що таке продакт менеджмент? про професію і карєру продактів для світчерів та початківців.

1. Product
Mark Opanasiuk
Що таке продакт
менеджмент?
Інтро лекція
Травень 2024
Марк Опанасюк

2. Привіт!
Я Марк, і я тобі трохи
розкажу про продакт
менеджмент і кар’єру
продакта)
6+ років юристом
>>>
світч в IT через
Genesis IT School
>>> 7+ років
Продуктове ІТ +
Сервісне ІТ >>> tbd?
Пишу подкаст TG:
@wtf_is_pmf

3. Product Manager Career Framework
Про що говоримо?

4. Product Manager
Personal Development

5. Mindset - a person's way of thinking and their
opinions, habitual attitude, state of mind.
* Cambridge dictionary | Merriam-Webster dictionary
Our mindsets affect our
lives, our work, our
careers, our results and
in a long run determine
who we are, and how we
interact with our world.

6. Fixed mindset vs. Growth Mindset
The product mindset is rooted in the growth mindset!
A growth mindset
encourages risk-taking
without worrying about
failure because mistakes
represent a chance to
learn. The growth mindset
classically refers to
personal development,
and in Product, it’s about
delivering value for
customers, embracing
change, and discovering
opportunities for growth.

7. • Product thinking mindset practitioners may come from a
wide variety of industry backgrounds with experience in
multiple disciplines (project manager, designer, developer,
business analyst, marketing manager, etc.).
• Vendor development teams that adopt a product mindset
bring even more value to clients, by finding additional
opportunities for growth along the way.
• Marketing teams can bring a product mindset approach to
every customer touch point, making each interaction a
chance to create brand loyalty and get better feedback.
• Designers with product mindset creates user friendly
customer–centric designs to delight end-users.
Product Mindset is not reserved
exclusively for product managers.

8. Product Mindset for PdMs
• What problem do we solve? (User problem)
• Who is it for? (Target audience)
• What do we want to achieve? (Goals)
• Why are we doing this? (Vision)
• How are we doing this (Strategy)
• What exactly we are doing (Features)
Thinking from First Principles

9. Product thinking is the journey from the problem space of the customer / user
to the solution space of the business. It starts with real problems and ends
with product market fit by delivering the right product to right people...
https://www.narenkatakam.com/

10. No business wants to ship Y when customers need X but, it happens... lack of understanding
of customer’s needs clearly or their own business constraints on what they can offer at that
point in time or lack of resources and team or hundred other reasons...
https://www.narenkatakam.com/

11. Love the problem, not
your solution.
Think in products, not
in features.

12. Problem Space tool for growing product mindset:
5W1H (What, Who, Why, Where, When, & How) questioning tool
Source: www.narenkatakam.com
If you want to expand your problem statement, then use why and what more frequently
in your line of questioning. If you want to narrow down solution options then use how,
who, when, where more frequently.

13. Problem Space Tool: JTBD
What job(s) arise(s) in people’s lives
that your product could solve?
Source: https://jtbd.info/2-what-is-jobs-to-be-done-jtbd-796b82081cca

14. Solution Space Tool: Outcome > Output
Start focusing on the outcome rather than output = the value your product is
generating over estimation of development effort, and the accuracy of the
product to do a job over its simplicity.
“Everything should be
made as simple as
possible, but not
simpler.”
Albert Einstein
https://uxplanet.org/product-thinking-101-1d71a0784f60

15. Solution Space Tool: HDD
Hypothesis Driven Development
Fail fast and learn fast...
https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/learn/practice_hypothesis_driven_development/

16. Solution Space Tool: Problem Solving Skills
Models for solutioning: SCAMPER Technique
1. Substitute – What can be replaced? (glass >> plastic)
2. Combine – What can be combined? (smartphones)
3. Adapt – What can be added? (cars with built in wi-fi)
4. Modify – What can be Maximized, Minimized, Magnified? (sizing)
5. Purpose change – Can it be repurposed for other uses? (dual use)
6. Eliminate - What can be Removed, Minimized? (audio jack)
7. Rearrange – What can be Reversed, Reengineered? (free to play)

