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Teague Hopkins

Mindful Product Management

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Oct 11 2013

The Secrets of Product Management

I’ve had several conversations recently about the nature of product management and the role of product managers. One thing that kept coming to mind was an old post by Martin Eriksson, which defines the product manager as the person who sits at the intersection of UX, Tech, and Business.

Eriksson says that the role of the product manager is to:

    Image Courtesy of Martin Eriksson
    Image Courtesy of Martin Eriksson
  • assess and articulate the needs of the user,
  • understand business goals and constraints, and
  • communicate requirements and prioritization to the tech team.

That’s a good starting point, but I wanted to add a few things to that description that have come out of my conversations with product managers and the people who work with them.

UX is not UI

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: user experience is not about the interface. It’s about the complete end-to-end experience of engaging with your company and your product. This is the part where the product manager observes the user and designs experiments to gain more insight, so that they can be the voice of and proxy for the user in internal discussions. Lean startup principles and customer development are two ways of thinking about how to collect those data and insights about what drives your customers. The product manager has to collect that qualitative and quantitative data and make sense of it in the form of a product strategy.

Vision

The product manager holds the overall vision for the product. That person must be able to guide the fine-tuning of the details without losing sight of the bigger picture of what the company is trying to build. Usually, this involves maintaining a product roadmap for internal communication.1 The goal is to help guide the team in the process of creating a high-quality product that achieves that vision without diluting that value. One of the most difficult parts of the product management role is saying no to good ideas. A lot of good ideas don’t add up to a great product. If you’re having trouble with ideas in isolation, try making it a strategic decision by choosing among choices instead of making a series of binary decisions.

All Together Now

The product manager also has an important role in coordinating between the development, design, marketing, and sales teams, as well as accounting and business development. Each of these groups speaks a different language – with different jargon and different salient variables and goals. The product manager is the ultimate cross-cultural communicator, speaking each language and translating among them. Building consensus and coordinating efforts across functions is critical to executing a strategic plan, and the product manager is responsible not only for coming up with the strategy, but also for seeing it through.

Bonus

On teams that use Agile, the product manager sometimes serves as the Product Owner, in the role as proxy for the customer or end user. While insights from the true product owner – the user – are key to setting strategy, the product manager is the one inside the building and available to give clear decisions about murky ideas. Those decisions aren’t necessarily always right, but they help the team avoid analysis paralysis.

One note here: the Scrum Master in Agile is the person who owns the Agile process. The product manager cannot effectively serve as the Scrum Master, because those roles have different priorities that often naturally involve some productive conflict, and that should remain a separate role.

Double Bonus

As the person who can most clearly articulate the problem you’re trying to solve for your customer, your product manager can be a great evangelist for your company. The fact that she has interactions with and an understanding of almost every part of the business is an added benefit. If you have a product manager who is a good public speaker, take advantage of it and put her out there. You will probably see extra benefits from giving her more time “out of the building.”

Product Manager Job Description

This got me thinking: if I was writing a job description for an exceptional product manager, what would I include? The following is my take on the skills needed to excel in this role. Feel free to commandeer this for your own purposes.

Experience with lean startup and customer development. Understand the customer, and not just by asking them what they want.

Ability to influence without authority. Much of the product management role requires coordinating among people who don’t report directly to them. Diplomacy and negotiation is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Previous P&L Responsibility – The product manager must understand business to the degree that he can understand the constraints, risks, and tradeoffs, and make educated bets with imperfect information.

Analytics and data – Qualitative data are great, but even more useful when they are not used in a vacuum.

Coaching technical teams – It’s critical that the product manager has some sense of what is easy and what is difficult for developers. Also required: being able to communicate what you want to the team and predict challenges the team might confront.

Technical Background – When you can speak your developer’s language (if not write it), everything goes smoother because you can skip steps by understanding technical limitations and complexities.

 

1. The internal caveat here is key. If you publish the roadmap, customers will see it as a promise instead of a flexible plan.

