Here are my personal notes for the online Product Management Course through UDEMY. The original course can be found through UDEMY
Product management is an organisation function that manages all the various stages of the product lifecycle. They do not project manageme, develop nor market the product but have key inputs across various deparments in developing a solution.
The product lifcycle chronicls the various stages of a product from ideation and inception, engineering design, manufacture, ongoing servicing and disposal. Even though a product may reach the end of its lifespan it does not mean that it cannot be continued through other ways such as rebranding or introducing a new version of the same device.
source: Mavo Institute slides UDEMY, Section2, Lecture 4
- Several ideas for products needs to be generated
- Conduct various activities to assess customer needs and desires
- Review of Customer Surveys, customer feedback
- Assessment of existing customers (increase, decrease, changing demographics)
- Better understand trends and movements of competitors from: industry journals, magazines, blogs and conferences.
- Define High Level Specifications
(mock up, business requirement document, wireframe, or bulleted points) - Business Case
- Problem Statement: What problem the product solves?
- Recommendation: Approach of how the product will solve the problem
- Cost Benefit Analysis: 3-5 year Expenditure and Revenues incurred.
- Alternatives Analysis: What existing products or solutions exists/competitor analysis
- Organization Impact Analysis: How product affects the current organization to go ahead with the solution, Build/Buy analysis. New support services required?
- Product Description: Describes the customer benefit, technology benefit, legacy migration, product development lifecycle, alignment with business strategy.
- Senior Management Approvals: Does it meet the strategic objectives for the organization. No/Go Decision requirements are provided here.
- High Level specifications have been finalized
Senior Management as approved and committed resources to the development
Product Development team is formed
- Engineering
- Sales
- Implementation
- Support
- Given High Level Specifications for the product and the goal to create the product
- Create Detailed specifications
- Engineering will then build a prototype / MVP
- Product Management will revalidate and confirm that the product meets their core requirements.
- Product Manager decides if any changes need to be made.
- Obtain market feedback through to finalise product – away from the main market with low market impact if changes are required. (Trade shows before release)
- Product Management should know how to position the product and know their target customer segment is.
- Product Management needs to prepare the campaign to launch the product.
- Sales + Channel Partners + Customer services + marketing must understand what they're selling and how it differs from the competition.
- The customers must understand the product they are buying
- Develop documentation for sales & service (Channel Partners & Customer Services)
- Internal stake holders require documentation for competitor comparison charts and pricing documentation.
- Prepare documentation to client and external project partners.
- Prepare documentation to convey how the product stays ahead of the competiton.
- Sales will decline and will need to discontinue the product
- Start planning a new product launch
- If the current product is discontinued and the new product is not accepted by the customer then new decisions need to be made. (Windows Vista vs XP, WIndows 7 vs 8.1)
is a coordination function focused on tasks, dates, owners, and dependencies. They look at a project and make sure everything is being done in time, alert of risks, ensure communication and collaboration. This is a general function that supports many activities from software development to construction.
is a function focused on building the right product for a specific set of customers to solve a specific set of problems. They build a market requirements document, work with development to guide building the product and coordinate its launch.
is responsible for making the product successful in the market by understanding customers, competitors, influencers and other forces. They provide sales tools, provide marketing strategy and guidance for demand generation, feedback for new products and features and work with all customer-facing areas of the company.
- Launch products on a regular basis.
- Identify market opportunities and define product vision and strategy.
- Understand customer needs and gather product requirements.
- Develop new products and enhance existing products.
- Engage closely with the engineering team to help determine the best technical implementation methods as well as a reasonable implementation schedule.
- Manage the complete digital product lifecycle from ideation through to delivery.
- Participate in and facilitate workshops and product planning sessions.
- Produce product documentation such as; statement of work, product roadmap, job cost reports, user stories, sprint timelines and sprint reconciliations
- Deliver projects on time and on budget
- Day to day management and communication for internal/external product teams.
- Participate and run staff WIP production meetings. Ensure effective communication between all staff regarding work & deadlines
- Coordinate & support internal resources for the flawless delivery of products
- Nurture relationships with clients and project stakeholders by delivering on our promise and setting transparent / clear expectations
- Championing the ‘Process’ - ensuring the product teams follow our delivery process from brief to product release
- Sell services to existing clients
Constantly assessing and reassessing the level of priority for all tasks.
How do you say no to people? I kindly mention the importance of the task but mention I have other pressing priorities I need to tend to.
Good interface and provides a visual indication of the learning journey, far superior than udemy, edx and coursera.
Incorporate a discussion forum. Add additional reading material.
We can analyse mutliple metrics for business functions to gauge how they are performing. We can also track these metrics over time to note trends and identify causes, recommending improvements along the way. With advanced data analytics tools available to us today, it is possible to gain even further insights from granular data and find previously unseen trends across various business activities.
Explain the product market fit, how it solves a specific solution for a targeted customer.
Can it be intuitively used, does it allow the user to reach their desired solution efficiently? Does it solve the core problem? Do the users enjoy using the product?
Ensuring the right vision and product strategy is translated and understood to all parties.
