Curiosity, Data, Delight, and Communication

For me, product management is about creating experiences that move people. We've all come across an app or product experience in the past 5 years that made life better in an unexpected way and that's beautiful. I can honestly say I look forward to doing my taxes every year because of Turbotax.  When I get turned around in a new city, I know Waze  will get me back on track. It boggles my mind that we have endless opportunities to rethink and transform everyday life experiences like this through thoughtful product management. It takes guts, creativity, and commitment to the following guiding principles.

Curiosity is king

In my experience, the most powerful product ideas come from asking one simple question over and over: why?  As a product manager, staying curious means not settling for the first explanation of why something is the way it is. It means having the humility to admit you don't know it all and the drive to keep digging for the right answer. It also means knowing your user inside and out.  What are your users loving? What makes them frustrated? Where do they hang out? Do they fit a certain persona? Curiosity as a responsibility includes staying ahead of emerging trends within the market and paying attention to what your users love about other products. Curiosity is the healthiest habit to practice daily to ensure the product you're building resonates with users. 

Data drives decisions

Data is a special gift for a product manager and something that must be used wisely. Without data, nothing is concrete and when it comes to prioritizing work for a product, data helps you stay objective when faced with competing needs. If you're watching closely, data is also endlessly helpful when it comes to tracking user behavior and that can provide important inspiration for shifts in the product experience. Data is the friend that will whisper, "you are on the right path, keep going" or scream "TURN LEFT" when you're approaching a cliff.  I believe gut feel and trusting your instincts within a market has its place in product management, too, but I jump at the opportunity to quantify, especially to clarify a risk or ROI. Data keeps us all honest and accountable.

Delight is required

Delight starts with solving a problem the user really needs solved (otherwise the solution is just a distraction). Then, from the concept, to the UI design, all the way through the full user experience, the product should feel organic and easy like breathing. User testing throughout the design and development cycles is a great way to ensure user flows remain springy and fluid. With the speed of agile development comes trade-offs that can jeopardize elements that give your product soul, especially when you're cranking out an MVP or trying to hit a deadline. But the element of delight isn't optional for my users--not with the millions of other products fighting for their attention--and keeping that top of mind helps ensure we always prioritize user joy.  I believe in creating Minimum Lovable Products as often as possible.

Communication breeds success

Communication is the most important part of happy, successful product management, including communication to stakeholders, the product/design/development team, to the internal company, and of course, to users directly.

Stakeholders: In my experience, communication about upcoming product changes and shifts in strategy should be delivered early and often, especially to key stakeholders. As a product manager, it's my responsibility to keep the ship on course and keep everyone moving in the same direction. When your stakeholder group is diverse, from executives to leaders from other departments and more, I like to remember that it only takes getting 1 degree off-course for a ship heading to Hawaii to end up in Tokyo. In agile development, you're working at breakneck speeds, which means you need to be prepared for quick changes and adjustments throughout the development cycle. To mitigate the risk of someone in my stakeholder group not receiving an important update, I like to establish strong communication channels early on. That way, when something comes up, it's quick and easy to get everyone on the same page right away. Sometimes that means creating weekly standup meetings for the stakeholder group, sometimes that means creating a central folder or Slack channel--whatever is easiest and most effective for that specific stakeholder group.

Product/Design/Development: As a PM, transparent communication with my team members is essential, and moreover, so is keen attention to detail. Once I've charted a direction for the product and we start working through designs, I find it's important to keep the problem we're solving in sharp focus to avoid scope creep and cascading confusion. Using a clear problem statement as a touchstone each step of the way helps everyone rule out edge cases more quickly and increase focus. In development, this emphasis on communication is most important when crafting clear deliverables and desired end results in user stories. If a feature or product change is multi-phase or has multiple teams working on it, I'll also spend time with the developers upfront, before work starts, mapping out exactly what we're aiming to accomplish and why (product strategy) before the iteration begins. I find it helps paint a clear picture of where we want to end up at the end of the sprint and helps us move faster with fewer questions along the way during development.

The Company: When it comes to launching a new product or communicating changes about an existing product, the product manager sets the tone for how everyone in the company will initially feel about the product. That's a big responsibility and a task I never take lightly. I've seen products lose steam and get pushed to the wayside just because the initial communication about the product was lackluster or confusing to the company at large. As a product manager, it's my job to be the champion of my product, which means making sure all communication about the product is consistent, thorough, and exciting whenever possible. I always make an effort to get people talking about product updates and releases with release videos, competitions, you name it. The way the product is perceived by the makers and sellers makes a real difference in the product's ultimate success.

Users: It should go without saying that communication to users about the product is the most important thing to get right when it comes to creating successful products. If a product launch falls flat because you didn't test your design or messaging first--that's a problem. I like to test multiple variations of messaging within and about the product to ensure the content we deliver to users is concise and effective, while conveying the specific problem that is being solved by the product or update. Of course, the best way to ensure users are delighted by the product when they receive said messaging is to make sure you've built the right product in the first place, which takes us back to the beginning, starting with curiosity about user needs> data > delight > communication. I know we've gotten everything right when adoption numbers rise organically. 

Summary

As a product manager, I constantly strive to know my users as closely as possible so I can lead without hesitation to ensure their problems are met with intuitive solutions. I am insatiably curious and I deeply value the impact of a problem solved in an elegant, delightful way. I know the power of consistent and effective communication and I live and breathe my products. I believe in building winning teams that crush deadlines and feel like family. I aim to build beautiful product experiences that customers love and I insist on having fun along the way.

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