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Agile, Agile software development, Business, Lean, Lean Startup, Management, Marketing, Product management, Product manager, Project management, Risk, Scrum, Software project management, Systems engineering, Systems engineering process, User

Sep 12 2013

Lean Startup Panel Discussion

Last night I had the privilege of moderating a panel discussion with four other lean startup practitioners at the Ballston BID Launchpad in Arlington, VA. The event was organized by Lean Startup Machine, and the five of us will all be mentoring at the upcoming Lean Startup Machine DC on September 20-22.

Moderator

Teague Hopkins – Founder of THG, Lean Startup Coach. THG helps teams at corporations, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies innovate more efficiently and effectively.

Panelists

Frank DiMeo – VP, Technical Staff at In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies to help the CIA and other intelligence firms equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.

Frank Taylor – CEO of Restin, Head of Partnerships at Fosterly. Restin provides robotic massage chairs for rent and lease to the engagement marketing industry and for various applications in the corporate wellness & hospitality space. Fosterly is a platform to organize and share entrepreneurial knowledge.

Bruce Mancinelli – Executive Director, Incspire. Incspire is a business incubator education program that supports emerging businesses and startups through the pairing of mentor teams to each incubated company in the program.

Laura Kennedy – Head of Corporate Development, Living Social. Living social  is a deal-of-the-day company that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. Based in Washington, D.C.

Panel Recording

Topics

  • What was your first introduction to Lean Startup?
  • An introduction to the components of Lean Startup Methodology.
  • How have you implemented the lean startup methodology at your company?
  • What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from running an experiment?
  • We’ve all heard about skunkworks. The goal is to insulate innovation teams from the culture and oversight of the larger organization. To be successful, do companies need to separate those doing innovation from those running operations?
  • What will we learn at Lean Startup Machine?
  • What are some tips for getting the most out of Lean Startup Machine?

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Culture, Lean, Lean Startup, Marketing, Technology

May 30 2013

How to Pick a Customer Segment

Customer Service Desk
Photo Credit: nffcnnr

In a lean startup, we like to say that it is better to pick the customer you want to serve and figure out what problems they have than to come up with a solution and then figure out who needs it. Entrepreneurs following this advice often ask me how they should decide which customer to choose and whether they should worry about targeting something too narrow. Specificity is good. Picking a small segment (e.g., parents of grade school aged children in the Washington, DC area) so that you can get enough penetration to start seeing network effects is usually better than biting off a segment that is too large for you to have any real impact (e.g., parents). With regard to what segment to choose, there are a few different approaches:

  • market sizing,
  • customer development, and
  • passion.

I’m going to lay them out from most to least traditional, ending with my favorite method.

Market Sizing

This is your traditional business school approach. Find some research on the sizes of various markets, maybe take a look at which ones already have similar offerings floating around, and pick whichever market has the best combination of size and untapped potential. As a baseline, this is not a bad way to go, but I prefer focusing on either customer development or passion as a way to pick your market.

Customer Development

Form a hypothesis about which market has the biggest problem doing whatever you’re good at doing. For instance, if you’re offering an online service to help customer find places to buy widgets, ask yourself who has trouble finding information about local stores, catalogs, and places to shop. Then, before building anything, go talk to some customers in that segment and ask them about how they currently find the information that you hope to offer, and whether that method satisfies them. Don’t tell them about your solution; just see if they actually have a problem with their current solution. If they don’t, you’re going to have a hard time getting them to use your option. If your first hunch about a market doesn’t pan out, try a few more and see which one yields the most frustrated customers. Start with that market, because it will be easier to attract your early adopters if they are actively looking for a solution.

