Do you have product management in your DNA? Product management awareness sesssion

1. Do you have product management
in your DNA?
@kurtbiesemans
Kurt.biesemans@atendi.care

5. Who am I
• Started SW development mid nineties, Traditional path from developer – analyst – consultant –
business consultant
• Last couple of years focus on entrepreneurship with a ‘weak’ for product management
• Co-founder & product manager atendi.care
• Interim product manager
• Co-founder & organizer ProductTank BXL
• Mentor @Start-it KBC
• Product management evangelist helping companies to get PM ship in their DNA

6. My digital channels
• @kurtbiesemans
• Every (work) day tweet about #productmanagement

8. My digital channels
• @kurtbiesemans
• Every (work) day tweet about #productmanagement
• Facebook group ProductTank BXL

10. My digital channels
• @kurtbiesemans
• Every (work) day tweet about #productmanagement
• Facebook group ProductTank BXL
• ProductTank BXL meetup
https://www.meetup.com/nl-NL/ProductTank-
Brussels/

12. Who are you?
• Name
• Startup / organisation
• Current role
• What do you expect of today
NOT:
I want to learn something about Product
management

14. What is Product Management
create customer value and business benefits
by identifying customer problems
to create product experiences
that outwit the competition
over a sustainable period
BUILD PRODUCTS THAT DELIGHT!

15. What is Product Management
?? create customer value and business benefits ??

16. What is Product Management
?? by identifying customer problems ??

17. What is Product Management
?? to create product experiences ??

18. What is Product Management
?? that outwit the competition ??

19. What is Product Management
?? over a sustainable period ??

20. What is Product Management
BUILD PRODUCTS THAT DELIGHT!

21. NOW, Let’s talk about
product managers

22. What EXACTLY does a
product manager do?

23. Can you explain it your
your parents?

25. More simply…

26. What DOESN’T a
product manager do?

27. What DOESN’T a pm do?
• Write code (engineering)
• Create mock-ups (design)
• Sign deals (Business Development)
• Plan PR (Communications)
• Support (Customer support)

30. Definition: A product manager helps
their team (and company)
ship the right product
to their users
Product manager

31. help YOUR team

32. Anyone working directly on the product (or an area
of the product)
Designers, engineers, QA, documentation, marketing
team members from adjunct teams, business
development, support, legal, sales
Who’s on the team

33. Your role

35. You are not the “CEO of the product” you are a
teamleader
Your role

37. Challenges
• Engaging all the stakeholders, know who to involve,
when and how
• Struggle to delight customers / users while juggling
overtaxed resourced and tight deadlines
• Capture market requirements

38. Challenges
• Ensuring on-time, within-budget delivery of the
right product
• Finding critical information you need at the
moment you need it instead of searching through
mails, spreadsheets, SharePoint, …..
• Prioritizing and re-prioritizing what goes in each
release, based on new info, pressure, …..

39. Challenges
• Fast changing market dynamics
• Legal stuff
• Product Manager needs to be the expert in
everything
• You are on your own, it is a lonely job

41. Great product managers
understand the very tricky
balance between getting it right
and getting it out the door

42. Product vision

44. Simon Sinek
• Author of best seller ‘Start with the Why’ (2009)
• Talks about the golden circle
WHY
HOW
WHAT

45. Start with the why
We make……

46. Start with the why
Enhance the relation between patient and
pharmacist
Increase medicine compliance to lower the number
of diabetisc patients
Create awareness for the need of product managers
within startups / companies
Examples

47. Then How and What

48. Product Vision canvas

49. Market research
• Why
• Get to know the market (size, evolution, shifts,…)
• Get to know competition
• Validate your idea / Product
• Validate your business model
• Validate your pricing strategy
• Validate your placement (distribution, image,…)
• Promoting / Seeding

50. Market research
• How
• Go out and talk with people
• Influencers
• Users
• Prospects that will ‘never’ by your product’
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Collect data and analyze
• Events
• Focus groups
• Define persona’s
• Do it yourself!

51. Product roadmaps

52. What?
• It communicates the why and what behind what
you’re building
• High-level visual summary that maps out the vision
and direction of your product offering over time

53. Why?
• Helps you planning on the long term
• Set milestones for you and the team
• Strategic communication document
• Get internal stakeholders in alignment
• Help communicate to external stakeholders, including
customers
• Have something to measure success

54. Euhhh, but we are agile?
• A roadmap can be a living document
• Far shorter timeframes
• More frequent adjustments
• To reflect changing priorities and market opportunities
• Focus on goals that you want to achieve, not on
features

56. Backlog vs. Release

57. Backlog
• List of features (backlog items)
• Features that ‘might’ be implemented in the future
• Need to be groomed (continuous)
• Features have:
• Goal and/or initiative
• Priority
• (High level) Estimation
• Origin
• Status

58. Release
• Big ideas you bring to customers
• It has a capacity
• More then a ‘bunch’ well selected features from
the backlog
• Includes help files
• Includes training of CS staff
• Included training of Sales staff

59. Capacity

60. Capacity

61. Customer delight

63. 5 W’s

64. What?

65. What?
Customer delight is
Surprising a customer
By exceeding his/her expectations
and thus creating a positive
emotional reaction

66. Why?

67. Why?
• Leads to word of mouth, 92% consider worth of
mouth as most reliable source of info
• Directly affects sales and profitability
• Make loyal customers - retention
• New customers cost 4 to 9 times more time and money
• Have customers that are more profitable
• Avg delighted customers spend more with less hassle

68. When?

69. WHERE?

70. Where?
• In the product itself
• Through any touch point of the company
• Customer service
• Sales
• Website
• Social media
• Advertising
• Billing
• …

71. (W)How?

72. (W)How?
• By interaction with people at the front line

73. (W)How?
ZOOM IN
By interaction with people at the front line
1. Interaction is the greatest source of opportunities
2. Can be personalized and tailored to customer
• Showing personal interest in the customer
• Offer small attentions that might please
• Find solution to specific needs

74. (W)How?
Conclusion
H2H communication is the most important to have
delighted customers
Front line employees are able to develop a relationship
between the customer and the brand.
We have to have motivated staff in the front line!
Continuous motivation
Clear leading

76. Measure
• Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Observation
• Point of Sale
• Customer Service
• Social Media
• Communities and Groups
• Email and Web Forms

77. Abraham Lincoln
“You can please some of the people all the time, you
can please all of the people some of the time but you
can’t please all of the people all the time”

78. As
product manager
YOU own
The SUCCESS
or FAILURE
of YOUR product

79. Useful PM resources
https://www.productfocus.com/
http://blog.aha.io/
http://www.romanpichler.com/
https://www.productplan.com/blog/
Book: The art of Business Value