Product Managers = Change Managers

Commons sense is one of the most undervalued virtues in business; hence I wrote these ideas down not to forget.

1. Ideas are cheap, bringing them to reality is expensive. Change is expensive. Successful Product Manager do that effortlessly.
2. “No” it’s a conversation starter. Always ask why.
3. Use a strict prioritization framework, eg.: I) What’s best of the user II) What’s best for the client III) What’s best for the service provider.
4. There are three metrics buckets: quality, quantity, efficiency. B2B funnel metrics are unique to each industry.
5. You cannot do traditional A/B testing in enterprise software, especially with sensitive data such as finance and healthcare. Also, there are no existing frameworks (2019), and the N is too small.
6. Use strategy to identify hypotheses to test. Craft as an experiment, you might not need A/B test anyway.
7. People hire their own kind. There are three types of PMs: Pioneer, settler, town planner.
8. Hire for Hungry, Humble, Brilliant, Resilient. Treat each candidate with a personal story for a high close rate.
9. Every org is flawed: it’s all about what you want to optimize.
10. Product Management can be home for multiple functions, product operations/support, economic research, or at least incubate them if you need those insights to develop the product. In large organizations, PMs are closer GMs.
11. It’s easier to create Engineering Product mgmt Design teams along the user journey when the product is mature.
12. Pillar of designs: Research, Content, UX, System. Design reporting into product dev/management minimizes potential for parallel roadmaps.
13. Quant research identify problems, qual research solutions
14. Spend 20% of your time with customers/using the product/insight gathering.
15. Ongoing product refinement/support is like operating the Toyota optimization process.
16. The saddest thing for PMs is not have enough engineers: don’t overhire PMs.
17. PM’s work is never done.

All views are my own.