See also: The Ideal Profile of an Early Adopter

Passion

The third school of thought, and the one I most often favor, is a variant of following your passion. Let’s take as a given that, barring lottery-like success, you will be working hard on this startup for 5-10 years before you see real returns. If that’s the case, who do you want to spend that time with? Which customer segment is the one you want to spend 5-10 years talking to, learning about, and empathizing with? When you pick a customer whom you like, you’re much more likely to stick with the startup long enough to find the right formula. If, for example, you hate sculptors but love musicians, you probably already know who you want your customers to be.

See also: Your Most Important Startup Decision Comes from the Heart

This post was adapted from an answer I wrote to a user’s question on Quora.

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Customer Development, Customer experience management, Entrepreneurship, Lean, Lean Startup, Marketing, User

Apr 14 2013

The Ideal Profile of an Early Adopter

When you’re doing customer development, you are specifically NOT trying to understand and satisfy all of your possible users, or the total addressable market. You can deal with the whole market after you get off the ground, but you’ll never get there unless you understand and satisfy (or better yet, thrill) your early adopters. You need to find the people with your problem who feel it so acutely that they are willing to try your imperfect solution, and to help you see where it needs to be improved. These early customers are worth their weight in gold once you find them. They will be your greatest source of insight into why the product isn’t working, the most supportive when it seems like you’ll never get it right, and your loudest evangelists when you finally nail it.

Portrait of an Early Adopter

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

To find people with the problem you’re solving, look for five simple criteria:

  1. They have the problem,
  2. They know they have the problem,
  3. EITHER they are paying for a solution currently
  4. OR they have hacked their own together,
  5. AND they are still unsatisfied.

If you’re talking to people who don’t meet all of these criteria, they are probably not your early adopters. They might be future customers. They might think they’ll buy your product at some future point, but that point may never come. If they aren’t willing to buy until the product is perfect, you can’t afford to focus on building the product just for them. Keep looking until you find the people who need your solution so badly they will climb on board with you before you’ve finished building the boat.

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Customer, Customer Development, Early adopter, Lean Startup, Management, Marketing, Product management

Sep 28 2011

The Startup Primer

[box]Welcome to the Startup Primer – a collection of 55 articles about the challenges of startups. If you are launching your startup, preparing to start, or if you’re already on the way to living the entrepreneurial dream, you need to read these articles.[/box]

Table of Contents

  1. Before You Start
  2. On Founders
    1. Just for Non-Technical Founders
  3. Team
    1. Starting the Team (Co-Founders)
    2. Building the Team
    3. Keeping (and motivating) the Team
  4. Boards and Advisors
  5. Marketing
    1. Social Media
  6. Product

Before You Start

  • A startup is an organization formed to search for (not execute) a repeatable and scalable business model – http://bit.ly/f5qcGv
  • So you want to do a startup, eh? – http://slidesha.re/iQrovv
  • 5 things you should know before starting a company – http://bit.ly/ql9xcj
Top

On Founders

  • How Great Entrepreneurs Think – http://bit.ly/fbewnn (Hint: Effectual Reasoning)
  • How Running A Business Changes The Way You Think – http://bit.ly/qVzb8W
  • The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: 47% of successful entrepreneurs have at least a Master’s degree – http://t.co/kj4WICE
  • 5 Surprising Traits Of Successful Entrepreneurs – http://huff.to/nuHzPu
  • What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology – http://tcrn.ch/gOxnNf
  • 13 Things You Must Do Every Week As A Startup CEO – http://bit.ly/gLuaCK
  • Before product-market fit, find passion-market fit – http://bit.ly/qvczRJ
  • “The notion that working longer hours is correlated to better business results is a pernicious social pathology” – http://bit.ly/peikcO
Top

Just for Non-Technical Founders

  • Tips For Getting Started For The Non-Technical Web Entrepreneur – http://bit.ly/juR4ZG
  • How to pull your weight as a non-technical co-founder – http://bit.ly/ne66h1
  • Please, please, stop asking how to find a technical co-founder. “You don’t find a technical co-founder, you earn one.” – http://bit.ly/j9K54Z
Top

Team 

Starting the Team (Co-Founders)

