Lessons In Product Management

There are great frameworks for prioritizing features, but what if prioritizing features isn't the right approach? We dig into why opportunity costs are the most underrated variables in prioritizing Product decisions.

This week's lesson in product management is brought to you by Derek Osgood, Founder and CEO of Ignition. If your product launches are less than ideal, you should listen to what Derek has to say. Even if you're launches go well, there are great tips on how to optimization the success of your launches. 

0:00-0:32 - Podcast intro

0:32-2:30 - Derek’s Intro

2:30-4:15 - Who is Ignition for?

4:15-4:40 - Where to find Ignition

4:40-8:40 - The PM/PMM Disconnect

8:40-10:23 - Aligning PM/PMM Teams

10:23-13:10 - Overlooked aspects of product launches

13:10-18:30 - Why Run Betas in B2B?

18:30-21:20 - How to price your new product?

21:20-24:00 - The future of software for PMs and PMMs

24:00-25:00 - Podcast Outro

As you wrap up the last 30 days of your 30, 60, 90-day onboarding, it's time to start drafting strategy. In this episode I break down how to do that with a simple framework and how to shrink the timeline if you don't have 90 days to get it done in a new position. 

Many answers to the question of "why do you want to be a product manager" have some variation of "ideation." While ideation and solutioning are definitely part of product management, it's by far NOT the most important thing to get right.

On today's episode, Eva Beasley shares her experience before and after getting into Product Management. One of the things she noticed about some of the PMs she interacted with was an anti-pattern that needed to be addressed, so we did so here.   

Eric Perkins is the Director of Product at Entrata. And as Eric describes his career, it feels like he has a rocket attached to his back. In this discussion, Eric and I talk through how he got into product management, how he quickly rose into a leadership role, and what he's learned along the way.   

On today's episode, I had the immense pleasure of speaking with Etienne Garbugli, Founder & CEO of Lean B2B and Author of Lean B2B, Solving Product, and Find Your Market. 

Etienne is a brilliant product thinker and author with a varied and diverse background, all in and around product management. Etienne joined me to shed light on the Growth section of his book, Solving Product. He answered some of my questions, clarified my understanding, and dropped knowledge bombs the entire episode. Enjoy!

On today's episode, we have JJ Rorie, CEO of Great Product Management and Author of 5 Immutable Truths of Great Product Management, and you're in for a treat! Don't miss out on this great episode as we dive deep into building high customer intelligence, the first Immutable Truth of Great Product Management

Nico joined the show to share his advice and experience on building strong product team relationships.   

Making the transition into product management can be hard. Larry Imgrund shares how he did it, and he offers advice for anyone looking to get into Product or anyone who has recently made that transition.  

Should users or customers drive your roadmap decisions? The answer is yes AND no. Like everything in product management, it depends... and Matt and I dive deep into the topic. 

On this episode, we get "out of the building" to start learning about our customers and the markets we serve and want to serve. After understanding your business, objectives, and strategy, this is the next step before being ready enough to start mapping out a strategic direction for your team or organization. 

Getting back to the basics of product management, my goal in this multi-part series is to demystify product management for new and aspiring product managers.  

So, today, I’m really excited for you to hear this conversation, because I have Irene Yu, Founder of Skiplevel, joining me to talk about how to become technical as a product manager. Irene was formally a developer at Amazon where she uncovered a pretty big problem that Skiplevel is helping to tackle.

On today's episode, we have the pleasure of learning from Tony Poon, Chief Product Officer at R-Zero. We tackle the difficult topic of ego, where it comes from, what the symptoms are, and what the effects of ego come to be. 

1. Great PMs are like sponges, they soak in info from anywhere
2. We can’t assume we’re always right, we don’t have all information, and the info we have is not always perfect or correct
3. We need allies - we can’t ship successful products on our own

However:

1. We should have an opinion - we just don’t always have to express it in an argumentative fashion
2. This doesn’t mean we say yes to everything - we can’t be order takers
3. So, if we can’t say yes, then how do we say no… we don’t - the best way to not say yes is to ask questions
   1. Ask for clarification
   2. Ask for context
   3. Ask for data

It’s pointless to argue as a product manager. We have zero power, and we need allies across our company in order for our team’s work to be successful.

Next time you get tempted to argue, remember those six tips:

1. Always accept and encourage feedback and counter-opinions
2. Never assume you’re always correct - we rarely are
3. You need allies, so don’t alienate them
4. You should have an opinion but be tactful in expressing it
5. Don’t say yes to everything
6. But don’t say no to anything. Use questions to put the ball back in the court of the requestor

I hope these tips are helpful as you go about your week, and I’ll see you next week for another lesson in product management.

You need experience to land a product job, but how do you get it? In this episode, I unpack two feasible ways of gaining and documenting tangible experience to help create your own path to product. 

There is no easy path into product management, but there are 4 simple steps to get you there. We cover step 1 in today's lesson in product management, and it's all about learning first. Before you can do the job, you need to learn what the job entails and how to execute different skills within it. In today's episode, I share some free and inexpensive places to acquire the knowledge you'll need as a foundation for your path to product management. 

In this episode, I share 3 tactics for making better decisions in a group setting. Help your team and your organization take your decision-making capabilities to the next level. Your company and your customers will thank you. 

There's no shortage of debate as to whether individual or group ideation yields better results. We're not going to take sides. What we're going to do is explore how to make better decisions by generating better ideas, regardless of the setting you're in. In Part 1, we examine a few ways you can increase your decision success rate by generating better ideas.

Most features never get adopted, and I'm betting these three tips will help shift your success ratio upward. 

Be sure to rate and review the podcast!

I get asked a lot about whether aspiring PMs need an MBA to land a Product Management job. The simple answer is no. But we dive into the nuance of why MBAs are valuable. 

