The Beginner Product Manager's Handbook PDF

The Beginner Product Manager’s Handbook theproductmanager.com 01 Hi, friend! First things ﬁrst, congratulations! You’re about to embark on a journey that will be exciting, challenging, rewarding, and take your career places that today might seem unimaginable. But, of course, you’re going to need a little bit of help along the way. We created this resource to help you kick oﬀ your journey in product management. Think of this ebook as a portable cheerleader, mentor, and ﬁeld guide—all rolled into one. Here’s a preview of what’s inside: First up, we've got Lily Smith with "10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster." Lily’s insights will become the playbook that’ll have you cruising through your ﬁrst 100 days. Next, Becki Hyde’s "Leading Your Team from Idea to Success" will give you a solid foundation for working with product teams—which will come in handy from pretty much day one. From ideation to execution, learn how to rally your team, align goals, and make the magic happen. Ever heard the phrase ‘the customer is king?’ Well, Jeanette Fuccella is about to make you the king's conﬁdant with "The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products." Jeanette shows you how to master the art of user research so you can build stuﬀ people actually want to use. theproductmanager.com 02 Last but not least is Andy Smith’s "A Crash Course in the 3 Need-to-Know Product Management Methodologies." Methodologies and frameworks are big in this line of work, and even if you eventually decide to veer away from these systems, you need to know the rules before you can break them. Andy’s guide is a great starting point to get you up to speed. Alright, enough from me. Go ahead, dive in, and make waves! And remember, every product that changed the world started with someone who dared to learn something new. Keep on shipping, Hannah Clark Editor, The Product Manager theproductmanager.com 03 Table of Contents 01 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster – by Lily Smith p.4-20 02 Leading Your Team from Idea to Success – by Becki Hyde p.21-32 03 The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products – by Jeanette Fuccella p.33-45 04 A Crash Course in the 3 Need-to-Know Product Management Methodologies – by Andy Smith p.46-59 theproductmanager.com 04 01 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster – by Lily Smith theproductmanager.com 05 The life of a product manager tends to be fraught with chaos, and juggling priorities that are competing for your time is often the norm. So, how can we work smarter? And how can we make time for learning so that we can advance our own careers, deliver better work and ultimately better business outcomes? 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster As a product manager who has risen through the ranks mainly in small startups, there is a certain mentality to pace and a work ethic that I’ve adopted which I believe has really helped me in those tougher times. This article shares some of the learnings from my journey developing into a Chief Product Oﬃcer role. The following advice is provided in ‘no particular order’, and I hope that you ﬁnd some nuggets of inspiration to support you on your own, unique, product journey. Here’s a preview of what’s inside: 1) Ask yourself, "What's the most important thing right now?" 2) Establish a culture of sharing 3) Develop your empathy beyond customers 4) Learn to be honest with yourself about your own assumptions and biases 5) Get really good at asking questions - and listening well 6) Get used to giving, receiving, and sharing feedback 7) Understand what good vs good enough looks like 8) Be brave 9) Practice 10) Network theproductmanager.com 06 1. Ask yourself, “What’s the most important thing right now?” 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster ties Priori As PMs we’re often very busy, and it’s easy to get caught up in ‘busy work’. I’ve found myself in this state a lot—and still do! ‘Busy work’ is essentially work that is keeping you busy but isn’t necessarily helping you to achieve the goal that you and your product team are aiming for. At a macro level, you need to make time on a weekly basis to step back, reﬂect, and ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing today the most important thing to achieve my goals / the business goals”? Sometimes the answer will be “yes”, sometimes the answer will be “no”, and you can take corrective action. But sometimes (and probably often) you won’t be certain, and at this point you should absolutely lean on your team and your manager to reﬂect with you and help you understand if you’ve prioritized correctly. theproductmanager.com 07 Frequently, we end up prioritizing work that has been identiﬁed as important at a more strategic level (e.g. the business decides that we need this feature or to go after this customer segment). If you’re in this situation you can approach it two ways: 1. Do the work, deliver the desired output, and see if you 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster get the outcome. 