  • The Co-Founder Mythology – http://bit.ly/ksqNiA
  • How to pick a co-founder – Venture Hacks – http://bit.ly/fwZddI
  • 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Picking a Business Partner – http://bit.ly/pXfVxr
Top

Building the Team

  • The Best Resources on Hiring for Founders – http://bit.ly/jCikuW
  • One of the best essays on recruiting a high performing team for your startup – http://bit.ly/fYcqj9
  • What to look for in a UI designer – http://bit.ly/ecXnfM
  • Hiring Developers: You’re Doing It Wrong – http://bit.ly/gbNFxs
  • Why Engineers Distrust Business People – http://bit.ly/lS4rVk
  • How Designers Want to be Contacted – http://bit.ly/p9dPQN
  • Don’t Hire Senior People, Hire People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class – http://read.bi/ibVrw6
Top

Keeping (and motivating) the Team

  • Reminding your team “why?” can double productivity. Why does your organization exist? – http://bit.ly/fn4MYk
  • Bored People Quit – http://bit.ly/ofhvwn
  • Do it Without Titles – http://bit.ly/pNqAF3
  • 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Embrace The Virtual Office – http://bit.ly/oTBAJj
  • Caring – http://bit.ly/mItMB6
  • Three Signs You Have A Management Problem, And That Problem Might Be You – http://read.bi/eBBwxZ
  • How to Build a Bootstrapping Culture – http://bit.ly/gNmzdL
Top

Boards and Advisors

  • It’s Time to Reinvent the Boardroom – http://bit.ly/pVShG9
  • The Benefits Of The Perfect Independent Board Member – http://t.co/8P5juNX
  • How to ask for help – http://bit.ly/kSx2gH
  • Don’t hate on VCs; Generalizing is dangerous – http://awe.sm/5Ilib
Top

Marketing

  • 17 Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup – http://bit.ly/pfGuNZ
  • The New Rules of Branding Your Business Online – http://bit.ly/egoqGS
  • The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising – http://bit.ly/ih8O24
  • “My Friends” is Not a Market Segment – http://bit.ly/lT04Qy
  • How Engineering-Based Marketing can “beat the stuffing” out of Traditional Marketing – http://bit.ly/pZD9cb
  • Do Not Build Your Startup Messages for Your Grandmother – http://bit.ly/oYB01O
  • Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why – http://bit.ly/q2oVOg
  • When failure is cheap, why not give it a go? – http://bit.ly/gqLlBx
  • The real reasons why startups go into stealth mode – http://bit.ly/gW3dsV
Top

Social Media

  • How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business – http://bit.ly/eIoANf
  • 5 Tips To Make Your Startup’s Twitter Account Stand Out – http://t.co/YUI03lc
  • Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert” – http://read.bi/kwh0b3
  • Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5% of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns” – http://tcrn.ch/kctz9Q
Top

Product

  • How to start your startup in 4 steps – http://bit.ly/l4KuQZ
  • Never say “no,” but rarely say “yes.” – http://awe.sm/5Iix1
  • Personas: The Foundation of a Great User Experience from @uxmag – http://bit.ly/hivV32
  • Crash Course: Design for Startups – http://bit.ly/g8Chci
  • Business Objectives vs. User Experience – http://bit.ly/dYDnZk
  • Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it – http://bit.ly/gavKUj
  • Launch your site too soon – http://bit.ly/kyUsdX
Top

Special Bonus: Equity and Funding

    This primer is not intended to be a comprehensive resource for those seeking investors but these articles should give you a starting point for exploring your options.

  • Intro to Stock and Options for Startup Employees and Founders – http://bit.ly/U5Ro6z
  • Where to Look for Different Amounts of Funding – http://bit.ly/lSsHfp
Top

[button color=”#61BFD6″ link=/contact-us]Get Guidance for Your Project[/button]

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Culture, Entrepreneur, Failure, Management, Marketing, Productivity, User

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