Research and Planning: Product Life Cycle
Source: Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakman and Jackie Bavaro
All product and features start with “Research & Planning” phase. This is where the PM thinks about what to build next. PM’s can get inspiration from:
- Customer request
- Competitive analysis
- New Technology
- User Research
- Sales or Marketing Teams
- Brainstorm
- Big Vision for product
A big part of a product managers job is to create and propose a comprehensive road map for the team. The PM talks to all possible sources, list all possible features and then prioritize it based on:
- Customer’s needs
- Competitive Landscape
- Business Needs
- Team Expertise
Once a PM has a proposed roadmap, he has to begin to win people over. He has to being to win stake-holders over.
In companies like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon — He has to win over executives and directors because they have a top-down approval process.
In companies like Google, Facebook and most start-ups, you have to win over engineers because they have a more buttom-up approach.
Once he has chosen the feature set to begin with. The PM has to do two things:
- Become an expert on them: Become an expert on the product, customer, problem and features. Afterwards, the PM needs to think deeply about the problem he is solving and goals of the feature. People are always going to question why they are solving this problem or why they are building this feature. You must have the answers ready.
- Start defining what success looks like: Many companies use Objectives & Key Results (OKR) to define what the most important goals are. PM comes up with measurable results the team can commit to