2. Question the logic / research that resulted in that strategic decision, dial in on the outcome, and ﬂex the output depending on what you ﬁnd out along the way. Most PMs will feel that point 2 is the ‘right’ way to respond, but if you haven’t gained the trust of the business or if you don’t have the experience to question the strategy, then I would recommend to stick with 1—because this will earn you trust and gain you experience and conﬁdence in your product methodology. At a more micro level, when I’m working in a product team, I re-prioritize on an almost daily basis. I’ll review the progress in a sprint and re-prioritize the work within the sprint according to information that I’ve gained. When doing this, it’s important to communicate changes to the development team and why you’ve made them (if they weren’t already involved in the decision-making). It won’t happen every day, but on a regular basis you should be able to talk about the value that you’ve created for the team, the product, the customers, and the business. Keep a note of this so that you can easily reﬂect on the impact that you’re having—it’s a great motivator and reassures you that you’re on the right path. theproductmanager.com 08 2. Establish a culture of sharing 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster There’s a very good reason why so many people talk about culture when discussing how to create high-performing product teams. The culture of the team can have a huge impact on performance, and being able to create and nurture that culture is a huge plus for a product manager. Even if the business has a strong existing (and perhaps not ideal) culture, it’s possible to inﬂuence your product team to create a micro-culture that reﬂects the way you want to work. Here are some basic rules I use myself that are key to creating a culture that fosters an accountable, supportive, high-performing product team: theproductmanager.com 09 Be helpful to others: If your developers are feeling the pressure of a deadline, ask if you can help. Maybe you can do some testing, provide some useful assets for them, or just talk through a challenge they’re facing. Or perhaps you can give them some space and clear meetings from their diary. It’s always good to oﬀer assistance—it helps the rest of the team feel that they 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster are being supported by you. Ask for help: On the ﬂipside, if you are feeling the pressure, let your team know and share what’s bothering you. This helps people see that you are human and demonstrates that you value the views and opinions of your peers. It will also help you get a more diverse perspective on challenges that you are facing. Share the blame when things go wrong: If something goes wrong, it can be so easy and natural to try and avoid the shame and ﬁnd the culprit. But if you’re truly acting as a product team leader, you’ll accept that everyone has a part to play in mistakes. You must develop your reﬂective skills, so that in each moment you’re able to answer these questions: “What was my contribution to this, and how could I have helped to avoid this situation?” Share the success when things go right: And similarly, when things go right, make sure the whole team can bask in the glow—even if one person stood out as the main superstar, it’s unlikely you could have achieved the success without the support of others (maybe they were even making space for that person?). One person’s success should be the team’s success. theproductmanager.com 10 3. Develop your empathy beyond customers 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Do you have time...? How are you? All good? It’s super important to empathize with your team, your manager, the leadership and other peers, as well as your customers. We can end up feeling that other people’s behaviors are a reﬂection of how they feel about us (for example, “no one paid attention in my product demo because they don’t value my work”). This is usually not the case, and often people can have other things going on—whether in work or in their personal life. Learn to ask “how are you?” with intention, and “do you have time for this?”, or “do you have other priorities right now?”. All of these questions will invite the team member to share a little bit more, which might help you understand their own personal context. You can then adjust your ways of working to accommodate them—which they will hugely appreciate. You’ll also develop a much deeper understanding of the diﬀerent challenges across the diﬀerent roles and teams and become a better product leader as a result. theproductmanager.com 11 4. Learn to be honest with yourself about your own assumptions and biases 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster For PMs there can be an expectation that we should have all the answers. But one thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to say that you don’t know. It’s okay to say, “based on this research my assumption is this… but until we go live, we won’t know for sure”. Or “I’m biased towards this idea because it really solves my own problems, but I don’t yet know if it’s a priority for our customers”. I have a constant ﬁlter to check what I’m saying. Do I really know something, or have I assumed it? If it’s an assumption, then I make that clear. I’ll also try to ﬁnd out if it is really true. Are you biased toward a particular decision? If you feel strongly about something, check yourself on why you feel like that—do you have a good reason, or are your biases skewing your thinking? Never present your opinion as