17. In ideal world Product
Management means: working
towards creating the Right
Product for the Right User
“
“

18. Product Manager
Skill Set

19. Product Manager as a business function
Будь-яка роль у компанії - це цільова функція
всередині бізнесу, яка покликана оптимізувати
outcomes для бізнесу (максимізувати позитивні або
мінімізувати негативні результати).
Цільова функція продакта полягає в максимізації
цінності, яку продукт приносить споживачам, з
мінімізацією time-to-market.
Таке трактування функції продакта допомагає
відповісти на запитання, що НЕ є метою його роботи і
сфокусуватися на головному.
PdM != CEO of product / Product Owner / Team Leader /
Business Owner це лише різні інтерпретації в різних
умовах та компаніях з різним рівнем повноважень та
культури.

20. Tech Stack: layers of technologies that are used to provide functionality to your product (i.e.
make the thing work). Fastest way to learn — Ask an engineer to take you through the stack at a
high level.
System Architecture: represents how those layers of technologies are structured to work together
to deliver the product. Fastest way to learn — Ask an engineer to draw you the architecture.
Data Models and APIs: organizes information used by your product and standardizes how pieces
of that information relate and communicate to one another. beauty of studying your APIs is that
they often represent most of your underlying data model.
DO NOT DO: Learning programming… PdM can do other high leverage work!
Source: https://blackboxofpm.com/mvpm-minimum-viable-product-manager-e1aeb8dd421 by Brandon Chu, VP Product @ Shopify

21. Project Management: If you can’t run a project well you’re never going to be a good Product Manager. Scope,
Budget, Deadlines… IT Project Management - basics of SDLC, agile (Scrum, Kanban), version control (Git), QA
processes, decision making processes at your company.
Modeling Impact: unit economics of a product, forecasted impact and the assumptions, building models for your
product.
Data Analysis: Being able to independently gather data is vital to making quick decisions. Relying on someone else to
get data for you is not only an inefficient use of their time, but it also doesn’t lead to insights, because anyone who’s
been an analyst before knows that insights come through iterative exploration of data. Learn SQL basics.
DO NOT: don’t waste your time making strategic business cases, 3 year plans, and other MBA artifacts - things
change faster. Understand the vision, find a problem worth solving to achieve it, build a hypothesis to solve it, and
then validate it as quickly as you can with real customers. Rinse and repeat.
Source: https://blackboxofpm.com/mvpm-minimum-viable-product-manager-e1aeb8dd421 by Brandon Chu, VP Product @ Shopify

22. Design: Knowing your product’s patterns are critical in understanding how users map your product in their minds,
and how they can effectively be given new features over time. Fastest way to learn — Talk to your designer.
User Research: If you don’t understand your users, you will never build great products. Understand Sample Size and
how to calculate statistical significance? How to normalize your sample and why that’s important? How to ask
unbiased, non-leading questions in surveys and interviews? How to synthesize data significant results and avoid bad
conclusions?
Prototyping: create visual mockups that can effectively express your ideas to Communicate a product concept
clearly, Unblock a team when design is behind or absent, Learn Figma basics or Miro, Canva, LucidChart, Balsamiq -
whatever your company is using.
DO NOT DO: Don’t focus on being a great visual designer
Source: https://blackboxofpm.com/mvpm-minimum-viable-product-manager-e1aeb8dd421 by Brandon Chu, VP Product @ Shopify

23. The first 30,60,90 days in a
new PdM role
Source: https://www.tryexponent.com/blog/first-30-60-90-days-product-manager

24. Product Manager
Career Path

26. Examples of PdM track in different companies (without C-level track).
For example in my current company PdM track is even more complicated…

27. For example in my current company PdM track is even more complicated…
However…. In product startups things happen faster…
А level
3-5+ years
B level
10+ years
C level
??? years
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
A1
Associate BA
entry position
A2
BA
6 month+
A3
Senior BA
3+ years
A4
Lead BA
5+ years
B1
PdM 1
3+ years A3-A4
B2
PdM 2
2+ PdM years
B3
Senior PdM
5+ PdM years
B4
Director, PdM
7+ PdM years
B5
Senior Director,
PdM
10 + PdM years
Умовно, усі, чиї тайтли на VP та на С починаються.

