There are a lot of people talking about product out there. Like a lot. How do you know I’m the one you need for your amazing secret project? Well, let me introduce you to my product vision.
What the f*** is “product” anyway?
Basically, anything you’re serving your users is product-related. The obvious part is made of UX and UI design of course but not only, your tech stack and the way you use your data (if any) change make go from a meh product to a great product!
A good product guy (or woman) should, in my opinion, be able to pull off at least 30% to 50% of any of her stakeholders’ jobs ranging from designers to data analysts to operational managers and engineers. Not saying she should tho ☝️ The ultimate goal is for one to be able to hold a relevant conversation with each of her stakeholders about their job to help them solve their issues.
Ok cool, now what?
Well now let’s roll! A product person's main objective is not to ship shiny features but to have an impact on her users’ lives. Sure often this means going through tech-driven features but, one must not forget that operations-driven solutions are a great way to test and experiment with an idea to measure its full potential before going into dev, even for a simple MVP.
Product people’s duties don’t stop when a feature has been shipped out in the world. Ideally, one should have defined success KPIs and built in a way to measure the feature’s impact on users’ lives beforehand. However, we all know that things tend to go south more than they should. So even when that’s the case, one should be able to find a way to identify a “good enough” proxy to get some insights on what’s happening out there.
You’re not alone!
When a product folk is working within a squad (watch Spotify's excellent video about what a squad id) or with another organization, they have brilliant teammates alongside them. Not only should they rely on them, but they also have to empower them as well.
Product folks are among the very few people who have a global overview of what’s happening and more importantly why it’s happening. Share this context with your designers and engineers! Soon enough they’ll be empowering you in finding the best solutions to deliver value to your users.
The End.
You certainly don’t agree with most of what has been said above. And you’re right! We all have our own personalities and approach to product management. I’m eager to discover new points of view on those topics so please let’s chat and share. I’m available here for a coffee IRL in Paris or for a video call.