fact. My kids do this a lot, and it really gets my goat. theproductmanager.com 12 5. Become better at asking questions—and listening well 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Practice asking questions! If you’re going to a BBQ with family, a wedding, or a similar social occasion, get really good at asking questions, digging into the details, and listening to the answers. People generally love to talk about the things that interest them, so it’s pretty easy to practice this. Then take this skill into work. If the developers start talking about something that you don’t understand, pull one of them aside later, and ask them to help you understand it. Can they draw you a diagram? Can they tell you the history and the future ideal state? And don’t be shy to ask the stupid questions. So many times I’ve felt like everyone was nodding along in a meeting and I’ve asked ‘the stupid question’ only to have half the room say “yes, I was unsure about that too!”. If you don’t want to ask in front of others, follow up later and make sure that you understand. It’s your responsibility to have at least a surface level understanding of everything going on with your product (from technical design to market research to ﬁnancial modeling). theproductmanager.com 13 6. Get used to giving, receiving, and sharing feedback 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Feedback can be scary—you don’t want someone to tell you that you’re not perfect. But the alternative is that they think it but don’t tell you, and you miss out on an opportunity to improve. Or even worse, they tell other people, and you develop a reputation for being a certain way without having the opportunity to address the critique. A piece of feedback I have received often is along the lines of “you’re always pointing out the problems in other people’s areas, it’s very demotivating”. I have to be careful and remember that lots of people aren’t used to direct feedback, and they need to get to know me better before I can be so direct. On the ﬂipside, one of the best compliments I’ve had was from an engineer (whom I worked with closely for a long time) who said to me “you’re really good at telling me when my work isn’t good enough, but not making me feel bad about it”. Some people are better at giving feedback than others, so you may have to coax someone into sharing their thoughts with you. My advice is to regularly ask for feedback, and if someone looks pensive or frustrated theproductmanager.com 14 during a meeting with you, ask them for two minutes of their time and say something like, “I noticed that you didn’t seem happy in that meeting, can I ask if I have said something that you weren’t happy with?” Then tell them you would really appreciate it if they shared their thoughts because you want to have a good 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster working relationship. Hopefully, this will give them the space to share and reassure them that you are open to listening. If they give you feedback, you must respond considerately (even if you don’t agree with the critique!). Otherwise you risk never getting feedback from them again. Try saying something like, “I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me, your opinion really matters and I’m going to think about what you’ve said”. Conversely, it’s really good practice to share feedback with others. This can be really diﬃcult if you tend to avoid conﬂict. But it’s so important in developing a culture of trust and a high-performing team. You want your team members to be thinking, “if [insert your name here] thought I could be working better, I’m sure they would say something directly, because they always do”. If you struggle with giving others feedback, I ﬁnd being upfront about it really helps. For example, “I’d like to give you some feedback but I ﬁnd this really hard because I want you to like me and feel good about your work. Do you mind if I share something that I think is stopping you from being amazing at your job?” Creating a culture of regularly giving and receiving feedback normalizes this exchange and allows the whole team to grow and develop. In my current role we have it as an agenda point on all 1:1 meetings (whether with managers or peers). theproductmanager.com 15 7. Understand what good vs good enough looks like 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster In my early career I worked with a CEO who constantly said to me “you need to know what good looks like”. Honestly, I was kind of confused by this at the time, but now I ﬁnd myself having the same conversations with product managers. Good vs fast is a trade-oﬀ that product managers are very familiar with. It usually refers to design and engineering work but it equally applies to PM work. For example, if you’re writing up user stories for developers that are currently blocked by you, they may just need the important details and not so much the context. But sometimes you really need to impress, and to learn how to do this is not often done in a silo. You’ll need to spend time practicing or ﬁnessing your work and asking for feedback to improve. You have to do this on a regular basis—if you don’t, then you’re probably not getting better at your job. This is very closely related to point 6 and asking for feedback, but it’s also about learning to judge for yourself whether your work is good. Look at how people respond to others’ work—do they think it’s good or good enough? See the people rising through the ranks, getting attention from the CEO and other stakeholders, what does their contribution look like and how can you match that? theproductmanager.com 16 8. Be brave! 