AMA With Vikram Bhat, CPO @ EkStep (and formerly of ABOF, Myntra)
On 23rd May we celebrated #WorldProductDay by having an extremely interesting AMA session with the super-talented Vikram Bhat. We talked about everything from the daily nitty-gritties of being a product manager to more fundamental questions on what makes one a good fit for a Product role. We also threw in some knowledge about India’s growing Ed-Tech sector.
Below is a quick summary of what went down!
And in case you interested in joining in for more such events, just sign-up on our meetup page and we’ll give you a holler for our next event!
- What is the hardest part of being a PM?
Explaining to relatives what you do!
One thing PM stands for is ensuring the success of the product. Being a PM is about bringing multiple processes together successfully.
A bit of trivia: PM field started off as brand management in P&G — it is much older than what people think. The idea of PM being a CEO originated at P&G as a brand manager is also responsible for success of product.
2. What does one have to do ensure success of a product?
To ensure a success of a product, a PM has to tackle multiple tasks such as:
- Market research and user research
- Analyse user behaviour and key jobs user wants to do
- Analyse competition
- Pricing play
- Prototyping & validation
- Roadmap scheduling & execution
- Marketing and evangelising
However, at the end of it, communication and coordination with all internal and external stakeholders is key to bringing it all together.
3. What is the difference between a Product Owner and a Product Manager?
The key difference is about managing processes.
In agile, a product owner drives stories during the sprint duration, but PM’s key responsibility is success of product. This can entail driving stories and coordinating with engineering, but focus on overall product success.
4. Should PM be responsible for delivery if there is a delivery team?
May not be directly responsible but still has accountability of delivery as essential part of product life-cycle.
5. How does role of PM change from in a startup to when in a full-blown large setup?
PM’s mandate does not change according to size of organisation, but the activities might. In a larger organisation you might have more focused teams to coordinate with, but the mandate does not change.
6. How to prevent disruptions, i.e. letting ad-hoc request sideline key tasks?
Put in processes to ensure feedback comes through right channels. Have larger-timescale product plans (quarterly plan reviews is a good timescale) and set priority checks so that any request is evaluated against these priorities. As a PM you cannot completely avoid disruptions and sudden requests, but with a plan and priorities in place you can at least minimise their impact and only filter through the ones that are of utmost importance.
Bucketing of pipeline also helps reduce volatility. You can divide your roadmap into the following:
- Experimental/non-linear stories: These might not be properly fleshed out and require R&D. Maintain about 20–30% roadmap for these.
- Blockbuster/metric mover stories: These are sure shot features that will move metrics if executed right. Maintain about 30–40% roadmap for these.
- Get-it-done list: Just a list of well known pain points, bugs and efficiency improvements.
7. What product roadmap tool do you use?
Excel is the most workable tool, especially during planning phase. If you have a very large, distributed team it is good to have a structured tool, especially if you move into execution phase. Suggestions for these are Trello, Aha! and Asana.
8. Why is it important for PMs to be metric oriented?
You can only define success of your product basis metrics that you can measure and see. Gut feel will only take you so far.
9. How to identify relevant metrics?
Come up with a good framework. In my experience the framework that has really helped me is a three dimensional framework comprising Utility (value to user and organisation), Usability (intuitiveness and efficiency of using the product) and User Experience (similar to usability but with more hazy metrics such as what encourages recommendation and virality).
10. What tool to use to measure metrics?
Different tools have different capabilities — identify tools based on metrics required. Google Analytics is most common for web. For apps, AppsFlyer and Flurry.
11. Who is a good fit to shift to PM role?
PMs have come from broadly three areas — Marketing, Engineering and Consulting. However, the most important skill set a PM brings is customer understanding — Marketing and Consulting people are generally good at this. You also have to understand different kinds of customer understanding approaches. Eg. Brand Managers from FMCG look at understanding customer needs from a marketing and branding perspective, while those from maybe an IT background will focus more on the customer JD/BD.
Another important thing is passion for solving business problems using technology. After that it is just about covering the gaps in your experience. Eg. Marketing person understands customer but will need to bridge technology knowledge, and IT person will need to figure out customer research beyond just simple requirements gathering.
12. Does an MBA degree matter for being a PM?
No good answer for this. However, the things I look for are:
- Success orientation
- Thought process — i.e. have they ever thought like a PM when working on different things
- Ownership
- Experience in different aspects of product life cycle
13. How do you conduct product research?
Everything is about who your users are and the jobs to be done. Yes, you might have a variety of users but you need start somewhere. Figure out what their struggles and which of them are you looking to solve. To prioritise the struggles conduct research to figure out which ones are currently being under-served and identifying the value of solving that struggle.
Interview users, conduct research and run experiments to form and validate a hypothesis.
Tip: Study the different types of UX techniques that can be used and combine that with market research theory.
14. What to read on Product Management?
Don’t believe there is a singular textbook on PM. But as general recommendations —
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Design of Everyday Things
- The Lean Startup
- Crossing The Chasm
- How To Create Products Customers Love
15. What are the current challenges in Indian Ed-tech ecosystem?
Firstly, Ed-tech is misleading word as a pure tech solution can only go so far in education, especially in the K-12 market. It has to be a tech+person approach. For ed-tech to scale and grow it needs take into account teachers, school administrators and parents.
Beyond that it is about following general product principles — addressable market is often wrongly estimated or only target high-end english speaking families.
Another problem for ed-tech is how to define value. How do you define better learning outcomes? Is it test scores? Personal growth? It needs to be clearly defined both for own growth and against competition. This is important for both growth and pricing strategy.
16. How can the learning pathways be personalised in MOOCs?
Personalisation is a broad field — it can be ability to account for different learner types, it can be ability to create dynamic paths based on learner knowledge, and it can be completely based on personal choices of learner.
You need to have a lot user and content metadata, and have a system that can easily branch based on user requirements.
17. How do you measure success of internal facing products?
Everything comes down to customer impact. Hence, look to identify metrics that will eventually impact customer. Everything is a balance between desirability, feasibility and viability to build.
18. How do you convince higher management about a feature you are enthusiastic to build?
Easiest way is to say your closest competitor is about to do it! :D
It is about coming up with a customer case, P&L case and net-positive case. Come up with a strong hypothesis and use that as argument.
19. Advice for PMs starting off?
It’s always about accountability and success orientation. Once you have that mindset everything else falls into place!
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Product Tank Delhi is the local chapter of Product Tank, a global community, founded in 2010 and currently spanning over 150 cities with over 100,000 members. We aim to bring together the local product community — whether they’re Product Managers, Designers, Developers , or Entrepreneurs— to share their experience and knowledge. We do this through our regularly hosted events such as seminars, workshops and AMAs, all of which are free to attend. #ProductTankDelhi
