The ABCs of Product Management
A love letter to Product Management from one product geek to another
Hope everyone’s having as happy a holiday as possible! Here’s to a more hopeful 2021!
Despite the challenges this year has rung in, we’ve seen moments of breathtaking compassion and brilliant technological breakthroughs, and we’ve gone through all this together.
Thank you for the journey thus far.
So without further ado, here’s a love letter to Product Management from one product geek to another.
A is for align, you’re getting the creatives on board,
B is for backlog, listing the tasks your team can afford,
C is for customer, the heart and center of your world,
D is for discover, the rabbit holes through which you’ve whirled!
E is for epics, turning story groups into features,
F is for (onboarding) funnels, where we become teachers
G is for Go-to-Market, plan the product’s new release
H to hypothesize — how can user delight increase?
I is for influence, PMs don’t drive as CEO,
J is for justify — devs have full plates, so mindfully go
K is for kudos, give credit whenever credit’s due
L is for lean, so no waterfall chasing for you.
M is for mapping, to shape our long road and the user’s,
N in North Star metric, hitch outcomes to measurable stars,
O is for OKRs, getting on the same page for goals,
P is for problem, sourcing our users’ pain in their roles
Q is for question, ask and ask to root out THE problems
R is for research, analyzing how you can solve ‘em
S is for your stakeholders, need their trust and buy-in
T is for test, validate each and every assumption
U is for usable — get users from Points A to B,
V is for value prop, spell out the perks users can reap.
W is for the “WHY”s (Thanks, Eric Ries and Simon Sinek!),
X is in experience, the thing we need to impact
Y is for yesterday, sift the past where the problem lies, and…
Z is for zero in, let’s ruthlessly prioritize!
A Few Runners-Up (Couldn’t find it in my heart to part with these):
- A: advocate, A/B tests, affinity maps
- B: bias
- I: ideate, iterate, interviews
- K: kanban, Kano
- P: prioritize, pivot, persona, product-market fit
- S: satisfaction, scrum, solution
- T: technical debt
- V: validate
- W: whiteboard
- Z: zero-sum game! Why? It’s the antithesis to Product Management. We compete to innovate— we’re all supposed to win with each new good idea!
What are some of yours?
Happy New Year!
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I know you will enjoy the great content at The Modern Product Manager.
If you prefer books, I think you’d also enjoy Disrupting Yourself (How to Succeed in the New Economy) or Building Digital Products (Handbook for Product Managers).