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster If you want to develop yourself as a PM, you will need to stretch out of your comfort zone regularly. The best possible outcome of this is getting used to being out of your comfort zone! I regularly challenge myself to do things that are new, scary, and require me to push myself beyond my current capabilities—not just at work but in my home life too. This has helped me learn how to deal with stress and to embrace and relax into ‘the unknown’. Positive aﬃrmations really help me personally. I tell myself “you can do this, it will be great, your intentions are good, you’ve done your homework, and that matters the most”. The feeling of fear is very similar to excitement. So when I feel afraid (even if it’s just presenting the roadmap to the business), I tell myself that it’s exciting, and honestly, I think a lot of the time it’s actually true! theproductmanager.com 17 9. Practice 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Often when we talk about learning product management, we neglect to talk about practice. But this is fundamental to becoming better at your job. Again, if you are in your comfort zone, you probably aren’t learning. You need to adapt what you’re doing and practice new and diﬀerent ways in order to ﬁgure out what works best. You might not get things right ﬁrst time—e.g. the ﬁrst time you do a user interview—but if you conduct 30 user interviews and make sure to reﬂect on each one after, then I can guarantee you will be better after the last one. And, guess what, ask for feedback! If it’s daunting because it’s very new or very important, establish who can help you practice beforehand. Perhaps you need to do a test run of a presentation or talk through the exercises you’re going to run in a workshop. If you don’t have time for practice, then set clear expectations while trying the thing (e.g. “this is the ﬁrst time running this exercise, this is what it is, this is why I think it’s a good idea, and I’d love for you to try it with me and see how it goes”). theproductmanager.com 18 10. Network with other product managers 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster I’ve cultivated a network of product people over my many years in tech. These are people that I’ve worked with, people that have come to talk at events I run or that I’ve interviewed on the podcast that I co-host, and people that I’ve met at events. Throughout my career I’ve found my product management network crucial for my development for a number of reasons. These people have been very supportive when I’ve needed advice or a pep talk. I’ve been inspired by some of their stories and learnings and diﬀerent ways of working that they’ve experienced. And nearly all of my product management roles have come through personal recommendations and contacts. If you’re settled in a role and you already have the support of product people, that’s awesome. But don’t neglect getting out there and hanging out with other product people. Other opportunities (to learn, connect, and—if it’s part of your path—to build your personal brand) are likely to present themselves if you expand your network. Try to create some diversity in your network too—talk to people that look diﬀerent to you and come with a diﬀerent perspective. theproductmanager.com 19 It’s not just about product people too. I would encourage you to connect meaningfully with the people inside your business. Get to know the leadership team, for example. What drives them, what are their stories, and what are their challenges? These deeper connections open you up to a large support network when you need it and greater opportunities along the way. 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Don’t neglect your mental health I hope you’ve found this set of tips helpful. My last piece of parting advice is to take care of yourself. Product is hard but it’s also amazingly fun and rewarding. Like a new parent looking after their newborn child, you won’t be doing your best work if you’ve had endless sleepless nights, so make sure you take moments for self-care. By looking after yourself you also set the very best example to your peers and your team. You’re able to think more clearly and creatively, and with more energy and enthusiasm. I wish you the very best in your own product journey. theproductmanager.com 20 10 Tips for New Product Managers to Work Smarter and Advance Faster Lily Smith Lily Smith is CPO at BBC Maestro, co-host of The Product Experience Podcast and founder of ProductTank Bristol. In her 15 years in tech, she’s worked with dozens of start-ups and specializes in the early stage—discovering product-market-ﬁt and building the team. Lily has worked on products for GoCompare, BTVision, Future Publishing, Travis Perkins, and Bower Collective and has a wide range of experience across D2C and B2B. theproductmanager.com 21 02 Leading Your Team from Idea to Success – by Becki Hyde theproductmanager.com 22 Good product management requires leadership without authority. While there