What are your best tips for improving your product management skills?

Understanding your customers is the cornerstone of a successful business. It's not just about demographics; it's about grasping their desires, challenges, and aspirations. Dive into their world, conduct surveys, and actively listen to feedback. This knowledge forms the bedrock for tailoring products and services to meet their specific needs. Personalization builds a connection, fostering loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Embrace a customer-centric mindset across your organization, from marketing to support. The more you comprehend their journey, preferences, and pain points, the better positioned you are to deliver exceptional experiences. In the realm of business, comprehension is the key to lasting success.

Completely agree. Customer has to be the focus of everything in a service industry. I also think that a thought or more must also be given to empowering the Frontline person delivering the product/ service/ solution. Organisations should also focus on making life and the delivery easy of the product/ service for the Frontline staff. After all they are the biggest brand ambassadors and the first point of contact.

Product managers are at the driving seat of many strategic initiatives. Following pointers can help one to be better: 1. Research/ Data driven approach: Informed decision-making lies at the heart of successful product management. Understand your product goals and your customer better 2. Empathy: Step into the shoes of your users, understand their motivations and pain points 3. Communication: One of the absolute must have skill as a PM has to align and drive everyone towards a common goal. One might have to update senior executives on progress or impact, hence clear communication is a must have 4. Deal with ambiguity: Learn to deal with ambiguity and be able to move forward even when you have limited data to make decision

Product Management is "Baptism by Fire". Improving as a PM is a journey of continuous learning and hands-on experience. You won't become an expert on day 1, but marginal improvements will elevate your skills over time. 1. User Engagement: Actively engage with users to understand their needs and pain points. 2. UX/UI Learning: Familiarize yourself with user experience and interface design to make more informed decisions. 3. Effective Communication: Employ the 5 C's of communication—Clarity, Coherence, Consistency, Conciseness, and Courtesy—to improve stakeholder relations. 4. Emotional Resilience: The ability to remain calm under pressure is invaluable. This skill is honed through facing challenges, making mistakes, learning, and iterating.

To deeply understand customers directly engage with them. Spend time working in support, answering questions and resolving issues. This frontline exposure reveals insights missed in reports. Rigorously test your own products like an actual user. Work through onboarding, core features, and workflows. Gain empathy for the real user experience, uncovering UX issues and confusion firsthand. No research or analytics replaces insights from personally using your product. Whether staffing support, conducting usability studies, or dogfooding, interacting directly with the customer illuminates needs and gaps that would otherwise be unseen. Your goal should be internalizing the user experience.

Clear path to your product vision: 1 - Identify the organizations objectives 2 - Map the customer's journey(s) and current service blueprint(s) to identify pain points. 3 - Answer the question "how might we make a meaningful dent in X objective(s) with this product." Explore pain point areas. Get diverse backgrounds to weigh in with diverse ideas. Don't worry much about technical feasibility. 4 - Combine and consolidate the best ideas (most impactful and most feasible). 5 - Craft value hypotheses for the various features in the vision, especially the most promising. Include measurement criteria. 6 - Now you have value hypotheses attached to features. The vision is the VALUE, not the features. The features are the (current) path to value.

Improving your product management skills is a continuous process involving learning, practice, and real-world experience. Things that should always be practiced are Understanding the Basics, Staying customer-centric, continuing to learn, having cross-functional skills, making data-driven decisions, keeping in constant communication, prioritizing tasks, networking, taking ownership of the product, having a feedback loop and transparency, Its ok to fail as long as you keep improving and learning, be a strategic thinker. Remember, becoming a skilled product manager takes time and practice. Continuously seek opportunities to learn, adapt, and refine your approach based on real-world experiences.

Product management is finding the sweet spot between vision of the organisation and market feedback. Very often we can be driven only by one or the other.

It's a simple Equation : Culture + Strategy + Execution = Sure shot Success ! (i) Foster a culture where everyone in the team thinks and moves forward to form a - (ii) Coherent Strategy on the Product Vison and User Pain Points Laid down not only be PM , but also the sales , Marketing , QA teams and Support . (iii) And Execute it by Ruthlessly prioritizing based on the User Needs , and market dynamics. At this step , focus on speed more than perfectionism considering Pareto principle of 80-20. This magical combination to achieve is generally Easier said than done 😀.

If you're just starting out as a product manager or simply want to have some extra practice, you can try doing this for your favorite product. Imagine being the product manager for it. How would you describe its vision? What would you put on the roadmap? What would be your OKR? Once you have it, seek feedback from a colleague or a mentor to know how you can improve what you wrote. Moreover, if you choose to do this exercise for a big product, chances are some of this information will be publicly available on their website, such as their vision, mission and possibly even the roadmap.

