Learn About 42 Rules of Product Management In 13 Minutes!
By: Mayur Patil
Tags: Product, Product Development, Product Design, Product Management, Startup

I just finished reading “42 Rules of Product Management: Learn the Rules of Product Management from Leading Experts from Around the World” by Brian Lawley and Greg Cohen and thought about sharing my notes for those who just want to know the crux of the book in just 13 minutes! These are points that are meant to provide a fundamental understanding of the material and get the conversation going. So, let’s get started!

Rules are meant to be broken: Best PMs are passionate and independent. For them, believing in themselves and creating value for customers is paramount, everything else comes later. If you’re fortunate, you can create an entirely new market. Eg: Henry Ford creating affordable automobiles: In 1908, Henry Ford produced an automobile that was differentiated in one characteristic— it was the first “affordable” automobile. The price continued to drop each year and within ten years, 50 per cent of cars in the United States were Ford Model Ts. Work on Products You Are Passionate About: Be passionate about the products you’re working on. It could be about almost anything; technology, solving customer problems, changing the way customers work or play, capturing a market and implementing a winning strategy. Why is it important? 1. If you’re working on something that you don’t deeply care about, you won’t have the tenacity and persistence to do what needs to be done for a product’s success. 2. Passion is infectious — if your team sees you’re committed and excited, they’ll carry that energy as well. Beware the “Requirements Death Spiral”: Keep your Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) simple and crisp else be ready to lead your organization into the “requirements death spiral.” Having too many specifications initially, and adding some more will compel you to miss out your product launch dates and create disharmony among the engineering team. PMs should focus on the problem space and encourage engineering to apply their creative energies to the solution space. Think Like an Entrepreneur: To think like a PM requires thinking like an entrepreneur. Just like how entrepreneurs need to convince Venture Capitalists (VCs), banks to invest time and resources in them, PMs also have to convince the management team of the future value of the product concept being proposed. Both entrepreneurs and PMs have one thing in common: the clarity of customer need. They know the profile, needs, emotions, and purchase drivers of their customers. Learn to Say “No” to Customers: PMs listen to many stakeholders and in order to understand their needs, one important part of this process is sharing information about strategic product road mapping with users. However, doing this will invite features that won’t align with the product’s long-term goals, and this is where the PMs need to step in and say ‘No.’ This quote from Ivan Chalif, Blogger, The Productologist sums it up really well — “Saying “no” lets product managers focus on delivering superior products rather than ones that are merely sufficient.” Product Management Is Inherently Political: In an ideal world, we’d expect several stakeholders willing to compromise and put the organization’s overall interest first. However, this is seldom the case. Therefore, it’s important for PMs to recognize the “internal politics” or “group decision-making” (whatever you want to call it) and help them understand your process and the resources your teams will need to complete a project. There Is a Fine Line between Knowing It All and Being a Know-It-All: As PMs lead several teams that don’t report to them, they’re expected to be decisive and play a judge while dealing with suggestions from different stakeholders. Certainly, this will invite conflicting opinions on key issues. However, it’s the PMs responsibility to keep their egos aside and handle the conflict with data-backed knowledge. Refrain from being the know-it-all — instead be someone that all know they can follow, learn from, and ultimately trust to lead the product toward success. Market Research Must Be Actionable: A good market research is not about using your favourite expensive market research tool, but about questions that help you understand your customers, your competitive marketplace, your competitors, and yourself. And you can do all this by just getting on a SOFA: Systematic, Objective, Focused, Actionable. Only things you need to conduct great market research is a commitment to understanding your customers, a willingness to accept your incorrect preconceived notions, and asking specific questions and a readiness to act. But the most important thing is to actually listen to your customers The Two-Week Rule: To avoid launching a failing product, introduce the product first to your customers and gather validated learnings by focusing on the right activities — prototyping and testing it on real users. You can do this by simply following one rule — never go more than two weeks without putting your product ideas in front of real users and customers. After it, it’s all about failing fast. Market Needs, Not Individual Requests: On a daily basis, PMs receive several feature suggestions from the organization’s stakeholders and customers. Instead of focusing on individual demands, PMs should start listening to market needs. You will often learn more about talking to people who are buying your competitors’ product or who once bought it, but aren’t using it anymore. Practising this consistently will make your product relevant to an entirely new customer base. No Surprises: When writing your Market Requirement Documents (MRDs), talk to your engineers, designers and everyone involved with the product to understand their requirements and ability to finish the task within set deadlines. Be transparent and explain your method of prioritization as this will make them more accepting of your product decisions, even when their suggestions aren’t deployed. Be Data-Driven by the Consumers of Your Product: We all have our favourite feature that we think will drive the product success and we may fight for its survival. But we’re wrong to do that. As PMs, our job is to improve our odds of being right about customer needs, and the only way to achieve this is by talking to the customers. Know about their underlying problems and how to solve them. Remember: you are not the customer, but you are the distilled collective voice of all of the customers. 