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Transitioning into Product Management
Ankur Sharma
@ankurdinesh
About me
Director - Products
11+ years of building & scaling products from scratch
Help startups on growth, platform issues and product.
Alumni:
@ankurdinesh
What am I covering today?
What is Product Management?
Skills required for effective PM
Common Mistakes PMs make
Growth Progression as PM
Day in a life of PM
Fast track your PM learning
Sources to Read & Follow
@ankurdinesh
What Product Management is not?
Product Management is not Project Management
Product Management is not requirements gathering
Product Management is not a conventional Manager
Product Management is not Marketing
Product Management is not Deep Visual Design
@ankurdinesh
So, what does a Product Manager do?
Help team (and company) ship the right product to users and deliver measurable benefits to org
drive:
@ankurdinesh
Skills required for effective PM
Self Starter / Task Master
User Empathy
Ability to prioritise
Communication Skills
Ability to evolve
Understands tricky balance between getting it right & getting it out the door
@ankurdinesh
Common mistakes PMs make
Fool themselves into thinking they are the customer
Leverage their position (“Because I said so” never works)
Don’t say no to stakeholders
Don’t over-communicate
Worry about winning the battles (and losing wars)
@ankurdinesh
Common mistakes PMs make
Don’t eat the dog food
Invent new behaviors
Build for all
Build everything in one go
Stop talking to their users
Lose sight of their key metric or goal
@ankurdinesh
Growth Progression as PM
Pretty much every PM starts as an individual contributor
Typical PM hierarchy looks like:
@ankurdinesh
Atypical Day in a life of PM
Atypical Day:
Customer Day
Data Day
UX Brainstorming Day
Strategy / Roadmap Day
@ankurdinesh
Fast Track your PM learning
1. Find a Mentor
2. Read (a lot)
3. Explore: Go to meetups4. Talk to Product Managers5. Write blog to verbalise thoughts on product &
services interaction
@ankurdinesh
Sources to Read & Followhttp://www.sharmaankur.com/2016/05/good-reads-for-aspiring-product-manager.html
Backup
@ankurdinesh
Enterprise vs Consumer Product Management
Enterprise Consumer
Everything flows from the business model & buyers
Everything flows from Users
Sales/Subscription Matters Scale/Virality Matters
Customer ≠ User Every customer is a user
Reliability > Usability User Experience is King
Longer sales & dev cycles Cycles usually < 6 months
@ankurdinesh
Startup vs Big Companies Product Management
Startups Big Companies
Biggest Challenge: Resources Biggest Challenge: Prioritisation
Build for growth Build for Scale
Ad-hoc requirements run the project (Formal) Processes run the project
Roadmap ~ 3-6 months Roadmap = 1-2 Years
Focus on new features Focus on later stages of product lifecycle
Product Vision = Founder(s)’ Vision Requirements are derived from competitive analysis and white spaces