are product managers who lead by telling others what to do, dictator behavior isn’t the best way to create products that drive the business forward, Leading Your Team from Idea to Success meet the needs of users, and balance myriad technical considerations. Being the idea person, who hands down tasks to a team of specialists, not only limits the eﬀectiveness and eﬃciency of the people who build and deliver the product, but is also incredibly risky to the product itself. Product development is a team sport, and while someone has to call the plays, that person must do so by synthesizing the best possible information and ideas from a diverse group of teammates. So how does a product manager lead without authority, manage all the inputs to the development process, and help a team come out the other side with something awesome? Let’s start at the beginning. theproductmanager.com 23 Keep the team balanced Product Design Successful product happens Desirable at this intersection Does it solve a problem? Engineering Product Management Feasible Viable Leading Your Team from Idea to Success How diﬃcult is it Will it help to build? the business? First, we must assemble a team. While a product manager generally doesn't have direct control over who is on the team, it helps to know what team makeup is going to help you be most successful. At minimum you can ask and advocate within your organization for the right ingredients for success. A high-performing product team consists of every specialty or discipline needed to make day-to-day decisions regarding the product. Generally speaking this means two to six developers with varying expertise and one to two product designers. The important thing, regardless of who is on the team, is that you all start together. This means from kickoﬀ, through research and ideation, into building and shipping, you have all disciplines represented. Starting together has many beneﬁts. theproductmanager.com 24 By starting together, you build shared context. Everyone is able to understand user needs, because they’re around for early research readouts. Everyone builds a growing understanding of the technical considerations on the product, so they’re able to discuss tradeoﬀs in implementation. Everyone knows what the business value of the product is, so they can connect their work to the larger mission. Shared context makes teams and products more durable, and more able to pivot on a dime when new information is uncovered. By starting together, you build psychological safety. Psychological safety is the belief that you will not be Leading Your Team from Idea to Success punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. Psychological safety is now widely understood to be the greatest contributor to better performance on product teams. There are many ways to create and maintain psychological safety, but a great way to begin is by having equal participation in early decision making for the product. When people are handed tasks without understanding the motivation or decisions behind the plan, they will have blinders on at best. At worst, they’ll be disengaged and lack motivation for their role on the product team altogether. When the team starts together, there can be thrash or lack of direction as the various specialties on the team each pull in their own direction. This is where a product manager can create balance, focus, and lead without dictating. Strong facilitation skills are a must for product managers, especially in the early stages of product development. Use workshops and inclusive facilitation techniques to help the team explore where they should, and drive toward decisions when it’s time to move forward. theproductmanager.com 25 Collaborate with designers Leading Your Team from Idea to Success Knowing when you know enough to start building something is an art, not a science. There’s an adage in product development—if you’re not nervous about your ﬁrst release, you’ve waited too long. The same applies for moving from research and discovery into development. If you feel conﬁdent, you’ve waited too long. You may have some personalities among your design or development folks that are eager to push forward—and if so, awesome!—but more likely the team will either look to the product manager for that “let’s get on with it” momentum, or they’ll keep digging and researching until you get everyone together and facilitate a decision. Before you build out a backlog and start delivering stories, designers are going to be spending the majority of their time doing user research and other discovery-related activities. This is awesome! However, we can’t delay jumping into development indeﬁnitely. It’s also not a good idea to make decisions about what needs research and when to move forward without the understanding and commitment of the designers on the team. theproductmanager.com 26 Maintain a healthy relationship with design by collaborating on a learning backlog, to provide focus for your research eﬀorts. Gather the whole team and do an assumptions exercise, to generate assumptions about your product that, if proven false, could hamper your success. Also do a risks and mitigations exercise in addition to the assumptions exercise. Each workshop tends to generate diﬀerent ideas and action items. Once you have a prioritized list of assumptions to validate and risks to