Today’s Lesson in Product Management comes from Jonathon Hensley, Co-Founder and CEO of Emerge Interactive and Author of Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure. When I first heard about Jonathon’s book, I ordered it immediately. Alignment is one of the hardest parts of my job as a product manager, and I’ve enjoyed putting his advice and frameworks into practice. In this conversation you’ll get to hear the origin story that drove Jonathon to write the book, how to build the foundations of alignment in your own company, and the pitfalls that you should be aware of as you do. And Be sure to grab the link to Jonathon’s book in the show notes before you close the podcast app.

Here's what we discussed:

1:18 Johnathon's Introduction

2:24 Origin story of Alignment

4:34 How Jonathon defines Alignment

6:45 The importance and definition of vision

8:35 How to build the foundation of alignment

11:05 Three themes of the book: Assumptions, Communication, and Strategy

13:24 The difference between reality and truth

17:30 The danger of the “fail fast fail often” mantra

19:57 The pillars of good strategy

25:08 Product Management hack to get unique customer insights

30:45 The four levels of alignment

32:00 Where alignment falls apart

38:30 The impact of written communication and documentation

43:00 Grab Jonathon’s book Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure

It’s funny how first releases have become synonymous with MVPs, but how many first releases have you seen that are able to stand on their own and sustain a business? In the early days it’s about testing and learning. You want Minimum TESTABLE Products

If you wait until you have something you think is a fully coded up MVP with what you believe to be the features that make the product minimally viable, you’re almost guaranteed to be wrong.

On today’s episode you’ll hear from Pranav Desai, Chief Product Officer at Reputation. We covered a ton of ground in the thirty minutes or so we talked, so don’t feel bad if you have to listen twice to take it all in. You’ll hear us talk about:

1. Why one customer’s feedback isn’t the end all be all for decision making
2. Why Product should own voice of the customer
3. How to balance quantitative data with qualitative.
4. How to distinguish between signals and noise

And so much more.

There's an age-old debate about what's more important, a good product or great marketing? Brian Yam, Head of Marketing at Paragon, and I look to settle that debate. The answer might surprise you.

You hear product people talk about feasibility, usability, and viability all the time as the three core variables product managers should care about. The typical definition of viability looks a lot like ROI, but today we challenge that narrow view of viability and expand the definition.

On today's episode, we discuss the difference between doing strategic analysis and developing strategy. Too many people conflate and confuse the two things as one, but they are not. 

Welcome back to Lessons in Product Management. I’m your host, John Fontenot, and today we have a bit of a different episode, but it’s soooo relevant. With the pandemic, working from home, and Zoom fatigue, our jobs are hard enough but how do you know when it’s time to call it quits? John Garret, Product Manager at Therapixel, and I talk through all of this and more.

As we wrap up season 4 of Lessons in Product Management, we’re going to hear from Henry Latham, Founder and CEO of ProdMBA. Before starting ProdMBA, Henry served in UX and Product leadership roles for a variety of companies and has taken his experience and used it to produce a great book, “Product Leadership Starts With You,” as well as launch ProdMBA to fast track your career from PM to head of product. On this episode Henry and I break down product strategy and how it works in conjunction with product discovery. We’ve looked at product discovery from so many angels this season, and I’m excited to wrap it up with Henry and discuss one of my favorite topics, product strategy.

Welcome back to Lessons in Product Management. it is November 22nd, 2021, and today we are chatting with Taylor Heyman, Product Manager at Lendio. Yes, we are co-workers, but I learned a lot about Taylor and his career in product that I didn’t know before this discussion. You see, Taylor’s PM career started in startups but how he get his start might surprise you.

Taylor’s shares his unique experience running discovery in startups and what he learned from those experiences and how to balance the need for discovery with the need to deliver value, while keeping in mind the law of unintended consequences.

On today’s episode, I sat down with Elena Leonova, VP of Product at BigCommerce. With a decade of product management experience, I really wanted to get Elena’s take on Product Discovery and how it’s perceived from a product leadership point of view

We discussed how Elena got into Product by accidentally taking a Business Analyst role. And after reading Marty Cagan and getting inspired, Elena decided she’d make a pivot from BA to PM. Now as a product leader, Elena works to create space for her PMs to focus on the important work of product discovery. We talked through what discovery is, why we should do it, and what gets in the way.

On today’s episode we get to hear from Duy Pham, Product Manager at HREasily. We’ll hear about Duy’s really interesting path into product, how to create organizational alignment through discovery, and the 4 quadrants of discovery that need to be considered to get a holistic picture of your customer and the market at large.

On today's episode, we get to learn from Austin Yang, Sr. PM at Landbot. Austin shared his journey from SDR to Sr. PM, his perspective on discovery, and the differences he's seen in Discovery between being a Core PM vs a Growth PM. 

Jon shared a ton of great insights about discovery. Here are just a few of the points covered in this episode:

1. The core skill to develop for discovery
2. Using discovery to identify and enter new markets
3. Balancing customer discovery w/ market discovery
4. Build for markets, not for customers
5. You’re not following the scientific method if you start with a hypothesis. You have to start with an observation. Hypotheses are only legit if they’re driven from an observation
6. You can’t be emotionally attached to ideas. Invalidating hypotheses early is just as valuable as building good ideas
7. Why “using data” is such a convoluted term
8. Just because you found a pattern in data, it doesn’t mean you know why it exists or what to do about it
9. You can’t have an ego as a PM, and you can’t take ego into discovery and expect to be successful
10. How to successfully involve developers in the discovery process

Starting fast in your career or at a new company require you to know where to start. Join me in this episode to learn best practices on how to approach your first 30, 60, and 90 days as a PM at a new company.