How to structure your approach to Product Management: A double diamond view
A product manager is expected to do a whole range of things, from interviewing customers to building a product vision, from consulting stakeholders to collaborating with developers, from rapidly testing assumptions to writing user stories, from analysing data to understanding what is possible technically. The list goes on, but that’s a lot.
The goal of a product manager is to ensure that the team is building things that meet customers needs and drive business value. That is no simple task, and I find some structure helps to achieve this. Here is my approach to doing just that.
Double diamond approach
The double diamond is something that most people have heard of, conventionally used to structure “design thinking”. I use this same concept, but apply it to product management.
Team mission / purpose
A team should know what its mission / purpose is. This should tell the team:
- Who are the customers they are focused on
- What are they trying to help these customers do
- How does this drive business value
I believe this should always be set by the leaders of the organisation. The value that teams are focused on delivering should be an organisation design question. However, I have seen many situations where a team is asked to define it themselves. Whatever the process, it is essential to get this agreed by all relevant stakeholders..
Problem Discovery
The first thing a product manager needs to do is to understand the problems the users are facing. The team mission has dictated what the customer is trying to achieve, but what problems are they facing when they try to achieve this? What needs and desires do they have whilst trying to complete this “job”.
If teams don’t understand the problems they are trying to solve, then it is unlikely that the features they build will deliver any value. At this point, the product manager is just trying to understand as many problems as they can find.
Problem Selection
Hopefully product managers will be able to uncover many problems to solve. They then need to choose which one they are going to focus on right now. They need to select a problem that will:
- drive a lot of value for the customer
- drive a the right value for the business in return.
Melissa Perri talks about how there is a value exchange between customers and a business. The business needs to provide products that create value for the customer, and in return they receive something that they see as business value (usually revenue, data, knowledge capital or promotion). The business value that a company wants at any point in time should be determined by its strategy.
The product manager needs to select problems that, when solved, will create a lot of value for the customer, and in turn will drive business value that aligns to the company strategy.
Solution Discovery
Now that you have a clear problem to solve, a product manager still needs to work out the best way to solve this problem.
This starts with brainstorming, trying to diverge and get as many ideas out there as possible, often with the help of as many people as possible. But this is also where we start testing, as one of the best ways to discover what is the best solution is to start testing ideas with users.
This is where we start hypothesising, and looking to test the assumptions behind those hypotheses. At this stage, the focus is once again about learning and discovery.
Solution Delivery
As we continue to test, we start to turn a corner. We start to hone in on the solution that is going to create the most customer value, and in return the most business value.
At this point we need to shift from thinking about testing assumptions, to planning how to build the solution for scale. We need to work with our development team to build something that is robust enough to deliver value over the long term.
Although we have decided on the solution, there is still learning to be done. We don’t know how to build it perfectly, so we still need to iterate our way to the solution. This is where a lot of the standard agile software delivery practices are necessary, as we incrementally deliver value to the customer and the business.
Conclusion
It is a Product Manager’s job to deliver products that solve customer needs and drive business value. This is not a simple task, as it requires 4 distinct phases:
- Problem discovery
- Problem selection
- Solution discovery
- Solution delivery
Not only does this require many different skills, but it also requires some structure to keep on top of all the different phases. A product manager is often dealing with different problems at different phases at the same time. I find this structure helps to keep on track.