mitigate, sit down with the designers and identify which items involve research, and how much the Leading Your Team from Idea to Success team needs to know to balance risk with moving forward. Then, check in on that list regularly, at least weekly, and discuss if you know enough to get started, or if there’s something out there we have to hunt down before we know what to build. Collaborate with developers In much the same way you collaborate with designers on research related to your users and domain, you’ll collaborate with developers on technical risks, assumptions, and general system design. Again, the role of the product manager in these conversations is to oﬀer another perspective, focus, and prioritization in the context of business need, so that we don’t simply go oﬀ researching every possible implementation before we start trying some things out. Collaboratively building a list of technical chores will also help you as the PM to balance trade oﬀs later on, and speak to your stakeholders about major blockers that might be coming your way. theproductmanager.com 27 Deﬁne and measure success A signiﬁcant role of the product manager during early discovery and solution framing is to help the team focus and deﬁne what success looks like. Set clear goals at the very start, and make them measurable. “Build a mobile app for kids learning piano” is something people know how to do, but the deﬁnition of success is binary (we either did or didn’t) and doesn’t relate to any larger business goal (how will this app generate revenue or reduce cost?). Leading Your Team from Idea to Success “Increase subscriptions to our online piano classes by 25 percent” is a much clearer goal. It gives the team something to grab onto (I can make that number go up!) and provides focus (our app doesn’t need a social component, as research shows that doesn’t impact subscription signups). Create tight feedback loops One of the best ways to mitigate risk in product development is by getting feedback early and often. A great product leader seeks out feedback from the team, from users, and from stakeholders, and incorporates that feedback throughout the product’s development. Feedback enables the product team to iterate and adjust to new information, ensuring the product is viable, valuable, and feasible. theproductmanager.com 28 How to create feedback loops within your team The ﬁrst and best way to lead the team through the day-to-day is to encourage and support processes and practices that create tight feedback loops. There’s new information to respond to every day, and being able to iterate through things quickly is vital to success. Lead by example—build your backlog with small, full-stack stories that encourage cross-discipline conversations. Bring the whole team together for planning meetings. Involve designers and developers in acceptance testing. Invite Leading Your Team from Idea to Success feedback and conversation about prioritization. In general, think of yourself as more of a steward of the vision than someone who writes out tasks for others to complete. How to create feedback loops with users Advocate for user feedback at all stages of product development, and support the designers in getting it done. This can mean helping out with logistics or networking, or it can be as simple as sitting in on research sessions and taking notes. While it’s not your role to lead research, being supportive and collaborative with designers on research and testing eﬀorts will help you understand what’s important to them, and incorporate their valuable perspective into the product strategy. With your stakeholders While it may seem like you are serving your team by acting as a buﬀer between them and outside stakeholders, in reality this turns you into a translator, increasing not just your communication overhead but also the risk that theproductmanager.com 29 something gets lost in translation. While it is helpful for you to manage communication with stakeholders, invite the team to present, and invite stakeholders to speak to the team directly when they have questions about users, design, implementation, or technical concerns. Maintain focus post-launch Leading Your Team from Idea to Success Once your team has launched a product to users, the real chaos begins. If the team thought they were inundated with information and options before, now the ﬂoodgates are truly open. You’ll still have stakeholder requests, changes in technology that impact your product, and major features you want to deliver that align to your strategy, but now you’ll be adding in requests and feedback from users and customers—at scale. Pivot or persevere Once initial user and customer feedback starts rolling in, you’ll be faced with a key decision: pivot, or persevere? If you’re having the impact you hoped (e.g. moving the metrics you deﬁned at the start) then it’s likely you’ll persevere. If things aren’t going the way you hoped, you have a more diﬃcult choice before you. theproductmanager.com 30 Regardless, the decision should leverage the expertise and perspective of everyone on your team, as well as key stakeholders. This isn’t a decision you should make alone. Someone else may have key information you missed or forgot, or may see a path forward that wasn’t obvious to you. By facilitating this key decision, you reduce the risk of a bad call, and