If you want to be a bad product manager, assume you know how all of your customers will use your product. You’ve done research, talked with customers, maybe even watched some usability testing. You know the different types of users and how they approach your product. There’s not much else you can do with your product, really, if it’s pretty simple. Plus, if people are buying it or using it for other reasons, you shouldn’t be concerned with those customers — that just takes your attention away from the main purpose of the product and your main target market.
If you want to be a good product manager, continue to learn more about new and different ways customers will use your product. As much as you may design very specific tasks and use scenarios, customers will always find ways to use your product that you never intended.
Understanding these alternative uses will help to identify new markets, new ways to promote your product, and new distribution channels. It also can help suggest minor changes that will better support these new uses without detracting from the main purpose of your product.
Duct tape is the classic example of a product known for its versatility. From home repair to fashion, customers have come up with thousands of ways the product can be used. It can even cure warts!
Dryer sheets were originally intended to reduce static cling and freshen clothes, but customers quickly found alternative uses. Bounce now devotes a section of their web site to “Fresh Ideas,” listing all of the ways that the product can be used.
Understanding alternative uses of your current product can also lead to brand extension and other new product ideas.
WD-40 and baking soda are two other examples of essentially commodity products whose continued success has been driven by an understanding of customer needs and uses for the products. WD-40 introduced their Big Blast can when they saw that customers needed a way to distribute the same formula over a larger surface area more quickly and easily. Arm & Hammer had long recommended baking soda be used inside of refrigerators and freezers for removing odors. Open boxes could easily be spilled, though, which led to the creation of a special non-spill version designed for use in refrigerators and freezers. Arm & Hammer has further extended their line of products, making new products tailored for distinct but common uses.
As a product manager, you need to understand and focus on the main purpose for your product — what the main value is and what markets you are serving. In doing that, though, you need to keep your eyes out for new ways your customers are using the product. This will likely give you clues into new markets, new promotional strategies, new product ideas, or changes to your current product to increase sales and usage.
Showing posts with label Product Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Product Management. Show all posts
Friday, August 12, 2011
Ignore fads; watch trends
If you want to be a bad product manager, react to fads. Your product needs to adapt to popular culture to keep it relevant. Pick the cool fad of the year/month/week and make your product relevant to it. It’s a great way to get attention and free publicity. You don’t want to be left behind as competitors take advantage of the hot fashion of the day.
If you want to be a good product manager, be on the lookout for trends. Trends are usually longer-term movements indicating larger shifts in behavior, attitudes, or beliefs. The decrease in traditional land-line phones, more meals being eaten outside the home, population movement away from rural areas, and increased reliance on web-based services are examples of current trends.
Fads are crazes where there is short-term and perhaps irrational attention paid to the current fashion. Hula-hoops, pet rocks, the Atkins diet, and Mahir (the “I kiss you” guy) are all examples of fads. How many of these are still relevant today? Fads change so quickly that by the time you react the fad you are chasing is probably old news and there is a new popular fad taking over.
Good product managers can look into the future and spot general trends as they begin to impact the market, if not before. While it may seem tempting to jump on the fad bandwagon — Create a branded Chia Pet! Put a dancing hamster on our home page! Set up a MySpace account for our product! — you will get more long-term benefits from identifying trends that may impact your business. There are massive changes going on right now in the global economy, media consumption, spending habits, technology adoption, and social behavior that will be much more relevant to your product and company than the current fad of the week.
As a product manager, you need to be able to identify emerging trends and capitalize on important ones. This will ensure that your products — and you as a product manager — are relevant going forward.
If you want to be a good product manager, be on the lookout for trends. Trends are usually longer-term movements indicating larger shifts in behavior, attitudes, or beliefs. The decrease in traditional land-line phones, more meals being eaten outside the home, population movement away from rural areas, and increased reliance on web-based services are examples of current trends.
