistake twice, then it’s not a mistake, it’s a choice. So, most of the time, I try to transform my product manager mistakes into lessons.

When I look back on my career as a product manager, I see that I have made these 6 mistakes which you as a product manager should avoid:

Failed to pay enough attention to market research

Well, yeah. Shit happens! Recently I have written an article about the secondary market research. But there was a time I knew very little about it and I was actually ignorant enough to not take it into account when doing product management.

If you are asking “why should I care about market research?” then you might be a beginner, too. Let me explain it to you in a few brief sentences. Market research is vital for validating a product idea. No market research, no successful product. Of course, exceptions might apply. But as a rule of thumb, research helps understand your potential users, see the demographics, learn what they care for and what their problems are. This way you will eventually come up with a product that solves a problem, not vice versa. Because, you know, there are a lot of products out there that seem to be generating problems rather than solving them.

Failed to use success metrics to measure the success of a new feature

I guess this is a mistake even some mid-level product managers tend to make. It’s because we are sometimes so obsessed with measuring pre-launch data that we forget to take a look at the post-launch numbers. But product management is not only about successful shipping. Did you ship? Be ready to iterate, to change, to improve it. How are you going to improve something if you have not asked the users/customers about it?

Gathering user feedback and analyzing it are two really important things a product manager should focus on. As a beginner product guy, I was often overlooking Cohort analysis and Net Promoter Score analysis. The first one measures the retention. Retention itself shows how valuable a feature is to your users. Cohort analysis is a behavioral analysis tool that helps observe how groups of people/cohorts experience something, usually over time.

The Net Promoter Score is a measure of your customer’s overall loyalty to your product. The score is calculated by taking the percentage of respondents who are promoters and subtracting the percentage of respondents that are detractors. This will bring a score ranging from -100 to 100, which is your Net Promoter Score℠. But it’s a good idea not to focus on the numbers a lot. Instead, focus on user feedback and try to improve the NPS over time.

Believing that more features=stronger product

I was once naive enough to think that more features could make a stronger and a better product. But a product is not like a pyramid, it does not need to have a lot of bricks to look cool. Even pyramids do not need them. It’s all about the structure, the inner organization of things, the idea behind it and the problem it solves. A product should serve a purpose. Pyramids served the purpose of being temples for worship. Your product should be good enough so that users find value in using it. It’s that simple!

Thinking that the product is not ready for public release yet

This is a common misconception that product people often have. I have seen a lot of development teams who create their own product and who make this mistake. Developers usually want to see it perfect. We all want to see our products perfect. But, dude, there are no perfect products! Give it to user testing, they will find a new bug every time. Something will need to be changed or rethought. And that’s normal. There is nothing to worry about. Just release it, then collect feedback, then improve it.

I am a perfectionist myself. And it was hard for me to acknowledge that a product is a living organism, too. There is no final product. Instead, you should make it better and better and better over time. Think about it!

Failing to ask for opinions

As a beginner product manager, I used to be a bit shy. I didn’t ask a lot of questions to anyone either the users or my peers. But the truth is you need to ask for opinions, for a critic, for feedback from nearly anyone. Are you traveling on public transport with a friend? Ask them to test that app for 5 minutes. Or go see what people say about your product on social media or app review sites. Try to get as much impressions from them as you can. Do not sell the product, do not pitch it. Just show it to people.

Losing the big picture

This one was one of my most dramatic product manager mistakes. And note that you can make it even if you are a veteran of product management. We can all make this mistake of failing to see the big picture. There were times when I used to concentrate on short-term goals more and I could sometimes forget about my long-term product vision. Be careful with this because it can end up ruining your whole product. Don’t get stuck, do not work too long on improvements, don’t do too much bug fixing, stop procrastinating, move that thing forward. It will evolve naturally if you keep going and keep looking at the big picture.

Fin

Yeah, I have made all these mistakes throughout my career. And I don’t regret them. It’s important that you know what the takeaways are. Do not be afraid of making mistakes. Just make sure you learn from them!

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