What's a ‘product’?
As a product person, I shall pen what bugs me the most about being one.
Product management has long been struggling for definition. More often than not, product managers are widely confused as project managers. It’s borderline embarrassing to admit that even my own developers think of me as the person who chairs their meetings/standups, write notes, clear up war rooms after we’re done with sprints, and all that ad hoc stuff. After having to repeat myself for the millionth time, I figured I should illustrate what product and product management is.
Here’s my hypothesis: People have a very vague definition of what a product is.
And if people don’t exactly know what’s a product, how can you possibly manage it?
While giving talks and conducting product design sprints over the last few months, I flashed this out to fish for responses:
“ermmm, it’s something that people sell?”
“It’s something that has value!”
“It’s something tangible that you can hold in your hands.”
or better yet, *blank silence*
The answers were enough to confirm my suspicions.
Here’s a definition of what’s a product, put together by some few good years of practicing product management.
At one spectrum of things, you have your business idea, your business model, your business development, your financials, your market trends and sizing, your competitor analysis, your business model canvas.
Then there’s your techy bits, the makeup of your mobile/web app, your sprint backlog, your tech stack, your server, your programming language, your TDD (test-driven development) practices, your waterfall/scrum.
Then there’s your visual identity, the way your colours, typography and logo works together, the UX (user experience), UI (user interface), the interactions, the animations.
Often overlooked, is your company culture, your team, your culture hacks, your rituals, your core values, your shared beliefs, your processes, your hiring, your organisation structure. Culture is an integral component because of the unseen but powerful impact it has on your product.
At the center of it all is your brand, the purpose for your business, the why you do what you do other than for profits. Your brand forms the soul, the heartbeat, the anchor for all that you do, and should consistently be reflected in all components of your product.
And finally, product is the entire outcome of all your efforts, the magic of all the different components coming together. Product is the collective what of your startup.
Product management hence, is the how, the management of all these different components to ensure success and realisation of the product’s vision. And a product manager’s role is to do whatever’s that necessary to drive that vision home.
I’ll be speaking about building loveable products at Echelon Malaysia 2015, so be sure to sit in if you happen to be there.
Do share and recommend this piece if you through it has been useful to you. Also, follow me on Twitter.