keep the team engaged in whatever decision is made—especially important if you’re going to pivot with the same group of people. Say no Leading Your Team from Idea to Success As you’re moving forward with building out new features, you’ll have an ever-increasing volume of requests, suggestions, nice-to-haves, and immovable requirements. At this point, product leadership becomes as much about what you say “no” to as what you prioritize in your backlog and roadmap. The continued success of your product is dependent on many factors, but focus is key. It’s always an option to alter the strategy (see “Pivot or persevere” above), but once you’ve got one, maintaining focus on that strategy and the vision it supports will ensure you’re not diluting your eﬀorts. Be a servant leader Product development is too complex for one person to drive alone—it takes a team of experts.The best leaders are the ones who are able to bring their ideas to the table, while also welcoming the ideas, feedback, and questions of others. They see themselves as support for their team. They respect and value the contributions of everyone, and work to ensure everyone’s voice is heard. This is called “servant leadership,” and it’s crucial to healthy teams, and healthy teams build the most successful products. theproductmanager.com 31 Help the team get unstuck Sometimes the best thing a servant leader can do for their team is to help them get unstuck. Product development is a risky endeavor, full of unknowns and surprises. It can be easy to get lost in the information overload and ﬁnd yourself unable to make the call. It can be even easier to feel like you don’t have enough information to make a decision, and you have no clear path to ﬁnding what you need. This is where a great product manager steps in and leads through ambiguity. Sometimes it’s to facilitate a workshop Leading Your Team from Idea to Success or conversation that brings clarity to the team. Sometimes it’s to make the call when no one on the team feels comfortable. Sometimes it’s as simple as breaking a tie on an implementation detail, when either solution will work just ﬁne. Give away the spotlight Recognition, success, accolades—all the beneﬁts of a job well done and a product that solves user problems and beneﬁts the business—are not a ﬁnite resource. It’s easy for product managers to steal the spotlight, often unintentionally. Stakeholders see you as the point of contact, or the face of the product, and will attribute all the successes and failures to you. Be willing to take on the latter, and be sure to give credit for the former to the team. They deserve it, and by sharing it with them, they’ll see you as a team member, and not a dictator. Nothing is more important when it comes time to make tough decisions. theproductmanager.com 32 Leading Your Team from Idea to Success Becki Hyde Becki Hyde is a product manager and design leader who has worked with companies large (200k+) and small (5); in agencies, startups, midsize tech, government, and enterprises operating in manufacturing, healthcare, ﬁnance, and more. The common theme through all her work has been creating a path forward through ambiguity, working across disciplines to solve problems. Becki is currently a Manager of Product Managers and Designers at VMware Tanzu Labs. theproductmanager.com 33 03 The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products – by Jeanette Fuccella theproductmanager.com 34 In today's competitive market, a deep understanding of user behaviors, needs, motivations, and pain points is essential for product managers to create successful products. User research plays a vital role in this process as it involves a systematic approach to gather and analyze data, which leads to valuable insights. The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products The ultimate objective of user research is to inform and guide product development decisions, ensuring that the resulting products or services eﬀectively meet the needs and expectations of the target users. Crucially, user research is most eﬀective when it’s an ongoing and iterative process, allowing for the accumulation of knowledge about users over time. This chapter will explore the signiﬁcance of user research for product managers, highlighting the beneﬁts it oﬀers, and exploring the diﬀerent types of user research methods. Why is user research important for product managers? Being a product manager can be a daunting role! Foundationally, the role of the product manager is to ﬁnd the intersection between the needs of the user and the needs of the business, all while managing the various risks associated with building a product or service. The data and assets derived from user research activities provide the product manager with the necessary foundation to navigate these challenges successfully. Overseeing the development and success of products and services requires the ability to make decisions quickly while simultaneously shepherding stakeholders through the process. User research plays a pivotal role in a product manager’s theproductmanager.com 35 success by providing the data needed to drive stakeholder alignment around both tactical and strategic decisions. In the fast-paced world of product management, making decisions quickly is imperative. User research provides valuable insights that enable product