5 things Product Manager should do after taking over a product
You are starting your new job as a Product Manager, and it’s your first time leading a product. Or, maybe, you’re being promoted from a Product Owner role and have to figure things out ASAP. Or maybe you’re just switching jobs and want to get into the rhythm immediately. Either way, there are some crucial steps to take, that will lay the foundations for your work. They apply to Product Manager role regardless of whether you’re working for external client in a service model, or you’re hired by your employer. Therefore, to make it short, in this article I’ll call him simply a “client”.
As in most business scenarios, regardless of the type of business our client runs, the fundamental stuff lies on the axis of Strategy — Market and ecosystem — People. If you are going to start a new adventure in Product Manager role, you should probably move along this axis in the following order:
1. Get to know the people and their expectations
Product Manager role is pretty often much about the people. You have to know your stakeholders, because your relationship with them will impact efficiency and quality of your whole effort.
So, first of all I’d try to create a rapport with my client (ie. company CEO). I would be extremely interested why she’s up to the product I’ll manage, where and when the idea popped up. What was her motivations, where did she start? I’d surely ask about the failures and achievements regarding the product so far.
I’d also do my best to get more profound insights on who — as a person — my client is. It’s always priceless to deeply understand the human standing in front of you, and it really helps to do great things when you have a bond.
Furthermore, I’d need to know what my client expects from the product itself and from me as a Product Manager. For example, the economic factors aren’t always the only reason people do what they do. And as for the role itself, I’ve seen lots of different views on who the Product Manager actually is and what’s his primary goal. It would be crucial to know my client’s perspective on that matter.
Last but not least, the client is probably not the only key stakeholder here. I’d try to identify who would be having an impact on our work along the way.
2. Strategy — understand it, or discover it
If you want to make good decisions, you have to align them with your strategy. Without a strategy product manager will inevitably become a so called forward manager. Therefore, an absolute must for a PM is to understand the strategy, and preferably get it written down to challenge throughout this process of figuring out what he’s dealing with. Understanding the strategy means also getting to know the business model and pricing.
It’s probably worth mentioning, that many times the strategy is being confused with the vision. That’s why sometimes PM should lend a helping hand to define a real strategy with the client.
3. Identify state of the product
Next, I’d delve into the current situation of the product, especially on the following fields:
Technology — if you’re dealing with software product, you could probably use computer science experience ie. in dev/architect role, or at least some expertise that would help you evaluate strengths and weaknesses of software product. In modern digital age, it can be a serious factor of success.
Knowledge about users/clients — While MVP is running, we should have some clients already, which means that their behavioral and demographic structure or even some personas or client segments could have been discovered already. We could probably also have some quantitative data you could delve into.
4. Learn the market: mechanics, dynamics and opportunities
The final step of getting into the product would be to learn the market surroundings. Product Management is also about interpreting the feedback. If you don’t understand the way things go on the market, you could for example misinterpret some early signals of danger.
Learning market mechanics — who runs the particular area this product covers, what is the structure and market share of our competitors, who are the brokers and value creators, what customers pay for and what competitors make money from, etc.
Learning market dynamics — what is the current trend on our market? Is it getting bigger, or shrinking? How much money it generates and how is it distributed among competitors? Are there any forthcoming changes that could shake the way we define our market?
Learning market opportunities — where in value chain do we see our product? Where to look for chances to disrupt, or innovate? Are there any signs of shifts we could profit from? Where should we look for partnership and where compete?
5. Create (together!) product roadmap
The process I’d probably follow unveils new information step after step. Therefore, it’s fair to say I’ve described a happy path. Assuming we — by this time hopefully a slowly forming product team — had time for learning, and we didn’t discover anything that revolutionized our approach, we are ready to form a sketch of a roadmap for our product. Of course, the timespan it would cover and how detailed it would be depends on scale and many other attributes of our product. But the primary reason to do the roadmap with your client is to help us confirm that we’re on the same page, and to receive a GO signal from our client.
