Product management fundamentals (from my perspective), presented at the Startup Journey 2015 accelerator program at Boost Turku (Finland) on 2015-07-08.

1. Startup Journey 2015
Product Management
Boost Turku, 2015-07-08
Anna Ronkainen @ronkaine
anna.ronkainen@trademarknow.com

2. Look who’s talking
Anna Ronkainen
- a lawyer at least on paper (LL.M., U of Copenhagen);
also studied EE/CS & linguistics; researcher in
computational legal theory (U of Helsinki) – I’ll also be
talking to you about intellectual property on Aug 12...
- Chief Scientist and co-founder, TrademarkNow Inc.,
head of product 2012–2015
- worked in the software industry since the early 1990s,
in project and product management roles since ~2000
- serious design (especially typography) geek; occasional
usability scholar as well

3. About TrademarkNow
- founded in 2012, based in Helsinki, NYC
and Kilkenny, now ~30 employees
- products based on an AI model of likelihood
of confusion for trademarks, based on my
own basic research in computational legal
theory (since 2002)
- NameCheck: intelligent TM search
- NameWatch: intelligent TM watch

4. Disclaimer: Everything I’ll
say is bullshit
– including what I just said!

5. In other words:
If what I say doesn’t seem to make sense to
you, it’s probably just not applicable to your
vertical.
Trust your intuition – but also remember to
question your assumptions from time to time!

6. Product management in a nutshell
http://vooza.com/videos/just-say-no/

7. Of course we’re in favour of
automation whenever possible
Our latest product
management hire (can
handle ~90% of all
feature suggestions
from prospects and
customers)

8. Why you should end up saying “no” to
most things
- you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) do
everything, product focus is crucial
- (most) end-users are not designers: their
suggested “improvements” would usually
make the product worse
- still, they are indicative of real problems and
tell where you should dig deeper to find out
what the actual problems are and how to
best address them

9. End-users are not designers:
You get this...

10. ...rather than this:

11. 12 arguments you should say no to
1. But the data looks good
2. But it’ll only take a few
minutes
3. But this customer is
about to quit
4. But we can just make it
optional
5. But my cousin’s
neighbour said...
6. But we’ve nothing else
planned
7. But we’re supposed to
be allowed to work on
whatever we want
8. But 713,000 people
want it
9. But our competitors
already have it
10. But if we don’t build it,
someone else will
11. But the boss really wants
it
12. But this could be “the
one”
(from Intercom on Product Management)

12. Design thinking
- Peter Drucker: the job of designers is
“converting need into demand” – figuring
out what people want and giving it to them
(i.e., innovating)
- Tim Brown of IDEO: The challenge for
design thinkers is to “help people to
articulate the latent needs they may not
even know they have”
- desirable, viable, feasible

13. Design thinking tools
- insight: go out into the world and learn from
the lives of others
- observation: watch what people do (and do
not do) and listen to what they say (and do
not say)
- empathy: stand in the shoes of others,
connect with their emotions.

14. Getting towards MVP

15. Minimum viable cake

16. You can’t outsource product vision
The answers to your questions are inside this
building. They have to be. But you do have to
get out of the building to make sure you are
asking the right questions (and to validate
your answers)!

17. You can’t A/B test your way to a MVP
A/B testing works (at most) for marginal
improvements – and even for them only if you
have the volume to draw statistically
significant conclusions.

18. My/our answer: Build something for
yourself (and be your toughest customer)
(a.k.a. the Steve Jobs
school of product
management)
Works for (almost)
anything:

19. What do you do
if you can’t be your own customer
- at least try to pretend: empathy, empathy,
empathy!
- do get out of the building – often and a lot
- being an usability geek helps a lot with
product design and management,
but tends to make your life a hell
around poor usability

20. Concrete product design tools
- interviews
- questionnaires
- think-aloud
- personas
- user stories (“as a ____, I want to ____ in
order to ____”)
- doing it yourself
- product roadmap
- (A/B tests)

21. The Jobs-to-be-Done framework

22. Things to consider before saying yes to
product features
1. Does it fit your
product vision?
2. Will it still matter in 5
years?
3. Will everyone benefit
from it?
4. Will it improve,
complement or
innovate on the
existing workflow?
5. Does it grow the
business?
6. Will it generate new
meaningful
engagement?
7. If it succeeds, can we
support and afford it?
8. Can we design it so
that reward is greater
than effort?
9. Can we do it well?
10. Can we scope it well?
(from Intercom on Product Management)

23. Be agile, don’t “do Agile®”
- in a larger project, have some sense of
overall direction, but don’t think you can
design everything at once
- plan for something a sprint, do it, get it out
to users, evaluate and plan next iteration
- focus on doing things mindfully, use your
common sense as well as your own domain
expertise rather than just think following
some methodology will solve everything

24. Product management/production cycles
- sprint (1–4 weeks each): work planned, and
specified in considerable detail
- current & next quarter: split work into sprint-size
chunks, ordered according to critical paths
- roadmap: major features and new products in
broad terms per quarter
This is usually too much structure to be worth it pre-
MVP (unless you’re doing something really really
complicated).
Also a tool for deciding what not to do!
(At least not until...)

25. What do users (really)
want?

27. Even B2B products are still bought by
people!
- ... you just may have to convince more of
them
- but you still have to make them want the
product on a personal level (in terms of
whatever evaluation framework they are
using)
- see the market in terms of Unique Buying
States, not just Unique Selling Points

28. Suck threshold
(Kathy Sierra: Badass – Making Users Awesome)

30. The Flow™ charts
(Csikszentmihalyi 1975, 1990 etc.)

31. Resources
- Steve Blank and Bob Dorf: The Startup
Owner’s Manual
- Intercom on Product Management (free
ebook): https://www.intercom.io/books/product-management
- Mind the Product conference, videos of
presentations from past editions at
http://www.mindtheproduct.com/category/product-management-videos/
- ProductCamp, ProductTank meetups (also in
Finland)
- Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things

32. Questions?
Thank you!