managers to make The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products informed decisions eﬃciently, leading to faster iterations and improved products. User research equips product managers with robust data and insights that instill conﬁdence in their decision-making process. By basing decisions on user feedback and real-world observations, product managers can align their product strategy with users' needs and desires. In the absence of user research, product managers may ﬁnd themselves paralyzed by analysis and uncertainty. User research provides a structured approach, oﬀering a clear path forward and preventing product managers from being overwhelmed by endless deliberation. When working at such a fast pace, it can become easy for product managers to fall into the trap of making false assumptions or having biases about their users. A strong foundation of user research can unveil blind spots and challenge preconceived notions, enabling product managers to gain fresh perspectives and uncover insights that may have otherwise been missed. Last but not least, user research helps mitigate the inherent risks associated with product development. User research provides an opportunity to test assumptions and verify if a product concept aligns with users' expectations. It helps product managers identify areas where their initial ideas may have been ﬂawed, allowing for adjustments and improvements along the way. By understanding users' needs, pain points, and preferences, product managers can theproductmanager.com 36 make informed decisions and minimize the possibility of building products that don’t achieve product market ﬁt. User research frameworks There are any number of published frameworks to guide The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products product managers in approaching what types of user research to conduct throughout the product development lifecycle. Two of the most common are the Double Diamond and Continuous Discovery. Both methods aim to mitigate risk through proper exploration and experimentation prior to investing heavily in engineering. An additional 2x2 framework is useful in prioritizing research resources. Double Diamond Engagement Connecting the dots and building relationships between diﬀerent citizens, stakeholders and partners Design Principles 1 Be People Centered 2. Communicate (Visually & Inclusively) 3. Collaborate & Co-Create 4. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate Challenge Outcome D D er ne is ev iv co eﬁ el el ve D op D r Methods Bank Explore, Shape, Build Creating the conditions that allow innovation including culture changes, skills, and mindset Leadership theproductmanager.com 37 The Double Diamond framework consists of two phases: 1. Solve the right problem 2. Solve the problem right Each of these phases begins ﬁrst with a motion of The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products divergence of thought and exploration, followed by convergence around the “right” problem or solution. The Double Diamond framework is particularly helpful when researching new product opportunities or when the problem space is particularly opaque. Continuous Discovery ? This app I heard was great! about a The end cool app Your app Continuous Discovery is a framework created by product discovery coach Teresa Torres. Unlike the Double Diamond, which suggests a more linear process, Continuous Discovery embraces the inherently iterative nature of product development. Continuous Discovery focuses on identifying and exploring opportunities and associated potential solutions. It’s most eﬀectively used when a product already exists and the team’s focus is on making small, incremental improvements. theproductmanager.com 38 User Research Prioritization Framework Problem clarity: HIGH Ship it Design and measure HEavy Risk: LOW Risk: HIGH The PM Guide to User Research: Listen to Your Customers to Build Better Products Research Research Light Heavy Problem clarity: LOW Regardless of their approach, product teams consistently encounter far more research questions than they are able to explore. I created the User Research Prioritization Framework to help product teams evaluate where to invest their limited time and resources. The framework is most eﬀective when used as part of a planning session. Teams identify open research questions and assumptions and then collaboratively identify the correct placement using the two axes of problem clarity and the risk of getting it wrong. Use of the framework helps identify not only the amount of research necessary, but also the type of research. Additionally, it helps teams avoid “analysis paralysis” by acknowledging that not every question requires in-depth research. The framework has received widespread adoption across product teams and organizations of every size, shape, and industry. Part of the usefulness of the model is in its ﬂexibility. Organizations that are more risk-tolerant have reported shifting the vertical axis to the right to lean more toward “shipping and measuring”. Other organizations, particularly those with scarce research resources, have reported applying an additional level of prioritization within the “Research Heavy” quadrant to further reﬁne and focus their eﬀorts. The research tool, Notably, leveraged the

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