28. Really…. much faster… there are a
great examples and really bad ones:
Great: grew from PdM to CPO in 3
years because a startup scaled from 5
to 150 people and this CPO has a full
team of product managers owning
various parts of the product.
Bad: a solo CPO in a startup of 5
people from the launch… or having a
title Head of Product when your
“product” is just a traffic web-funnell
and you work solo…
Потрібно шукати не job titles на
початку кар'єри, а потрібний
досвід та знання, менторів в
команді (learning by doing)

29. Skill Map of Product
Management
1. Sales & Economics
2. Discovery & Research
3. Value & Solution Design
4. Development & Delivery
5. Growth & Experiments
6. Product Marketing
Senior Middle Junior

34. PM != PMM != GPM

35. Product Manager
Every Day Work Challenges

36. Effective communication
and attention focus
PM is a bridge to maximize product value between
dev team and end users / stakeholders.
Many stakeholders = more meetings… stakeholders
management and communication skills grow more
important when you move higher in career ladder…

37. Decision making with
limited data
Ability to extract insights from data,
talk with end-users, run and
interpret surveys & interviews to
back up your hypotheses and
decisions. Know when stop
gathering data, because we need to
maximize value + minimize time to
market!
Higher ranks => more problems to
deal with that lacks data

38. Product backlog management
Sometimes it may get ugly…
Legacy and inherited tickets
from your “попередників”...
Not controlled submission of
new tickets from support / BAs/
dev team / stakeholders…
But PM is the backlog owner!
Change requests
management, Backlog
management techniques…

39. Roadmaps & Prioritization

40. Leadership & Stakeholders
Management
How to say “No” to some change requests? How to keep good relations
with leadership and stakeholders? How to get approve and budget for
features you want to have in product roadmap (data backed!).

41. Create proper feedback loops with
sufficient user data to back up your
hypotheses
How to do right things when your upper
management wants smth different or you lack data?

42. Getting job done with
limited authority…
How to motivate and persuade people
to work with you, do smth for you and
your team?
Especially when you are not “CEO of
Product” but PO of dev team in a large
company with limited power but
everyone tells that you own a product!

43. How to keep healthy relations with dev teams?

44. Product Manager
Performance Review

45. What is measured?
Impact: What did the PM achieve for the company?
PM skills & development: Does the employee develop their
skill-set to ensure repeatable performances & successes?
Scope and complexity: How hard is the problem space the PM
is working in? Is the challenge appropriate to the career level of
the employee?

46. В реальності праця продактів є дуже
різною та багатогранною залежно від
спеціалізації продакта, домену,
сеніорності, компанії і т.д… але є дві
ключові ідеї, які запам’ятайте…
“
“

47. Product Books
1. Inspired by Marty Cagan
& SVPG
2. Intercom on Product
Management by Intercom
3. The Lean Startup by Eric
Ries
4. Scrum and XP from the
trenches by Henrik Kniberg
5. The Mom test by Rob
Fitzpatrick
6. The Four Steps to the
Epiphany by Steve Blank

48. “How to get rich
(without getting lucky)”
by Naval Ravikant про
дуже багато крутих штук
і про то, як розвивати
правильні скіли, щоб
бути в верхньому
квартилі своєї професії)
Summary & Infographics

49. A few useful links on PdM Career Progression
● Career Frameworks from top-companies
● Product Manager Skills by Seniority Level — A Deep Breakdown
● Career Guide for Product Managers
● Product Manager vs. Product Owner
● Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Growth Manager
● Product Management SkillBook
● MVPM - Minimum Viable Product Manager approach
● GitLab PdM Handbook & Competencies
● Product Market Fat KB - моя колекція різних ресурсів та корисних
лінків для продакт менеджерів.

50. Q& A
THANK YOU!
Mark Opanasiuk
Portfolio Product Manager
Legal Solutions Portfolio @ EPAM
You can reach me at:
Telegram: @mark_is_here
Follow in Telegram @wtf_is_pmf