Let the market be your guide as you validate your hypotheses. In my experience, a negative response can be as helpful as a positive response. It tells you to stop wasting time on a flawed idea and figure out how to pivot. Too many people ignore “bad news,” but we should take a long term approach and use negative feedback constructively!

The key to solving a user's problem is to pick just 1 or 2 pain points in the user journey. The narrower the problem statement, the more resourceful the solution will be. For example, if you are trying to solve the problem of user commute in traffic, first list down all the activities the user would perform to achieve the objective of reaching the destination (job to be done). List down pain points in performing each of these activities. Then, pick which of these impacts the user more, which of these you are well equipped to solve. Write down your assumptions regarding this problem. Validate these assumptions through hypothesis testing/interviews with the user, even before thinking of solutions

Create a continuous feedback loop with your stakeholders. Make sure that you validate and receive feedback from multiple stakeholders. You never know if the one stakeholder you are talking to is the unicorn of processes.

Expanding on the clear path to product vision. A clear vision is like a compass that helps the team move forward and make decisions in case of ambiguity. A clear vision, once aligned with stakeholders will also help the product manager to resolve disputes quickly and align everyone. In my previous experience, I had a case where operations team was more focussed on cost saving instead of a better customer experience. However, with a clear vision to improve customer NPS we were able to align the operations team and move forward.

Prioritizing and validating ideas is a crucial skill for product managers. It involves determining the most important and impactful features and improvements for customers and the business. Testing assumptions and hypotheses through experiments and prototypes is essential to gather evidence and feedback. Frameworks like the RICE model, Kano model, lean startup, and design thinking can assist in prioritizing and validating ideas effectively. By employing these approaches, product managers can make informed decisions and optimize resource allocation for successful product development.

1. Just understand what to do and what not to do - this solves most of the problem. 2. Focus on one item - Take one feature - analyze - prepare spec. - close it - move to next. 3. Ask questions - Unless you don't get an answer just ask Why? This may be annoying but this would bring clarity on the details. 4. Understand how customers are using your product and make decisions.

To foster effective communication with stakeholders as a product manager, I would recommend to follow these guidelines: 1) Be curious, open and humble, recognizing that diverse perspectives contribute to better outcomes. Embrace active listening. 2) Get a deep understanding of stakeholders' perspectives, KPIs, and motivations. Tailor your arguments to resonate with their context. 3) Use a mix of data-driven reasoning, voice of the customer, relevant examples from past experiences, etc. This approach ensures a well-rounded, persuasive communication style that strengthens collaboration and decision-making.

I suggest adopting the following communication model when working with cross-functional teams: 1. Clearly specify the inputs and outputs required for any task you assign to a team. 2. Establish quality criteria for evaluating the outcomes. 3. Ask for options of outcomes, and give names to each outcome option. 4. Thoroughly analyze each outcome option, considering factors such as cost, time, advantages, and disadvantages. By implementing this approach, you can minimize the need for direct involvement in their processes, reduce potential headaches, and convey trust in their capabilities.

Product management is constant communication and collaboration. Stakeholders need to understand the what but more importantly, the why. Stakeholder involvement is essential and should be coordinated, not sporadic. The constant involvement builds trust and helps to greatly reduce vaporware sales, capability exaggeration, and manages road map expectations. The involvement also brings the needed perspectives PMs need from those that are market-facing everyday. Have a product readiness team, consisting of most stakeholder groups, meeting on a perpetual basis - not when a project is weeks away from launch. This will make GTM much smoother.

Too many PMs and product leaders fail to actually align stakeholders because they view the communication and alignment-building parts of their job as wasted time. When you approach cross-functional communications as simply, "I need to inform others of the decisions I've made," it will be a waste of time. But if you can reframe as, "This is an opportunity to make my ideas and decisions better," you start to actually get value from these communications. Even if the questions or push back you hear from others don't change your direction, they can open your eyes to what risks you may have overlooked or where your strategic vision needs to get stronger.

In an evolving landscape, it is vital to cultivate First Principle thinking and adopt a Growth Mindset. Having a curious disposition leads to questioning both established norms and assumptions; assisting not only with RCAs & process but also personal improvement. A growth mindset means staying ever willing to learn. The process of learning will often begin with unlearning; which is just as important in a world where definitions and solutions are evolving every single day. Staying iterative with your self is extremely vital to your evolution

Opportunities to improve your product management skills include training, work experience, role models, and mentoring. Similar to the product manager's role in leading customer-centric improvement through continuous delivery and measurement, product leaders can improve their skills by continuously adjusting their approach based on feedback over years of defining, shipping, and iterating on products. At its heart, product management is about building and learning. To become a great product manager, you need a desire to build great things to make people's lives easier, a passion for business impact, and a commitment to learning a wide variety of skills every day. You also need self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.

