Product Management: Influence without Authority

Question 1

What is needed to build Social Capital

Answer 1

1. Credibility

2.

Question 2

What are the components of Credibility?

Answer 2

Know your company
Know your market
Know your product

So that you can engage in productive conversations with stakeholders

Question 3

What do you need to know about the company?

Answer 3

Vision
Mission
Strategy
Who is the target customer?
What are the customer’s unmet needs?
Who are the competitors?
How does the company create value?
How does the company grow?

Question 4

What do you need to know about the market?

Answer 4

Target Market Segmentation
Size
Growth
Trends
Potential adjacent Markets
Talk to and Observe Customers

Question 5

What do you need to know about the product?

Answer 5

Test the product yourself
Read the reviews
Understand the Product Metrics
Read the PRD
Understand the outstanding list of features and issues
Understand the integration/interaction with ohter products

Question 6

Creating a Basic Story Narative

Answer 6

What problem is being solved?
How does it impact the user?
What is the impact of solving the problem on product strategy and goals?
What is the solution?

Question 7

DACI

Answer 7

Driver
Approver
Consulted
Informed

Question 8

RACI

Answer 8

Responsible
Accountable
Contributer
Informed

Question 9

Waterfall stages

Answer 9

Gather Requirements : The requirements must be fully captured and defined through rigorous documentation in the form of an elaborate requirements document.

Design the solution : The requirements are utilized to design the product that details the functional or system requirements and aids in defining engineering architecture. The requirements and solution may be functionality focused instead of being customer-centric.

Develop the solution : The scope of work is broken into smaller manageable units and developed independently. Each unit of work is tested to confirm whether the intended functionality has been developed and this is called as Unit Testing

Test the solution : The units developed and verified in the previous phase are combined or integrated. This integrated system is tested thoroughly for any issues or failures.

Deploy the solution : Once the product has been exhaustively and comprehensively tested, it is deployed to the production environment for customers to start using it.

Maintenance and support : When issues arise, they are fixed. Enhancements to the product go through the same process to deliver the changes Each phase requires a sign-off from an approver ( for e.g. in the case of Gather Requirements and Design the Solution - it could be the enterprise customer for a B2B2C product) to ensure there is no overlap between phases ( e.g. gather requirements and design the solution).