How do you do product management in the early days?
Hey everyone - not sure if this is a bit of a vague question but thought I'd ask anyway.
For background, we are about 10 months in on our product, and just now going full time on it. So, fairly early days.
We have our big product vision, and we scoped an MVP, built that, and have been iterating on this early version since launch. So, sort of working on new stuff on an ad hoc basis based on user feedback, and dogfooding the product ourselves.
Now we are at a stage where we are happy with v.1 and want to have more of a strategic/big picture approach to how we build out the product. We want to have a reason for each feature we work on that is helping us achieve our bigger vision because if we keep asking users what they want we'll just build a faster horse.
I'd love to hear from people who have been at this stage before - how do you approach product management, planning, prioritizing, talking to users, internal meetings, etc.?
Hi Matt! Really interesting question, and it seems like you’ve got a good approach already 👍 I’m not experienced at going full time on my side project but I can share a bit about what I’ve learnt in my product management journey. I’m totally for the approach where you work around your users, not so much by asking them what they want but by focussing on what they need to get more value. At times I’ve had user feedback which requests a certain feature and I took a step back to understand why they were requesting the feature and I followed up with them and realised there was a simple change to address their need (rather than a full blown feature). Whilst user feedback is important, your business needs and product values will also drive feature development. I found it helpful to make a view of all the features that could possibly be worked on and then applied a score of how important it was for my business goals and for my users - I regularly update this view after speaking to users which really helps in prioritising how our product is developed. Hope my ramble is useful in some way!
Hey, thanks this is really helpful! Good point on understanding needs rather than wants. Sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle.
And the prioritization stuff is something we need to do a better job of.
Do you have a product management tool you use that you like? Am trying out Productboard because we had been managing this on a Miro whiteboard but it's not working for us anymore.
No worries at all!
We've used Trello (probably similar to your Miro) and that's worked well for us but I can see how you may have outgrown this type of tool. I haven't searched for other tools myself so none come to mind but I'll let you know if I do come across any.
Hi @mattcrail! This is a great question! And your goal of having "a reason for each feature we work on that is helping us achieve our bigger vision" is so important.
Right now, the most important thing for your entire business should be to develop strong conviction through experimentation about what is going to create enough value for your customers to transact. If you're full time, you need revenue (or investment, maybe both), and getting your business right is going to turn on your ability to have customers pay for your product.
To do that, you need to spend as much time understanding your customers' motivations/context/desires as possible and prioritizing features that will get you to product-market fit as fast as possible. Every feature must get you closer to happy, paying customers who are thrilled to pay you for helping them realize their goals, and who feel awesome because they use your product. Everything else -- especially planning disconnected to seeking product-market fit-- is arguably a distraction.
It may sound overly simple, but it isn't easy. Hope this helps. Happy to chat further, too, if useful. Good luck!
Thanks this is super useful!