Presentation on Practice of Product Management at PODIM conference in Slovenia 2015, covering: 1. Why is product management important 2. What are the fundamentals of product management 3. What is the product management cycle 4. Product backlogs 5. Product roadmaps

1. Product Management
IN PRACTICE

2. WHY IS IT
IMPORTANT?
Solutions looking
for problems
You think you know
more than your users

3. PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
Customer Technology
Business
Product
Management

4. the role of product manager
is to discover a product that
is valuable, usable and
feasible
Marty Cagan
Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

5. PRODUCT MANAGERS ARE
CONDUCTORS

6. WHAT PROBLEM ARE YOU
SOLVING?

7. IS THIS PROBLEM WORTH
SOLVING?

8. CONTEXT FIRST!
 Environment in which the problem needs to be solved
 where,
 when
 Who
 Feedbacks into what problem you are solving
 This is far before you look at device or anything
like that
 Starts setting constraints for the possible solutions

9. COGNITIVE LEAKS!
 People are surrounded by
distractions that drain their
mental energy
 Your product is just
another drain, treat
your users carefully
 Remember, people using
your product are not stock
photogray models!

11. PRODUCT
BACKLOG
 What you could do, not what you will do
 Separate your product backlog from your development
backlog
 Provides continuous intelligence about customer
problems and unmet needs
 Get everyone involved in the product backlog
 If it becomes a black box, everyone else will distrust it
and seek a way around it

12. WHAT IS A ROADMAP?
An artefact that communicates
the direction you’ll be going in
order to
fulfil the product vision.

13. ROADMAPS
Time horizons
Scope
STRATEGIC Initiatives
Product Areas

14. I love deadlines.
I love the whoosing
noise they make as
they go by.
Douglas Adams

15. DAT
ES
 Priorities change, dates force you to delivery what is no
longer worthwhile
 Dates become promise, when the promise isn’t kept
trust is loss in the roadmap
 Dates go on release/project plans
 Clients engage more with roadmaps without dates

16. DELIVERY
 Is it done?
 What about?
 Documentation
 Marketing
 Sales briefing
 Not for the product
manager to do but make
sure it is done

17. More time learning Less time shipping

18. “If you trust in yourself. . .
and believe in your
dreams. . . and follow your
star. . . you'll still get
beaten by people who
spent their time working
hard and learning things
and weren't so lazy.”
Terry Pratchett,
The Wee Free Men

19. simon@prodpad.com
@simoncast
www.prodpad.com
www.mtpcon.com/london