Product management - skill set, polite, requirement

After a short break at the morning, digesting the product management skill set @ different tech blogs from woshipm, I decided to write few short notes to make me memorise the key point.

Product Management Skill Set

Marketing Strategy

• Market Size, Pricing, Positioning, Customer, Competition , 6 Forces (Buyer Bargaining Power, Consumer Bargaining Power, Competitive Rivalry, Substitution, New Entry Barrier, Politics)
• Branding Identity

Product R&D

• User Requirement, Pain Point, Reasoning
• Tech R&D, Development, Design
• Vision, Long Term + Short Term Milestone(For Facebook, 30 Years + 6 Months), Prioritise
• Visualisation

Operation / Sales

• Operation Flow, Cost Control, Customer Management
• Market Communication, Interaction
• Project Mangement, Scheduling, Product Launching, Priorize , Polite

User Requirement gathering

is one of the important skill set, typical methodology would be focus group, questionnaire or so. The Personas, Customer Journey Map, Storyboard, Experience Map would be another innovative way to achieve. Be empathy, try Design Thinking. Make sure focus on the market part first.

If there are any new requirements pop out, Ask 5 questions to yourself.

1. Is that agent?
2. Where is the new requirement from? (its get more important, if its close to the target user.)
3. How many users need that?
4. Can this requirement solve the problem?
5. How to prove your decision is correct once if deploy the new requirement? (try A/B testing.)

Design

can be missing for a professional god-like product manager. Wire-framing, Sketching, User-Flow Chart, Site-maps, User Story, Design Pattern should be applied at the early stage in order to gather early feedbacks.

Perfection

some say its born natural. Well just keep practise.

Visualisation & Branding Identity

Visualise has 2 important factors : Content & Channel. Content is the message you want to deliver to the customer. Channel is how you deliver the message to the target audience. Try to think about you are going to teach your kids not to touch the shit. Should you punish them or just explain the reason? "Not to touch the shit" is the content and the method you use is Channel.

Setting up branding identity is deliver your business values though different Touchpoint. Including, Slogan, Metaphor, Stationary, Product Color Scheme, Logo, Special Wordings in both business & casual etc.

Priorize

Your tasks. We always have limited resources for the product development. Map the most suitable person to your pizzle, don't exceed one's duties and meddle in others' affairs.

Polite

Ask five questions yourself before assigning task to others.

1. Once you are ready to exchange and idea, are they free?
2. Are you going to talk to your teammates directly and walk in front of the teammates?
3. Estimate your result, the best case and the worse case. Are you ready for the result and the materials?
4. If you talk about something you don't know, should you be focus on the possibility and the costs?
5. Before any product design, have you confirm your teammate option in different situation ?

Skill Set Preparation

Web dev / Mobile dev / Rapid Prototyping + Testing is a must.
People management skills > Product management > Schedule

Be a Real Product Manager

• need to re-think.
• gain less or no management power.
• is small potato most of the time.
• once get shit, you have to take responsibility to it no matter what it is.
• make a great deal to every stakeholder.
• mature.