CSSE 490:
Fundamentals of Product Management
Week 1: Intro to PM
Agenda
Who am I?
Syllabus Review
Course goals
Should you choose to, you should be able to get a job in PM. This means:
Course overview*
* subject to change ;)
Warning: this is not a typical course
There are no formulas
There are no right answers
Why am I here?
I want to give you money!
Why are you here?
The who, what, and why of PM
Most products fail
Why do PMs exist?
The best tech doesn’t always win
The best product wins*
Case study: Mongo vs Rethink
Case study: Mongo vs Rethink
...the product decisions were entirely within our control. We wanted to build an elegant, robust, and beautiful product, so we optimized for the following metrics:
It turned out that correctness, simplicity of the interface, and consistency are the wrong metrics of goodness for most users.
Case study: Mongo vs Rethink
The majority of users wanted these three trade-offs instead:
Case study: Mongo vs Rethink
“It's not that we didn't try to ship quickly, make RethinkDB fast, and build the ecosystem around it to make doing useful work easy. We did. But correct, simple, and consistent software takes a very long time to build. That put us three years behind the market.
By the time we felt RethinkDB satisfied our design goals and we were confident enough to recommend it to be used in production, almost everyone was asking ‘how is RethinkDB different from MongoDB?’ We worked hard to explain why correctness, simplicity, and consistency are important, but ultimately these weren't the metrics of goodness that mattered to most users.”
RethinkDB: why we failed
gist.github.com/ramalho/93b87e961b6e019be8e1f6f82864b6f9
Technology is a means to an end
Technology is not the end itself
What is product management?
PM is an overloaded term
Made more confusing by overlap in the usage (e.g. Microsoft’s product folks are called Program Managers, and Google’s Project Managers are called Technical Program Managers)
The job of a PM is to discover problems and deliver solutions to customers
Analogy time: PMs are farmers
Farmer “does” and “doesn’ts”
Does:
Doesn’t:
PM “does” and “doesn’ts”
Does:
Doesn’t:
PMs are interfaces
Customers
PM
Business
Needs
Pitches, corrals, etc.
Products
Objectives
PMs are hubs
Design
PM
Engineering
Sales
Marketing
Operations
Legal
Finance
Leadership
Testing/QA
Support
Note: PM differs based on organization size
Why would I be a product manager?
Why would I want to be a PM?
Who are PMs?
The product mindset
What is “product vision”?
Where do products come from?
Product: Problem
Solution
Insight
Product: Need
Hypothesis
Reason
Everything starts with user needs
Example user needs
I need a place to stay in a city, and I want to stay like a local
I need to commute to the office, but I don’t have a car
I need office space for my company, but can’t negotiate a lease
I need to make a healthy dinner, but I can’t cook
Users “hire” products to fill their needs
Products have “Jobs To Be Done”
“The company started by segmenting its market both by product (milkshakes) and by demographics (a marketer's profile of a typical milkshake drinker). Next, the marketing department asked people who fit the demographic to list the characteristics of an ideal milkshake (thick, thin, chunky, smooth, fruity, chocolaty, etc.). The would-be customers answered as honestly as they could, and the company responded to the feedback. But alas, milkshake sales did not improve.”
“[Christensen] approached the situation by trying to deduce the ‘job’ that customers were ‘hiring’ a milkshake to do. First, he spent a full day in one of the chain's restaurants, carefully documenting who was buying milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they drank them on the premises. He discovered that 40 percent of the milkshakes were purchased first thing in the morning, by commuters who ordered them to go.
The next morning, he returned to the restaurant and interviewed customers who left with milkshake in hand, asking them what job they had hired the milkshake to do.”
“‘Most of them, it turned out, bought [the milkshake] to do a similar job,’ he writes. ‘They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to keep that extra hand busy and to make the commute more interesting. They weren't yet hungry, but knew that they'd be hungry by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.’”
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clay-christensens-milkshake-marketing
Users can be over OR under served
Overserved examples
Often very easy to tell users who are overserved (mature markets)
Overserved users often require little education (they know their problems)
Underserved examples
Underserved users have a key issue: nobody knows they’re underserved!
Users can be under AND over served
I want to stay at a hotel in a foreign city
I want to feel like I belong when I go on vacation
I want to commute to work
I want to show up at work without having to worry
Different jobs for different users
Jobs have both functional and emotional pieces
What about well served users?
What makes a good problem?
Where do you get ideas?
Read the news, daily
Pick one from each category:
Aggregators are great (Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt)!
I also strongly recommend newsletters/blogs
Don’t be afraid to branch out beyond your comfort zone
Talk to a lot of people
Ask “why?” a lot
What is the hardest part of doing X?
When was the last time you had X?
Why was X hard?
What have you used to solve X?
What don’t you love about X?
Have hobbies, do them socially
Get warm introductions
Reach out cold (Twitter, email, etc.)
Brainstorming exercises
For next week
E.g.: