What is product management means to you?

How a user interacts with a product and entire process of creating and managing the whole user experience. This involves creating user journey, technology, understanding business requirements.

How to define customer needs?

We define hypotheses if there is already a product running and see what can be improved. We focus on high frequency users and see what they are trying to do with product. Based on the study we see what the user intent is and based on hypotheses and data, we create options and do experiments.

Tools used.

Google analytics is the primarily tool used. We do multi variate tests. JIRA for managing sprints.

What happens if the experiment is not successful.

We revert to the state before the experiment and then we try to understand what went wrong.

How to manage product priority and backlog.

We start with big business goals aligned with product goals and see where we want to focus. With in product, we define primary user journies and focus on them. Every month we look back and see what needs to be done in next sprint and re-calribrate our priorities.

What is the best way to say no?

PM’s important job is communication. Say no based on priorities and rationale behind the decision.

How does your day look like?

Start the day by looking at key KPI’s. Some day I see only the base reports or some day meeting different stakeholders and aligning priorities. I would see feedback from users. Meeting users to understand how they are using the product.

How do you hire product managers?

We don’t hire too many lateral product managers. Typically people have done couple of years software development and then went to business school. We groom people to be product managers.

Advice for new PM’s

1. One has to be passionate about the product you are building.

2. Understand the users very well.

3. Good working knowledge of steps to build a good product.

4. Good communicator