Are you doing everything to make your product, offering or organisation successful in the post Covid era?

1. What should PMs do to face the post-
Covid world
Khilan Haria

2. Disclaimer
The content presented here is for knowledge sharing purpose only. These are views and opinions of the speaker.
And shouldn’t be construed as views of his employer.

3. The Macro view

4. Widespread
epidemic
Source: Bond Covid Trends

5. How big is this going to be?
Most of us underestimate outlier events
➢ Confirmation bias
➢ Illusion of understanding its real impact
➢ Resistance to change

6. Embrace the reality
Economic Engine of this globalised era has stopped
➢ Dont ignore
➢ Disruption & Chaos on a large scale
➢ Important to identify its direct impact - both the good and the bad one.
Source: The Economist

7. When things will get back to normal?
Mar 2021
Average case
Sep 2021
Worst case
Mar 2020
Engine has stopped
Sep 2020
Best case recovery
Build a hypothesis basis the macro situation and your industry

8. Exponential boost in very few cases
Launched in Jan 2013. Took ~7 years to get to first 10m users.

9. Extreme positive or extreme negative?
Positive impact
Video
OTT
E-grocery
Ed-tech
Gaming
Negative impact
Pretty much everyone else

10. What should PMs do in these uncertain times?

11. Stay course or make change?
Be ready to reflect & pivot
Source: Shutterstock

12. Impact across the PM’s lifecycle
Strategy
Does your business & product strategy
need a refresh?
Roadmap
Are you doing something that may not
make sense anymore? Are there newer
ideas that you should be building now?
Conceptualisation
More hypothesis drive and less research
driven
Go-to-market
Silent launches might be the norm for now
Build
More imp that ever for a PM to energise
everyone and execute with the same
intensity
05
01
02 03
04

13. Strategy
Near-term
➢ Growth v/s sustainability
➢ Demand will take some time to re-emerge
➢ Supply would also be constrained in the near term
Post-Covid
➢ Consumer behavior could change for the forseeable future.
➢ This crisis will not change the fundamentals of our Digital economy.
➢ Will make it even stronger. There is a good chance that digital might get accelerated in our everyday lives.

14. Roadmap - Revisit the current plans
Near-term roadmap (FY Q1 2021)
➢ Demonstrate adaptability - Revisit your goals and Roadmap
○ Humans by nature don’t like change. However, as a PM your job is to ensure the right idea gets
merit every day, every week. So don’t hesitate in reprioritising your plans immediately.
➢ Avoid sunk cost fallacy
○ Just because you are halfway there, does not mean you need to see it through
➢ Question every single item that is currently in your Q1 2021 Roadmap with this new piece of information
○ For e.g. if I was building a product or an enhancement for the travel industry, I would park it right
away.

15. Roadmap - Ready yourself for the post Covid world
Post Covid opportunities
➢ Strategic time-out to ready yourself for the next wave
○ Not always easy to drive a car at 300 kmph and take a curve. Rare focussed window to take a pause
and build for the basics and build it right.
➢ Identify new use-cases
○ This time of crisis might result in irreversible consumer behavior change. Identify the implications
for your industry. Be ready to utilise its potential. Start building towards it.
➢ Avoid experimentation or pick more certain bets
○ In your prioritisation framework, you would generally focus on Cost, Impact and Probability of
success. Put more weightage to probability of success in the near-term.

16. Build
Your role as a PO is more important now than ever
➢ Over communicate
➢ Don’t sugarcoat the reality
➢ Provide super clarity on why we are building this now
➢ Documentation is super important

17. Conceptualisation
Solutioning might be tougher than in normal times
➢ Difficult to whiteboard while we are all working remotely. Move over to documentation. PR-FAQs are a good bet.
➢ Avoid waterfall. Dont have to do a 30 page PRD before your Designers and Engineers can get involved.
➢ May not be possible to do enough customer research. Utilise secondary research.
➢ Diagnose and do problem validation both through data - as much as you can.

18. Go-to-market
Launch silently
➢ Launching now is going to be more tricky than in normal times.
➢ Show sensitivity to your customers
➢ Adapt to avoid backlash

19. Personal front

20. L&D
➢ Time to become a better PM
➢ Utilise this time to learn new skills
➢ Ready yourself for the next wave of digital growth

21. Summary

22. Recap
➢ Demonstrate agility and adaptability.
➢ Be comfortable to deprioritise and change tracks.
➢ Identify newer opportunities.
➢ Documentation - Without this you and your team might feel lost.
➢ Digital would get a massive boost and you roles as PMs would be super important.

23. Thank you