post

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Customer Research

Hardware

Digital Transformation

Our Privacy Policy is changing on April 5, 2022 - for more information and a description of the updates, <a href="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/privacy/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">see the policy here.</a>

Switching back the focus from ‘Build only’ to ‘Build-measure-learn’

Product career special part 2: Making a change

Build what matters with vision-led product management

Lessons in fearless leadership

Building a product organisation from scratch by Kevin Mansfield

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Product Management

The executive product leader persona

Test blog post

Andres is a freelance writer and digital marketer with a background in engineering and a keen interest in the latest technology advancements. He currently helps tech companies and startups tell their stories by turning their complex ideas into easy to understand material. You can reach out to him on LinkedIn

Andres Phillips

<p>In this <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/producttank-about/">ProductTank</a></span> London talk, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/merissarsilk/?originalSubdomain=de">Merissa Silk</a></span>, then CPO at Fundingport, provides some practical tips and tricks to becoming more product-led and ways to get everyone in your organization thinking like a product person even if management isn&#8217;t entirely convinced.</p>
<p>Her key points include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Applying <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/why-product-thinking-is-the-future-for-product-management/">product thinking</a></span> will help you to know what to build and how to prioritize what to build next</li>
<li>Product thinking can be applied to a roadmap to keep your team aligned</li>
<li>Applying the a Now, Next, Future framework can help with alignment, as can providing a one-pager</li>
</ul>
<p>Watch the session in full to see the talk or read on for an overview of her key points.</p>
<h2>Knowing what to build</h2>
<p>Product thinking will help you know what to build by providing three ways to get everyone on the same page.</p>
<ol>
<li>Identifying the problem: Think about your user and what they need to do. Where is their pain or friction point? Tools like personas and jobs to be done can help to identify these problems.</li>
<li>Explore opportunities: Consider how to solve this problem for the user and the potential impact of solving it for users and the business.</li>
<li>Consider solutions: What solutions are possible from a business perspective? Consider the constraints and how technology can be used to help solve the problem.</li>
</ol>
<p>Following these steps provides a basic template for stakeholders to adopt product thinking. Another way of approaching this is to follow a more advanced template of &#8216;5Ws and H&#8217; (What, Who, Why, Where, When, How). If product managers or team members can&#8217;t articulate the problem clearly, research is needed.</p>
<h2>Prioritizing</h2>
<p>Product thinking can help teams prioritize. Product managers need clear company goals to prioritize successfully. It&#8217;s management&#8217;s job to set company goals and then for product teams to translate those into incremental value for your users. Use the company goals as the starting point for your product goals. Goals become metrics, and metrics become ideas, which then become features that can then be prioritized.</p>
<h2>Keeping your team aligned</h2>
<p>Product thinking can be applied to a roadmap to keep your team aligned. Some companies may use Gantt charts, but these are for projects, not products. Instead, Merissa explains how to use a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/now-new-next-how-growth-champions-create-new-value">Now, Next, Future framework: </a></span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Now</span>: Granular areas of focus, Specific scope, Specs &amp; designs, Less flexible, Prioritized</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Next</span>: Wider areas of focus, Some flexibility, Lo-fidelity stretches or designs</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Future</span>: High-level, broad scope, Flexible</li>
</ul>
<p>This framework can be applied to features, topics, or problems you want to validate or solve. Finally, as a product manager, you may want to create a one-pager to provide additional context. It should outline:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are you building? And who is it for?</li>
<li>Why did you decide to build it?</li>
<li>When do you expect to deliver?</li>
<li>How does the feature align with the company goals?</li>
</ul>
<p>The key takeaway from this talk is that following this approach to being product thinking can help improve productivity and aid in prioritization within any organization.</p>
<h2>Enjoy more ProductTank content</h2>
<p>ProductTanks are informal meetups, created by Mind the Product, to bring local product people together and to enable speakers to share amazing product insights. Today we have ProductTanks in more than 200 cities across the globe and there’s probably one near you.</p>
<p><a href="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/producttank/">Learn more about ProductTank </a>– find your local meetup, explore more ProductTank content, see the latest ProductTank news, and discover ways to get involved!</p>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-95"><a class="gofollow" data-track="OTUsMjEsMSw2MA==" href="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/product-management-training/public-workshops/product-metrics-workshop/"><img decoding="async" src="https://mtpdevwpe.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Training-Metrics-what-should-a-PM-know_-FOOTER-scaled.jpg" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Product Management Process

What’s stopping teams from running experiments by Cameron Savage

Top 7 signs you’re in a bad product system by Scott Williamson

Product operations by Christine Itwaru

How to bring product thinking to any team by Merissa Silk

The role of the first product manager by Andrew Moll

Storytelling for product leaders by Peter Fletcher-Dobson

Meet your new best friend: Product ops

Product management for remote teams by Rian van de Merwe

How to avoid turning your product into a feature factory by Ravi Kumar Sapata

What makes for effective product management by Nikolaus Horn and Sebastian Ratcliffe