The document provides guidance on product management. It discusses how product managers are responsible for strategy, roadmaps, and feature definition. It also covers understanding customer needs and problems, defining the total product concept to meet expectations, prioritizing features, and using techniques like impact mapping and weighted shortest job first to help align work with goals and maximize value.

1. Think like a PROduct manager
Anna Mamaeva
2017

2. Let’s get acquainted
Senior Project Manager
8+ years in IT
(Project/Product Management)
• Mobile applications (iOS, Android)
• Web-solutions development and
management (Java, .Net)
• Product developing and Marketing
• Cross-functional team leadership
• SAFe Agile certified (2016)

3. Product
management in two
hours

4. What’s going on?
• Customer does not know what he wants.
• Customer wants a lot, but has no money.
• Customer wants to “do the job by himself”.
• Customer does not have the vision for the
product.
• You want to grow an account.
• You want to understand customer`s business
goals.
• You need a tool to communicate with
customer.

5. How it usually works
Roman Pavlyuk ©

6. Who’s the Product Manager?

7. Product manager profile
Product Management – help me know
which problems are most
important to a particular user
The product manager is often
considered the CEO of the product
and is responsible for the strategy,
roadmap, and feature definition for
that product or product line. The
position may also include marketing,
forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L)
responsibilities.

8. Solution-based approach
Roman Pavlyuk ©

10. Ted Levitt’s Total Product Concept
An augmented product is one that has
exceeded customer expectations
The potential product is the “everything” the
product could possibly be.
@sehlhort ©

11. Ted Levitt’s Total Product Concept
A generic product is equivalent in the
eyes of customers to competitive
products. There is no difference that
matters to the customer. It is a
commodity.
The expected product is a generic product
plus all of a customer’s “good enough”
expectations.
@sehlhort ©

12. Ted Levitt’s Total Product Concept
Not being talked about (at all) Being talked about (in a good way
@sehlhort ©

13. Ted Levitt’s Total Product Concept
@sehlhort ©

14. Basic problems
If your product does not
(sufficiently) solve table stakes
problems, your product will not
be considered as a possible
solution.
You won’t get the opportunity to
compete.

15. Task:
1. Form groups of 4-5 people
2. 5 minutes: On sticky notes, think of every
service your product might provide for you
as a consumer or a small business.
3. Create a Levitt board on easel or wall

17. Harvey ball charts

18. Competitive matrix

19. How to make a difference?

20. Task:
1. Form groups of 4-5 people
2. 5 minutes: Select 10 items from previous
workshop – no more than 3 can be table stakes;
3. Number them 1-10 first, then assign importance
H/M/L (all table stakes must be High) – and put
into order
4. Score from 1-5 one or two competitor banks at
the same items
5. one person assigns costs to the items [costs =
12,26,8,19,41,14,17,28,35,50] in any arbitrary
order ( 1-10, 10-1, odds-then-evens, etc. ) this
person is now the shopkeeper
6. Group decides collectively how to spend $100.

22. Impact Mapping is a strategic
planning technique that helps
organizations manage flexible
roadmaps for iterative delivery, by
clearly communicating
assumptions, helping align activities
with overall business objectives
Deriving scope from goals

24. DETERMINE MEASUREMENTS
• What to measure? (Scale)
• How to measure it? (Source of data)
• Minimal value
• Financial constrains, investment cost
• Desired Value

25. Why? Pick a problem to solve
• Why are we launching the
product?
• Why we should change how
things are now?
• Numbers matter

26. Who? Your actors
• Define actors – people who
are interested, or may
impact the goal
• Who will help?
• Who may interfere?
<someone> can help us achieve our goal by <doing
something differently>. Make the <someone> specific. Can
someone stop your team you even start?

27. How? The impact
• specify how each person’s behavior
should change
• how he (actor) can help achieve the goal
• how he can be an obstruct
You may not choose to work with all the actors you identify or
get them to do all of the impacts, but the map helps you see all
the alternative paths

28. What should we do?
• Work with features here, define
deliverables
• Do not forget about organizational
activities
• Let them be high level

29. Task:
Create a short impact map, working
with previous exercise features

30. Weighted Shortest Job First

31. Weighted Shortest Job First is a scheduling algorithm
(or if you prefer, prioritization method) that maximizes
the amount of whatever it is you choose to “weight” by
in a given time period through a constrained resource.
 the weighting of each job (using Cost of Delay)
 the duration of each job
 Cost of Delay is calculated by assessing the impact of
not having something when you need it
What is WSJF?

34. SAFe® and WSJB

35. Define the WSJF for the features in a list given

36. Business Model Canvas
PRODUCT MARKET

37. Have a question?
Write to
anna.mamaeva@gmail.com