What is product management?

Product management is the process that directs all stages of a product’s lifecycle, from discovery to go to market, with a focus on the product and its users.

What is the product lifecycle?

The product life cycle describes the stages of the product from the time it is introduced to the market until it is removed from the market. There are mainly four stages of product in the market industry:

  1. Introduction: This stage is when a product is launched in the marketplace. Typically, at this stage, sales are low and demands build slowly.
  2. Growth: This stage is when customers have accepted the product and demands and profits are growing
  3. Maturity: This stage is when demands are stagnant and level off, and might have to look for a price strategy to complete market
  4. Decline: This stage is when demand is declining and replaced with new emerging products, might have to retire or pull the product from the market.

What are the key areas of the product cycle?

There are three pillars of the product cycle that define the primary area of focus

  • Product discovery
  • Product Planning
  • Product Development

Product Discovery: This is the phase of determining what to build, why to build, and for whom to build. This involves market understanding, user research, competitive analysis, and the assessment of opportunities. This is a decision-making process.

Product Planning: This is the phase of conceiving the product vision, defining goals, setting the direction of the product and success criteria, prioritizing goals, and developing a roadmap for alignment with stakeholders and the team. It refers to the discovery of products to create a product plan.

Product Development: This is the phase to create the feature sets, requirements, acceptance of criteria, definition of ready, definition of done, testing, and launch strategies.

What are the key elements of product vision?

vision statement should have: <What> <who><why>  focus on long term. Key elements are

  1. The problem, what is the problem of users?
  2. Solution, what is an approach to solve this problem?
  3. Target segment, for who behind the product?
  4. Needs, why behind the product?
  5. Goals, what to achieve with this product?
  6. Trade-off, what will be trade off, in any.

How do you prioritize feature sets?

  1. MoSCoW technique. Assign priority based on must have, should have, could have, and won’t have for each feature. Then ranked them based on these assigned groups.
  2. Effort and Impact technique. Create a quadrant of effort and overall on impact customers. Considering revenue, strategic, and business goals are essential elements. The ratio of Impact vs. Effort can be to rank features. High impact with low effort can be a quick win and set as a high priority, while low impact with high effort can be ranked low.
  3. RICE technique: Create a score for each feature based on four factors: reach, impact, confidence, and effort. To quantify each factor, use the following questions:
    • Reach: How many customers will be affected by these features for a given duration like a month, etc.?
    • Impact: How much does this impact customers? Eg: 4: severe, 3: high, 2 medium, 1 minor, 0.5 trivial
    • Confidence: How much confidence is in Reach and Impact data? Eg: 100%, 80%, and so on.
    • Effort: How much time will be invested for this from requirement, design, development, and release?
    • RICE Score: (Reach * Impact * Confidence) / Effort.
    • The product team should gather SMART metrics (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant ) before using this.
  4. Story Mapping: This is based on user experience instead of internal or stakeholder opinions. Layout categories that represent each stage of the user’s journey t on a horizontal axis, then place tasks for these categories in order of importance, from top to bottom. This is a group activity that involves the whole team however it doesn’t consider business value and stakeholders.

How to measure product success?

Product success should be measured by the impact of the product to users and the goal defined during the planning phase. It can be measured using metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) of milestones of the overall goal. This data helps perform calculations and understand business and revenue performance.

Metrics to predict revenue

  • Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) = Monthly subscription rate x number of subscribers
  • Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) = Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) / total number of accounts
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) = Average revenue per user (ARPU) x average customer lifetime
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): = Sales and marketing costs for a specific period / total number of customers acquired during that same period

Metrics To Track User Engagement

  • Active User Percentage:
    • DAU = Number of daily active users
    • MAU =Number of monthly active users
  • Traffic (Organic/Paid)
  • Average Session Duration = Total time spent by users/number of users
  • Bounce Rate

Metrics To Track Customer Retention

  • Churn Rate = Number of lost customers / the number of existing customers during a specified period
  • Net Promoter Score( NPS) = Percentage of promoters – the percentage of detractors
  • Acquisition Rate (AR) = Number of new users in a specific period
  • Client retention rate (CRR) = Number of existing customers at the end of a period/number of total customers at the start of that period

Tips to improve product success

  1. Define comprehensive marketing and messaging for the product.
  2. Perform Testing prototype to predict the potential of the feature and perception of the feature 
  3. Assess the variance between actual data, and predicted values to refine the forecast of demand and price.
  4.  Use customer feedback and interviews to adapt the product.

What is the product KPI?

KPI is a quantifiable measure used to define and track product success. The product management team uses these to identify problems, set goals, and make informed decisions.

  1. Marketing:
    • Revenue
    • Number of Leads
    • Cost per Lead
    • % Sales Growth year by year ( existing vs new)
    • Sales cycle time
    • Average revenue from one customer
    • Traffic, MQL ( Marketing Qualified Leads)
    • SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
    • Current Budget
  2. Product Development KPIs:
    • Velocity
    • Release Time
  3. Product Usage KPI:
    • Daily Active User
    • Duration
    • Onboarding Time
    • Customer Chun/Retention Score
    • Customer Satisfaction Score
    • Promoter Score

What is the product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a strategy for how a product will develop over time. It outlines product functionalities along with the timeline. Roadmaps can be created with Atlassian tools.

How do you write user stories?

User Story:

As a [user], I want [functionality] as that [benefit].

Acceptance Criteria:

Given [how given]

When [action ]

Then [outcome of action]

It should meet INVEST criteria. INVEST stands for 

  • I – Independent
  • N – Negotiable
  • V – Valuable
  • E – Estimate
  • S – Small
  • T – Testable

How do you manage the product backlog?

Product backlog can be order 

  • By Technical necessity: The necessary items to be completed prior to another.
  • By Risk: Amount of unknown associated with each item.
  • By Business Value: The expected value of each item to the overall product.

Follow 20/30/50 Rule

  • The top 20% of stories should be refined enough to be worked on immediately.
  • The middle 30% of stories should be suitable for productive discussion and have a concise description of the intent of the items, basic acceptance criteria, and the business value the item will add overall.
  • The bottom 50% of stories can have only summaries and descriptions.

What distinguishes the product from the engineering team?

The three Ws (Why?, What?, and Who?) are the responsibility of the product. The main objective is to find the right problem, which requires different levels of activity.

The product team works with the engineering team to determine how to solve the problem, understand its feasibility, and determine when it can be delivered. 

The engineering team looks forward to solving the best problem available within the time frame. They look for clarity and a well-defined mission.