![](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-SV6765WCZXc\/WnbcRhW_IjI\/AAAAAAAAC5I\/JVxdbGuliFAErTnDw8jutHICs-FXOor4wCK4BGAYYCw\/s640\/YJnZiVsIQn6F6JxzMmL6_Product%2BVision.png\")
<\/a><\/div>\nFollowing this template, you end up with a quarterly roadmap that has every action and each person\u2019s work closely connected with the company\u2019s direction and purpose.<\/i><\/p>\n
4. Effective Stakeholder Communication<\/b>
Group 1: Executives and leadership<\/i>
Do…
-Send presentations, decks and other materials before every meeting.
-Validate every decision with data.
-Be specific about the executives’ desired participation.
-Take notes and close the loop.
-Send high-level updates right after each meeting with action items.
Don\u2019t…
-Go into too much detail.
-Surprise anyone with bad news. If the news is bad, reach out to folks 1:1 in advance.
-Show up unprepared.
-Ignore room dynamics.<\/p>\n
Group 2: Your own team<\/i>
Do…
-Leverage efficient daily stand-ups.
-Review strategy\/roadmaps regularly.
-Record and send out notes on key decisions and actions.
-Reward team members often, tell anecdotes about customer pain points that were alleviated.
Don\u2019t…
-Make decisions without engineering and design.
-Send action items\/requests without talking about them first, 1:1 or stand-up.
-Forget to update folks on roadmap or specs changes, particularly important after meeting with execs.<\/p>\n
Group 3: Internal and external partners<\/i>
Do…
-Exhibit detailed understanding of their work and domain.
-Use the right format at the right time with the right audience.
-Leverage your teammates. Bring in engineering leads.
-Gently and continuously educate them. Partners sometimes don\u2019t know the consequences of their actions.
-Build relationships outside of work meetings.
-Create transparency. Don\u2019t rely on others to communicate to everyone.
Don\u2019t…
-Forget who to loop in at what stage.
-Make stakeholders feel ignored.
-Forget you have more insight than anyone else. Stakeholders don\u2019t see your roadmap.
-Allow meetings to end without clarity.
-Forget to educate about timelines and tradeoffs.<\/p>\n
Group 4: Customers<\/i>
Do…
-Always start with the user problem. Ask why and understand the journey that creates that pain point.
-Keep, what\u2019s important to them, top of mind.
-Treat email copy as a part of the product experience.
-Generate empathy for yourself by reading through user feedback, attending user studies in person\u2026
Don\u2019t…
-Leave product communications\/messaging to the last minute. *Start with this, don\u2019t end with it.
-Assume marketing will position the product themselves.
-Leave customer success in the dark about launch.
-Believe internal products require no roll out.<\/p>\n
5. Create Compelling Product Messaging<\/b>
Start with one question:
What superpower do you want to give your user? For example, the iPhone lets us navigate to unknown places wherever we are in the world.<\/i> As a PM, it\u2019s your job to ensure the entire team knows the story you\u2019re trying to create for your users. *This should come first in your development process, not last.
Will Carlin\u2019s 5 C\u2019s framework comes in hand for telling strong stories<\/i> (your goal should be to craft a story around a single user \u2014 not a group of users).
-Context<\/i>: Establish the setting and identity of the user you\u2019re talking to.
-Conflict<\/i>: The problem your product attempts to solve for that user.
-Conflict Escalation<\/i>: Really visualize what it\u2019s like for a user to encounter this problem. Draw out the emotions tied to the pain point and solutions that have been tried but failed. Really feel and describe the frustration, disappointment, etc.
-Climax<\/i>: Your product is introduced \u2014 what changes for the user?
-Conclusion<\/i>: Detailed description of the improvement in the user\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Use this framework to create a story about your product. Remember, no matter what you do, different versions of your story will emerge once it launches. To win, craft the story that is closest and most personal to your user.<\/i> The more emotionally resonant it is, the more it will drown out competing perspectives.<\/p>\n
6. Build Your Best Product Team<\/b>
You have to hire people who aren\u2019t just talented, but who are perfect for your particular business.
Develop a strategic hiring plan by determining who on your existing team should be a part of the hiring process (all relevant folks the role will interface with), and the concrete steps every candidate will take between application and hire.
-Build a strategic hiring plan.
-Define key competencies
-Standardize your assessment of competencies.