As you'll collaborate with specialists from various areas of expertise, it's always a good idea to learn some basics in those fields. No one expects you to write a code or design a website but knowing the basic concepts will help you hold more productive conversations with developers and designers.

Once an MVP has achieved success in market, there is a substantial amount of work that is required to launch the product. My suggestion would be to do smaller rollouts, test user behaviour and make tweaks accordingly. Product management is a job that required continuous learning and evaluation

A key tip for thriving in the continuously evolving realm of product management is to embrace adaptability as a core skill. In this dynamic field, change is constant, and your ability to pivot and adapt your strategies, priorities, and product roadmaps is paramount. Cultivate a mindset that welcomes change as an opportunity for growth rather than a disruption. By staying flexible and open to new ideas, you'll be better equipped to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of product management and turn challenges into stepping stones toward success.

To get better at product management I suggest these things: • Customer obsession. Advocate for customer needs, rapidly test ideas with users, and ensure the product delivers tangible value. • Develop cross-functional empathy. Spend time with engineers, sales, customer support, marketers, to understand their perspectives and pain points. • Growth mindset. Be open to feedback, self-reflect on mistakes, and constantly seek to improve. The best PMs never stop learning. • Improve your technical literacy. Take time to understand the underlying technologies, limitations, and possibilities to make better product choices. The key is to build a diverse set of capabilities while playing to your strengths.

Product management is complex and provides wide exposure to different skills and competencies. In my experience, a few of these stand out that are applicable to other areas and helpful for career advancement. Leadership - The ability to influence peers and colleagues without the authority lends itself to other areas. Experience with defining a product vision and strategy naturally translates to providing direction to others. Combined with storytelling skills, PMs can become inspiring leaders. Innovation - Not only are PMs guiding the process to improve existing products but they help bring new products to life that are useful and valuable to customers. They influence various types of innovation including incremental and disruptive.

IMHO, the communication and empathy aspect of product management is much greater than other technology roles. I was academically trained in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior, and I think that these fields contributed a lot to me as a product manager. I think that product managers, especially those who focus on areas such as data, UX, and growth, should know psychology, although not as much as a psychologist; sociology, although not as much as a sociologist, and change management, although not as much as a change agent. Technical hat alone is often insufficient and even harmful.

Great question! As someone with a background in industrial engineering and communications, I’ve found that leveraging Lean Six Sigma principles for process optimization, maintaining clear cross-functional communication, and adopting a user-centric approach are key. Continuous learning and staying agile also keep my skills sharp in this ever-evolving field.

Time management is something many product managers struggle with. But the hallmark of successful product managers lies in their ability to juggle multiple activities, prioritize tasks, stay organized and be productive.

While getting into details of understanding customers, product managers often lose sight of understanding business. We should create a balance between solving user pain points and meeting business objectives simultaneously. Else, we will make good products that customers love but we will not be sure if customers would pay for the product that generates enough wealth for the firm.

Skill Building: -Shadow a sales person: Sounds odd, but a lot of what PM's do is internal sales. Selling a story, an idea, a strategy. Having some sales experience is helpful. -Relationship building: Establishing a great relationship with your stakeholders is key. -Remain Relevant: It's a fast paced environment . Be in the know on what is new in technology. Taking unsolicited vendor calls is a great way to learn about what's out there. -Public Speaking: PMs are always presenting. It's important to always know your audience. Public speaking is important skill to have on the job. -Be Humble: I can't stress this one enough. It's a relationship game and arrogant PMs will only go so far. Enjoy the good days and own up to the bad days.

Develop a genuine product sense and see everything around you from a PMs angle if you really wanna get ahead. Become a master in insight discovery, be truth-seeking, dive deeper, connect dots, try observing patters. So much of product management is beyond looking at already existing fancy products. You can look at a jug of water and think about how would have you designed it differently. That helps product sense and thinking.

Product managers shouldn’t just love great products but have a knack for developing excellent ones. Having great taste means being innovative, forward-thinking and disruptive. They should be able to pinpoint what needs have not been met and how they can be improved. What product features will wow a customer and address their core needs? What makes customers fall head over heels for one product and detest another? When the product manager is genuinely passionate, innovative and customer-centric, it rubs off on the entire team, leading to the development of excellent products.

1. Embrace Data-Driven Decision Making 2. Stay Updated with Market Trends and Technologies 3. Cultivate Empathy for Stakeholders 4. Foster a Risk-Taking Mindset 5. Master the Art of Negotiation and Influence 6. Understand and Utilize Agile Methodologies 7. Build a Strong Network 8. Balance Big-Picture Thinking with Attention to Detail 9. Cultivate Resilience and Flexibility Remember, product management is a field where continuous learning and adaptability are paramount. Building these skills will not only make you a more effective product manager but also prepare you for future challenges and opportunities in this dynamic field.