Fads are crazes where there is short-term and perhaps irrational attention paid to the current fashion. Hula-hoops, pet rocks, the Atkins diet, and Mahir (the “I kiss you” guy) are all examples of fads. How many of these are still relevant today? Fads change so quickly that by the time you react the fad you are chasing is probably old news and there is a new popular fad taking over.
Good product managers can look into the future and spot general trends as they begin to impact the market, if not before. While it may seem tempting to jump on the fad bandwagon — Create a branded Chia Pet! Put a dancing hamster on our home page! Set up a MySpace account for our product! — you will get more long-term benefits from identifying trends that may impact your business. There are massive changes going on right now in the global economy, media consumption, spending habits, technology adoption, and social behavior that will be much more relevant to your product and company than the current fad of the week.
As a product manager, you need to be able to identify emerging trends and capitalize on important ones. This will ensure that your products — and you as a product manager — are relevant going forward.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Track Customer Requests Appropriately
If you want to be a bad product manager, respond to any feature request that comes in the market. If a customer requests it, there are probably dozens more that you do not receive even enjoy it. If you want to be customer-focused you have to listen to all the feedback from our customers everything that comes in response and. When a display on a bulletin board on a specific potential, so be sure to run either on the function and / or answers, and let people know when it becomes available. You do not want clients who want things you do not have to provide the plans, and you?
If you want to be a good product manager, monitor customer needs and applications of high-level and rank in the long run. You will receive more requests for new features, changes and improvements that can reasonably respond to the capture or even to a granular level. In response to each case, take all your time and leave you with a product without perceptible and focus on a hodgepodge of many reactive functions, without clear benefits.
You must ensure you have a good way to collect and track customer requests as well as internal ideas, so they can feed in your product roadmap. Requirements of individual customers are not as important as the aggregation of all the customer wants. Be careful not to simply be voice, but not so much the number of times a function is listed does not match its importance or priority.
In Getting Real: Forget feature requests, the 37signals team discusses his management (or not) the client requests:
When you launch your products, customers to send hundreds or thousands of requests. ... So what do all these requests? Where are they stored? How can I manage? How do you keep track of all these requests? You do not. Read them and then throw them away. ... It is not necessary to follow or remember everything - let the customer be your memory. Please note.
This can be a bit '"extreme" of your company, but the point is valid. Monitoring the client's desires, rather than counting the number of times each specific location is mentioned, and more understanding of general trends and areas with a potential to delight customers. Although you might want to approach and throw away all the 37signals feature requests and project management of your financial processes can not be otherwise.
Regardless of how you approach it, not overreacting to all requests of each client. Instead, develop a plan to collect and manage customer information - with other sources, such as internal ideas, improved technology and business strategy - and use it to drive improvements in the future and its long-term product sheet map.
If you want to be a good product manager, monitor customer needs and applications of high-level and rank in the long run. You will receive more requests for new features, changes and improvements that can reasonably respond to the capture or even to a granular level. In response to each case, take all your time and leave you with a product without perceptible and focus on a hodgepodge of many reactive functions, without clear benefits.
You must ensure you have a good way to collect and track customer requests as well as internal ideas, so they can feed in your product roadmap. Requirements of individual customers are not as important as the aggregation of all the customer wants. Be careful not to simply be voice, but not so much the number of times a function is listed does not match its importance or priority.
In Getting Real: Forget feature requests, the 37signals team discusses his management (or not) the client requests:
When you launch your products, customers to send hundreds or thousands of requests. ... So what do all these requests? Where are they stored? How can I manage? How do you keep track of all these requests? You do not. Read them and then throw them away. ... It is not necessary to follow or remember everything - let the customer be your memory. Please note.
This can be a bit '"extreme" of your company, but the point is valid. Monitoring the client's desires, rather than counting the number of times each specific location is mentioned, and more understanding of general trends and areas with a potential to delight customers. Although you might want to approach and throw away all the 37signals feature requests and project management of your financial processes can not be otherwise.
