The document discusses the roles and responsibilities of product management. It describes how product managers should understand customers' needs through research, generate ideas to solve problems, validate and prioritize solutions, and deliver solutions through an iterative process working with cross-functional teams. It also discusses how to structure product teams, distribute planning and control to those who understand results, and clarify responsibilities between product managers and technical leads while providing necessary support.

1. Beautiful accounting softwareBeautiful accounting software
What does a VP / Head of / GM of
Product actually do?!
Product Management Auckland
Wednesday 20 April 2016
@bradley_scott

2. Beautiful accounting software
As little as possible

3. Beautiful accounting software
Pods
Product Managers
Chief Product + Platform Officer
GM of Product portfolios

4. Beautiful accounting software
Conway’s law
Organizations which design systems ... are
constrained to produce designs which are
copies of the communication structures of
these organizations
— M. Conway

5. Things achieving
company
objectives
Things I want
ongoing
investment in
Definable problem
that will exist into the future
that you can empower a product team to solve

6. Current state
architecture
Future state
architecture
Provides an
understandable path
from the current state
to the future state

7. Current state
architecture
Future state
architecture
Helps justify the
technical roadmap
Things I want
ongoing
investment in

8. Current state
architecture
Future state
architecture
Things achieving
company
objectives
Things I want
ongoing
investment in
A defined problem with an
investment stream that can sustain
an achievable technical roadmap

9. Too chaotic Too many processes
Introduce structure
Increase autonomy

10. We understand our customers and their pain
We then come up with ideas for solutions
We then validate, qualify and quantify
We then prioritise the ideas
We then deliver them to customers
We iterate. Even within each step

11. Customers
Ideas
Validate
and
Prioritise
Deliver
Understand our customers: markets, segments and needs
● Size markets and segments. Determine fit and decide our focus
● Perform User research to define customer needs
Come up with ideas for solutions to customer pain points
● Pick pain point to solve. Describe our solution and how it’s better than
alternatives
Validate, qualify and quantify the customer pain point and how well our solution
solves it
● Solution interviews, paper prototypes, HTML prototypes
● Use cases and solution requirements
● High level technical design and sizing
● Value-cost scoring, prioritisation and roadmapping
What we do at each step
Work in cross-functional teams to deliver value to our customers
● Detailed user stories meeting definition of done
● Complete screen designs for key user flows [placeholder?]

12. Beautiful accounting software
The future ... can’t be predetermined.
Distribute planning and control to those
who can understand and react to the end
results.
— Michael Kennedy, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise

13. Beautiful accounting software
Pods
Product Managers
Chief Product + Platform Officer
GM of Product portfolios
Provide context
Distribute control

14. Clarifying responsibilities
● Each Product manager will have a
budget for FY17
● They provide capacity requirements to
Tech lead
● Tech lead is responsible for any Dev
or QA recruitment
● Product manager is responsible for
any PO recruitment
Recruitment

15. Am I successful if I am doing as
little as possible?
● The right organisational structure with
the right people
● Support them by increasing
empowerment or introducing
structure when required
● Invest to support your product
strategy and technical roadmap
● Provide context and distribute control
How

16. Beautiful accounting software
‫פרעגן‬