Your Product is Decisions. Your decisions make you. Leaders have to make decisions every day about priority, vision, strategy, execution, economics and many more. In this session, Smartsheet Senior Director of Product Management, Nitin T. Bhat, discusses making decisions as a product manager. This talk will deep dive into the art of decision making, how to use frameworks to make those decisions and leading with conviction.

2. Nitin T Bhat
Senior Director, Smartsheet6:05pm: Talk
6:30pm: Q&A
@nibhat

3. He is responsible for driving overall
product strategy and direction,
identifying new generation
technologies, M&A, key customer
relationships.
He’s a board member at
Eagle10Ventures and advisor to a
promising venture. Adjunct lecturer at
University of Washington (UW) and
Product School.

4. How to Make Product Decisions
• Your product is decisions.
• These decisions make your product.
• You are making countless decisions
everyday as a PM/leader.

5. Decisions which involve setting vision of your
product, merger and acquisition strategy,
execution, economic impact of pricing and
many more.
What are product decisions?

6. • A good decision does not guarantee
success.
• A bad decision taken at a critical time is a
recipe for failure and often irreversible.

7. Why does it matter?
• Excite turned down buying a
company for $750K in 1999.
• The target company market
cap today is $875.55B.
• Excite was acquired by Ask
Jeeves for $343M in 2004.
• The target company was ?
Source: gs.statcounter.com

8. • Microsoft- Change from on
premise to the cloud

9. All Stock deal for $1.65 Billion.
https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/brand-resources/#logos-icons-colors
Purchased for $1.65B in all stock deal by Google in 2006
Feedback at the time of acquisition
Revenue in 2019 is $15.1B

10. Types of decisions
Type 1- Irreversible-
• Consequential type and one way
doors.
• If you walk through and don’t like
it, you cannot go back to the
previous position.
• Ideally should be made with lot of
deliberations, consultation.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312516530910/d168744dex991.htm
Type 2- Reversible
• Most decisions are reversible.
• Two way doors.
• Ideally should be made by high
judgement individuals or small groups.

11. HOW IT WORKS
MEASURE
BUILD
LEARN

12. HOW IT WORKS
1. BUILD or conduct an experiment to test your assumptions.
2. MEASURE the results of your experiment against your initial
hypothesis.
3. LEARN how to best proceed.
4. Adapt to uncertainty. You will never have perfect information.

13. NEEDS FEATURES BENEFITS
Product decision- Go vs no go
‣ a void or gap in
what the customer
would like to be
able to do, and what
they are able to do.
the “pain.”
‣ a product
specification or
specific function
that allows a
customer to
accomplish certain
tasks. the “what.”
‣ what a product or
feature makes
possible for the
customer. the piece
that satisfies a
customer need. the
“value proposition.”

14. Lessons from my experiences
Crawl, walk, run-
Delight your customers
Easy of use

15. Principles Accountability
Additional context
‣ Define a set of
guiding
principles/core
tenets. Ex data is
always encrypted,
in transit/at rest,
high availability
‣ The process of
decision making is
as important as the
decision outcome.
Ex did you take your
team into
confidence?
‣ Being clear with who
is responsible,
accountable,
consulted vs
informed (RACI)
helps a lot.
Operating model

16. Frameworks
Porter’s five forces-analysis to assess a
market or the industry

17. • Market is defined as a
specific industry that
sells similar products.
• Porter’s analysis is used
to assess market
attractiveness both for
new entrants and existing
companies.

18. Porter’s five forces
• The stronger the five
forces are, the less
attractive is the industry.
• During increased
competition, companies
need more than usual
resources to survive,
which ultimately leads to
less attractiveness.

19. Frameworks
SWOT-Strength, weakness, opportunities,
threat

20. SWOT
What do you do well?
What unique resources can you draw
on?
What do others see as your strength?
What opportunities are open to you?
What trends could you take advantage
of?
How can you turn strengths into
opportunities?
What could you improve?
Where do you have fewer
resources than others?
What do others likely to see as
your weakness?
What threats could harm you?
What is your competition doing?
What threats do your weakness
expose to you?

21. Thank you!