Regardless of how you approach it, not overreacting to all requests of each client. Instead, develop a plan to collect and manage customer information - with other sources, such as internal ideas, improved technology and business strategy - and use it to drive improvements in the future and its long-term product sheet map.
What Are The Steps To Be A Product Manager
If you want to be bad for a product manager to avoid awkward or naive-sounding questions. You are responsible for a significant area of business, and do not seem to be ignorant about key issues. It 'a good time to ask basic questions, and the beginning of the life cycle of the product, or a particular project. If you raise those kinds of things at any time across the board, every question your ability to understand the business and bring the product.
If you want to be a good product manager, do not be afraid to ask what may seem like stupid questions. "Dumb" questions are really more about when asked what they are curious about.
Too often, people make assumptions about the products and these assumptions are not addressed. We expect the business model is solid. We expect the market research to find a particular solution. We assume we need to maintain the characteristics of the next version of the product. Stupid questions to challenge these assumptions, the project is often a time when they are relevant.
Some of the most productive and enlightening conversations I've had, when the project is the result of stupid questions asked. These are often the underlying problems that many people have been, but never thought to ask, or were too scared to ask. "This may be a stupid question, and I asked a long time ago, but ..." often starting with very interesting ideas and hypotheses, and each leaves a better understanding of the context and issues.
Once I was in a meeting to discuss a new proposed product. We were talking about financial goals and the reason behind the launch of this product, and spent 90 minutes talking about the technical options, business models, sales channels, and the challenges of integration. Suddenly it occurred to me that if we had discussed market conditions and needs indicated the product is accepted by customers, never really clear whether the product will meet the specific business objectives were established.
Once I asked stupid questions - "What is the underlying problem we face is to actually fix this problem?" - All quickly realized that this product could meet the needs of the client, but the approach we consider does not meet the objectives of the organization. He quickly regrouped and began to address this issue as well. If I had not asked the "stupid" question, I would have gone further in the wrong way and waste and more than 90 minutes of conversation.
When a product manager to do these stupid questions, you can also create an environment where other people can ask questions such as, without fear. Questions to the best business models to become a developer, the best questions about the marketing strategy to become the designers and the best questions on the need for operations to customer service representatives. You can get the most out of these questions, the more you are able to deal with them to create a better product and get the R & D team to rely on what they create.
If you want to be a good product manager, do not be afraid to ask what may seem like stupid questions. "Dumb" questions are really more about when asked what they are curious about.
Too often, people make assumptions about the products and these assumptions are not addressed. We expect the business model is solid. We expect the market research to find a particular solution. We assume we need to maintain the characteristics of the next version of the product. Stupid questions to challenge these assumptions, the project is often a time when they are relevant.
Some of the most productive and enlightening conversations I've had, when the project is the result of stupid questions asked. These are often the underlying problems that many people have been, but never thought to ask, or were too scared to ask. "This may be a stupid question, and I asked a long time ago, but ..." often starting with very interesting ideas and hypotheses, and each leaves a better understanding of the context and issues.
Once I was in a meeting to discuss a new proposed product. We were talking about financial goals and the reason behind the launch of this product, and spent 90 minutes talking about the technical options, business models, sales channels, and the challenges of integration. Suddenly it occurred to me that if we had discussed market conditions and needs indicated the product is accepted by customers, never really clear whether the product will meet the specific business objectives were established.
Once I asked stupid questions - "What is the underlying problem we face is to actually fix this problem?" - All quickly realized that this product could meet the needs of the client, but the approach we consider does not meet the objectives of the organization. He quickly regrouped and began to address this issue as well. If I had not asked the "stupid" question, I would have gone further in the wrong way and waste and more than 90 minutes of conversation.
When a product manager to do these stupid questions, you can also create an environment where other people can ask questions such as, without fear. Questions to the best business models to become a developer, the best questions about the marketing strategy to become the designers and the best questions on the need for operations to customer service representatives. You can get the most out of these questions, the more you are able to deal with them to create a better product and get the R & D team to rely on what they create.
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