Running this exercise is time intensive. You have to run several voting rounds to arrive at competencies, questions for each competence, and then the best and worst responses to each question.<\/i> Sounds like a lot, but it\u2019s incredibly worth it to have a standardized approach created collaboratively \u2014 one that can be recycled and reused again and again as hiring picks up pace.<\/p>\n
7. Scale Yourself as a Product Leader<\/b>
PMs should focus on scaling in four areas: decision making, velocity, collaboration and empowerment.<\/p>\n
Decision making starts to slow down and crack at a certain point of growth.<\/i> The warning sign is too many cooks in the kitchen and slowed pace. The antidote is the DACI framework<\/i>:
-Driver<\/i>: The one person responsible for the project who drives process and keeps everyone aligned.
-Approver<\/i>: The person who approves the proposal\/recommendation for the project.
-Contributors<\/i>: People working on the project team, providing input, producing work, etc.
-Informed<\/i>: People kept in the loop about the project and results, but not contributing.<\/p>\n
Velocity of work starts to slow down as tech debt accumulates and teams grow. <\/i>To fix it, create durable teams around durable problems. To avoid scope creep and last-minute design changes, Chang recommends the following product development process<\/i>:
-Goal definition<\/i>: Everyone included in your DACI framework should come together and emerge with a singular goal for the product.
-Product definition<\/i>: Align on scope of the project and what will be required to solve the problem at hand. What is and isn\u2019t out of scope?
-Design review<\/i>: Be explicit about the type of feedback you want and don\u2019t want.
-Tech review<\/i>: Make sure everyone has a chance to debate and buy into the technical approach.
-Go\/no-go<\/i>: Review your checklist to make sure the rest of the org is operationally ready for a product\/project launch \u2014 i.e. customer service has the bandwidth to answer questions, etc.<\/p>\n
Collaboration starts to break at a certain company size.<\/i> Free people up and fuel effective collaboration with these three moves:
–Make your product roadmap and product docs accessible to the entire company<\/i>.
–Hold Gate Meetings to force decisions<\/i> that must be made to proceed.
–Send decision emails to communicate to all possible stakeholders<\/i> when big decisions have been made and why.<\/p>\n
Empowerment at scale becomes important when teams get so big that people feel like they\u2019re just executing on other people\u2019s orders.<\/i> Several strategies to combat this are:
–Present options instead of a firm decision<\/i>.
–Start milestone meetings with a background share<\/i>.<\/p>\n
8. Drive Product Development with Data<\/b>
PMs use data to align stakeholders with roadmaps<\/i>, track efficacy of what’s been built, and prioritize what to build next.
-You have to gather implicit data.<\/i> Stop making excuses. If you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll have no real visibility into how users will react to new features. These can be little experiments, like seeing if someone will click on a link.
-Don\u2019t underestimate the importance of explicit data.<\/i> Protect yourself against this by taking in qualitative feedback shared directly by your users.
-Always go to your customers when you observe them.<\/i> see how people are using your product in their natural habitat. If they\u2019ve developed any workarounds, take special note.<\/i>
-Find the right users for your questions.<\/i> At B2B companies, product managers often find themselves engaging with the C-suite at their customers. Determine who is the most relevant user of your product, and pose the questions to them directly.<\/i>
–Find a meaningful metric for your performance.<\/i> Net Promoter Score is a common choice, but that\u2019s not universally appropriate. You could augment it with a Customer Effort Score \u2014a measure of whether the company made it easier to perform certain tasks.<\/p>\n
9. Going from PM to Founder<\/b>
In many ways, product management is the ideal springboard for founders.<\/i> It\u2019s a position that affords you opportunities to go deep in areas<\/i> that will serve you when running your own business, like:
-negotiation<\/i>
-P&L and forecasting<\/i>
-legal-<\/i>
-hiring<\/i>
-operations<\/i>
<\/i>But before you can get into all of that, you need to be sure you\u2019re choosing the right idea to work on.<\/i>
How do you know if an idea is worth pursuing? Evaluate each one according to Marty Cagan\u2019s Four Big Risks:<\/i>
-Value<\/i>: Do people want this? When you talk to prospective users, do they see value in what you\u2019re building?
-Usability<\/i>: Can people figure your solution or product out intuitively?
-Feasibility<\/i>: Can you and an eventual team build what you have in mind within a realistic time frame with the resources you can realistically get?
-Viability<\/i>: Is there a clear business model and path to making money?
Before you set out after an idea, make sure you can check each of these boxes and confidently explain your answers to each of these questions to possible investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
#mustread \u2026 The best companies are most often built by extraordinary product minds. Even if you\u2019re not a PM right now, you can benefit from adopting the habits and strategies that make talented PMs successful. 17 Product Managers Who Will Own the Future of NYC Tech \u2014 and the 9 Frameworks They\u2019ll Use to Do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,50,26,29,44,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosillas-empresariales","category-diseno","category-el-critico-como-artista","category-gestion","category-innovacion","category-start-it-up"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}