How someone manages all the different tasks required to develop a product that meets their customers needs.
By testing the market, even before touching any hardware or code. We verify the problem exists amongst our users.
Face to face interviews with our target customers and complimentary solution partners, product reviews on active discussion forums regarding the competition.
UDACITY Facebook Google Documents Google Drive Dell XPS13 Macbook pro 2017 Samsung Galaxy s8+ (+ Lighter and better batter life than the note 8) (- Fingerprint scanner is hard to reach. Community is asking for it to be on the glass, but how does it discard accidental touches by others and ensure an actual unlock request is required?)
Be the voice of the customer within a development team Ensure the right product meets the clients needs ensuring product market fit. Testing assumptions and hypotheses ensuring the end product is as refined as possible to meet the customers needs.
The concept of product life cycle (PLC) concerns the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. The product life cycle proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. PLC management makes the following three assumptions:
- Products have a limited life and thus every product has a life cycle.
- Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the seller.
- Products require different marketing, financing, manufacturing, purchasing, and human resource strategies in each life cycle stage.
Extending the product life cycle by improving sales, this can be done through
- Advertising: Its purpose is to get additional audience and potential customers. Exploring and expanding to new markets: By conducting market research and offering the product (or some adapted form of it) to new markets, it is possible to get more customers.
- Price reduction: Many customers are attracted by price cuts and discount tags.
- Adding new features: Adding value to the product catches the attention of many buyers.
- Packaging: New, attractive, useful or eco-friendly packaging influence the target customers.
- Changing customer consumption habits: Promoting new trends of consumption can increase the number of customers.
- Special promotions: Raising interest by offering Jackpot and other offers.
- Heightening interest: Many of the following things attract many customers who match certain profiles: Eco-friendly production processes, good work conditions, funding the efforts of non-profit organizations (cancer cure, anti-war efforts, refugees, GLTBI, environment and animal protection, etc.) and the like.
E.g. Coca – cola. Core product hasn't had much changes Seasonal marketing Change of branding, I.e. personalized coke bottles.
These are the characteristics of each of the 4 PLC stages:
This is the stage in which the product has been introduced first time in the market and the sales of the product starts to grow slowly and gradually and the profit received from the product is nominal and non-attained. The market for the product is not competitive initially and also the company spends initially on the advertisement and uses various other tools for promotion in order to motivate and produce awareness among the consumers, therefore generating discerning demands for particular brand. The products start to gain distribution as the product is initially new in the market and in this stage the quality of the product is not assured and the price of the product will also be determined as low or high.
- costs are very high
- slow sales volumes to start
- little or no competition
- demand has to be created
- customers have to be prompted to try the product
- makes little money at this stage
In the growth stage, the product is present already in the market and the consumers of the products are habitual of the product and also there is quick growth in the product sales as more new and new customers are using and trying and are becoming aware of the product. The customers are becoming satisfied from the product and they bought it again and again. The ratio of the product repetition for the trial procurement risen and also at this level, the competitors have started to overflow the market with more appealing and attractive inventions. This helps in creating increased competition in the market and also results in decreasing the product price.
- costs reduced due to economies of scale
- sales volume increases significantly
- profitability begins to rise
- public awareness increases
- competition begins to increase with a few new players in establishing market
- increased competition leads to price decreases
In maturity stage, the cost of the product has been decreased because of the increased volume of the product and the product started to experience the curve effects. Also, more and more competitors have seen to be leaving the market. In this way very few buyers have been left for the product and this results in less sales of the product. The decline of the product and cost of attaining new buyers in this level is more as compare to the resulted profit. The brand or the product differentiation via rebating and discounts in price supports in recalling the outlet distribution. Also, there is a decline in the entire cost of marketing through enhancing the distribution and promotional efficiency with switching brand and segmentation.[3] costs are decreased as a result of production volumes increasing and experience curve effects sales volume peaks and market saturation is reached increase in competitors entering the market prices tend to drop due to the proliferation of competing products brand differentiation and feature diversification is emphasized to maintain or increase market share industrial profits go down
In this stage, the profit as well as the sales of the product has started to decline because of the deletion of the product from the market. The market for the product in this stage, started to show negative rate of growth and corroding cash flows. The product, at this stage may be kept but there should be less adverts.[4]
- costs become counter-optimal
- sales volume decline
- prices, profitability diminish
- profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution efficiency than increased sales Note: Product termination is usually not the end of the business cycle, only the end of a single entrant within the larger scope of an ongoing business program.
Brand and product management is closely related Your product will affect your brand Your brand will affect your product.
A brand is a product identity that differs from the competition. It is combination of emotional and intuitive aspects related to a product. They are about customer experience. Customers are forgiving of a strong brand.
It is intangible but are a experience. It has tremendous value. Your customers own your brand.
The benefits of a strong brand is focus. Apple provides the same product experiences across its ecosystem.
Apple isn't in the business of computer products, but for creating incredibly designed products that is different from the status quo.
- Be different
- Be alert.
- Be relevant.
Brands are owned by the entire company and people using the product.
Feedback provides instant feedback from your customer. Allows the company to take action when it needs to.