Figure out which risks are the most detrimental to the business
Devise experiments to validate your risk-reducing solutions
Current State of Product Management
Keep things moving
Plan Epics
Write Stories
Accept/Reject stories
Data Geekery
PM's are known as the glue, the pace setter, the pragmatist, and the decider
Future of Product Management
Wearables, fashion, devices
12 year olds look at the world and presume nothing is impossible
Mobile first
Multipart products and services (phone, body, web, in-store all have different experiences)
Complex supply chains (e.g. a just-in-time clothing manufacturer based on facebook likes)
New constraints based on the physical world
Examples
Tie Society: re-intermediation. Inventory personally curated for you by a stylist. Fullfilment is about pick and pack to someone you've never met
Service design will lead us into the next decade
There are many steps in the customer journey
How do we create a cohesive experience around very complicated purchase decisions?
Quirky: community management. At what price is this product too cheap or low quality? What's it like to negotiate store placement of a Quirky product at Target?
Lollywolly Doodle - Children's clothing company that adds 20 new garments to their Facebook page. The ones that get the most likes get added to their permanent inventory. You can buy via the comments section of Facebook.
Agile is a beautiful thing
Organizing the backlog is not the future of Product Management
Leveling Up
Kent Beck taught us in Extreme Programming that:
Courage to speak truths pleasant or unpleasant fosters communication and trust
Courage to discard failing solutions and seek new ones encourages simplicity
Courage to seek real concrete answers creates feedback
These are the challenges PMs face
This is effectively the Lean Manifesto
Leadership
Not ownership
You're not a dictator; you're a facilitator
Differential diagnosis
What are all the symptoms
Is there an intersection of symptoms?
What scenarios caused this intersection of symptoms?
This is NOT process implementation
The process serves the goal
The PM does not serve the process
Group Facilitation
Not Heroism
PM's don't go into a corner and come back with a decision.
They should be the glue
They should get the right minds in a room and extract value
They should get the right minds in a room and come to an agreement
It's not consensus or democracy
It's an agreement for the purpose of moving forward
Sometimes a PM has to make the call
They make the call in service to the team, not because they're the hero
Experienced Makers
Not just MBAs
You need to have lived it so you can improvise when you need to
Pragmatic
Not Dogmatic
Have philosophical conversations about why we are here and what we are doing as a team
Whole business
Not point solutions
Be able to telescope
MVP of a wedding cake is a delicious, beautiful cupcake
Be able to articulate why we are doing what we are doing
Everyone is faking it
CEOs don't know 90% of what they need to
Lean on tools like Lean Canvas et all to remind us what we should be thinking of
