Delivered to the Imperial College Business School, May 2016

1. A CASUAL INTRODUCTION
TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
or,
All of the responsibility
& none of the power…
Imperial College / May 2016
Randy Silver

2. A bit about
me.
http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/well-i-was-born-at-a-very-young-age-and-me-too-70601

3. bbc.co.uk

5. https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5387961900
Where do we fit?

6. The
essential
quality of
Product
Managers
http://statement.sg/products/plays-well-with-others

7. Martin Eriksson / Mind the Product

8. We have 2
jobs…
http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/11/dinosaur-supervisor-demoted-after-letting-everyone-get-killed-in-jurassic-park-
• Figure out what
to do
• Convince
people to do it

9. What does
a Product
Manager
actually do,
anyway?
Feature
Development
Putting
out fires
Organisational
process &
analysis
Competitor
research
Stakeholder &
Customer
management
User
research
The dirty secret:
for the most part,
we’re middle
management
Staring
into
space
Prioritisation,
Backlog &
Roadmap

10. Essential
skills
• Technical
• Coding
• Hosting & Delivery
• Infrastructure
• Mobile
• Marketing & Sales
• SEO/SEM
• Business Management
• Governance
• Budgeting
• Vendor Management
• Stakeholder Management
• User Experience
• Testing
• Interviewing
• Design
• Content Development, Management &
Publishing
• Support
• Data, Analytics & Reporting

11. Essential
skills
(really)
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/55/c3/d6/55c3d6e553a7b53bd45cd849c3b9c16e.jpg
(possibly. obligatory
Einstein quote of
dubious provenance.

12. CEO of the
product?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Customer-Fire-Everybody-Company/dp/B00MY1LQZQ/

13. Product vs
Project
Managers “A Project Manager is like a midwife -
he/she delivers the baby, hands it
over to the mother and moves on.
The baby being the product and the
mother being the Product Manager.”
-Derek Morrison
Head of Product, Practice
Tesco

14. Portfolio
management
https://www.flickr.com/photos/miajudkins/4124218980

15. Portfolio
management
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/evildead/images/b/b1/Ash.png/revision/latest?cb=20140719001020

16. Product
Managers
and
Product
Leaders
Product leaders create the conditions
for product managers to succeed.
We need to build strong relationships
with Engineering and Marketing/Sales;
craft sensibly lightweight processes;
and help cut through the inevitable
company politics.
We need to push our product
managers to take strong action and
defend them when they do. We need
to keep executives focused on markets,
value and problems to be solved.
-Rich Mironov
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-do-product-leaders-worry-rich-mironov?

17. A short aside
about lean,
scrum, agile,
kanban or
any other
idealised
process or
philosophy.

18. Your company will never love you.
*unless you own it
https://xkcd.com/317/

19. Resources &
Development
• Product Tank / Mind the Product
• Blog, meetup, Slack group &
conference
• Meetups
• London Product Talks, London
Product Group, many more
• Podcasts:
• A16Z, This is Product
Management, Ready Product
Radio, Product Hunt, UIE Brain
Sparks
• General Assembly
• Silicon Valley Product Group
• Product Manager HQ
• Many, many articles on Medium
• Rich Mironov, Ken Norton, Melissa
Perri, Jeff Gothelf, Jared Spool and
many many more

20. randy.silver@gmail.co
m