What is Product Management? Flashcards
What is Product Management?
Product Management is strategy, prioritization, and execution. A PM’s job is to make sure their users are successful and are winning.
What is a Designer’s job?
A designer’s job is to make sure that the product is usable and looks good.
What do Sales and Marketing do?
Sales make sure people buy the product
Marketing makes sure people know about the product
What is Engineer’s job?
They build the product
What is Data Scientist job?
They track the product usage
What is the Product Manager’s job?
The Product Manager’s job is to figure out what to build, facilitate the actual build of it with engineers and maintain the product
They also make sure that the company is building the right product
What do features need to fulfill and align with?
Features in the product need to fulfill what users want as well as align with the business goals
What are the two main areas of product according to the CEO of Wealthfront (Adam Nash)?
- What game are we playing at? (product vision, target customers, value to the customer, an advantage over competitors)
- How do we keep score? (What metrics do we need to determine if we’re winning: it’s not always “are we making money.”)
Which moving pieces will you need to coordinate to ensure the customer has an amazing experience in the end? (6)
Business leader expectations
Constraints of the business
Legal and Compliance
Design for UX and UI
Marketing and Sales
Engineering Restrictions
There are 3 PMs. What are they?
Product Managers, Program Managers, Project Managers
What do Project Managers do?
Project Managers are time keepers that put a plan/schedule together to get something done and keep track of your progress towards that goal.
What do Program Managers do?
Program managers work closely with engineers to get the product built on schedule. They are not focused on the product vision or customers’ needs, merely the need to ensure engineers have everything they need to start and continue building on time.
What is a good rule of thumb to distinguish the roles and responsibilities of PMs?
Whoever holds the responsibility of writing the User Stories is usually the Product Manager.
What is a User Story?
A User Story is a description of a task that Engineers read to determine how to build the product
What is a Product?
A product can be anything people use
What are the responsibilities of a PM?
PMs do whatever is necessary to make sure the product gets shipped
This may vary from day to day
Writing a product requirements document and user stories
Interviewing customers
Project management
UX prototyping and wireframing
Writing relevant documentation about the product you are building
Presentations to senior leadership and stakeholders
At a high level, what are the 3 types of Product Managers?
What is the difference between them?
Internal PMs
Business to Business (B2B) PMs
Business to Consumer (B2C) PMs
B2B2C PMs
Difference
- The different stakeholders they work with
Who are the Stakeholders?
The people who have input into what you are building
Ex. lawyers, accountants, marketers, etc.
Who are Internal Product Managers
Someone who builds internal company products and tools for employees to operate more efficiently
Who are Business to Business (B2B) Product Managers?
Someone who builds ENTERPRISE LEVEL products that are SOLD TO COMPANIES instead of individual consumers.
The PM usually interacts with the salespeople of that company with their employees being the users
The buyer of the product is a BUSINESS, and function similar to a wholesaler
Who are Business to Consumer (B2C) Product Managers?
Someone that builds a product for the average consumer where the end user is also the buyer of the product
Who are B2B2C Product Managers?
Where the product is sold to a company but the end users determine the feature and product set
