One of my plans this year is to become a remote product manager, this means a lot of self learning and value adding :)
Product Digest is where I will share some of my useful findings on product management on irregular basis.
For this founding issue, I have found the 4 findings (3 frameworks-ish + 1 podcast) worth sharing:
1. Decision Journal to help make better product decision
I come across this idea on using a decision journal / decision diary to help making product decisions. A decision journal is a document where you can record some of your major decision making process and what drives them at the point of decision making. This gives your future self a reference point on how and why things are led up to what it is then.
For me, this is a very interesting and effective way to improve your product decision, best of all this can totally be done in a team and collaborative settings. I believe product journal could help team gain much transparency and be more candid to each other in making product decision.
Fortunately, this can also be used in a personal setting, so while waiting for my future product team, I will be using this for my personal decision too!
2. Product Vision Workshop through Amazon news release
For PMs looking to craft a product vision, here’s a really effective way to do that while keeping high engagement with the team: using the Amazon Press Release format.
In Amazon’s early days (not too sure now), whenever a new feature or product decision is to be made, the pm or whoever proposing it needs to run it through with Jeff Bezos through a press release format — instead of the usual presentation with charts and donuts.
This article details how product managers can make use of the press release format to engage the team & stakeholders and run a product vision workshop effectively.
This helps to frame the product vision from the point of view of your customers, and put up clarity on how much value your customers can get from it; minimizing or even totally removing the risk of building something that nobody wants.
3. Porter’s 5 Forces for industry & competitive analysis
Porter’s 5 forces is a framework that helps analyse the competitiveness of an industry:
- Rivalry among existing competitors
- Threat of new entrants
- Bargaining power of suppliers
- Bargaining power of buyers
- Threat of substitute products
I love this framework as it helps you gain an objective and defined picture of the competitive landscape of your industry. It is also very helpful to see how you can bring innovation and competitive edge for your product and industry by tweaking and leveraging on one or more of the five forces.
4. [Podcast] Building Products in Asia Pacific
Listen to this Mind The Product podcast interviewing my friend Colin Pal (representing Malaysia yo!) and Adrienne Tan from Brainmates (Aus). Super exciting to hear some perspective, experience and namedropping on product scene in this region.
If you are just starting out, or looking to move into a product role, or simply wanna learn more — I highly recommend joining some online and local product management communities and connect with other product folks. Some of the places I check in regularly (2–3x / week):
- Product School slack group
- Mind the Product slack group
- /ProductManagement on Reddit
- PM Huddle Facebook Group (Mainly for KL/Malaysia PMs)
On another note, building meaningful relationship through online channels is very different and hard. I am still learning how to do that without being creepy or weird. To start, you just really gotta put yourself out there and see what happens.