90–360–3 Framework: The answer to “How long will it take you to make an impact?” The rule is simple: over ninety days, take a 360-degree view of your organization and develop three top-line measurable objectives. This will give you critical insights, visibility, and measurable objectives. Don’t use this process after 6 months. How to use it?— 1. Design a rhythmic timescale right for you and your organization. 2. Build regular and ongoing connections with all the groups in your organization. 3. Develop a measurable and attainable set of objectives Creativity Opens Up More Possibilities: Creativity plays a crucial part in every PMs lives as they can develop creative techniques to solve day-to-day operational tasks. One way to do this is by mind mapping: Start off with a blank sheet of paper and summarize part of the problem you are trying to solve in just one word. You can further branch them out to create a more complex mind map. Another technique involves studying parallel universes that are completely unrelated to the product you manage. This is a great way to guide teams to explore all possibilities without relying on the clichéd “think outside the square” method. Get Your Hands Dirty: As a PM, you should know everything there is to know about your product as it's your best tool to understand your customers and their underlying wants. Be passionate about what you’re building, and that can only be gained from actually hacking, cracking, and beating on the very thing you’re trying to develop. That “survey of one” is quite an essential part of your job and you have to do it consistently. Get Out of the Office: There’s no better way to understand your customers' needs than by actually meeting them in their natural habitat. While the data can tell you about their usage patterns, only by being present in their environment can you learn — 1. What they’re thinking about? 2. how they’re using your product? and 3. How much benefit/satisfaction your product actually provides them? You Do Not Own Your Product: In a company, the CEO makes all decisions, including the ones concerning the product. PMs are only responsible for the product’s lifecycle but they don’t have any authority over it. However, successful leadership promotes and leverages collaborative decision-making process than a top-down mandate. Carve Out “Think” Time: While PMs are often overwhelmed with daily operational tasks and tactical responsibilities, it’s crucial for them to take some time to think about long-term prospects of the product, explore new markets, discover untapped opportunities, learn about alternative product solutions, and up-skill on product management techniques. PMs can use this time to think about product strategies or simply spend that time drawing inspirations from talking to people in other professions, watching a film and so on. Get the Market Segmentation Right!: Do your own market segmentation before making your product. Once you do this, focus your efforts on marketing the product to those specific consumer segments. Use common sense while naming your service, else face massive losses. How to accurately segment your market? Look at the market. Talk to prospective customers. Find groupings that match common needs, characteristics, and behaviour. Clarify Product Positioning: An essential starting point for solving many product management problems is a clear positioning statement; a one-line statement which you use to describe your product to anyone with minimal understanding of it. Creating a positioning statement forces you to figure out what you are best at, where you are in the hierarchy, and exactly what you are. How to write good product positioning statement? 1. Where do you provide value? 2. What are you the best at in the industry? 3. What exactly do you sell? Write it in as detail as you can and shorten it until you arrive at a single statement. Define and Align Your Roles and Responsibilities: Often, many organizations copy/paste the job description of product managers on job portals which can lead to significant misalignment and frustration. To avoid this, it’s important to build your definition of your role and responsibilities with the management, hiring managers, cross-functional teams, and arrive at a common ground. Most of the times, organizations are unaware of PMs duties and this is your opportunity to educate them on what you should be doing and why you should be doing it. Write It Down!: Your job as a PM is to document and clarify. Your PRDs and MRDs should be the go-to documents for anyone involved with the product’s development. Write about your audiences and the time-frame in which you need to serve them. Invite reviews and inputs and revise/update them whenever necessary. Make Sure You Have Clear Priorities: There are always more product ideas than there are resources to implement them. Have clear priorities so that teams and stakeholders know which high priority product you’re currently working on. To do this, create a list of High, Medium, Low priority items and further divide them under H1, H2, M1, M2, L1, L2, etc. Share this list with everyone and keep it updated. Be clear and agile just like water. Salespeople Don’t Just Want to Make Lots of Money: Salespeople are motivated primarily by winning. Money is simply a yardstick to keep score. Focusing on your product or service features and benefits without tying these directly to business value is a recipe for failure. Understanding what really motivates most salespeople will help win acceptance and drive more revenue for your products and services. Create a Culture of Openness: As a PM, you will not see all of the greatest dangers or opportunities yourself, so you must create a culture of openness within your company. Only open communication will ensure that dangers are avoided and opportunities are capitalized on. Align Your Product Strategy with the Company Strategy — Then Sell It: A PM can do this in three simple steps — 1. Understanding the company strategy: You can figure this out by talking to executives. 2. Aligning product strategy with company strategy: Your product strategy must support the company’s ability to deliver it else it will be deemed as wasteful. and, 3. Telling the strategy story and gaining executive support: Finally, unveil your product strategy to executives and ask for the resources you need to make it. Short, Standardized Cycle Times Drive Predictability: Predictability is more important than high productivity. Predictability means dependent organizations — internal and external — can plan with confidence. Knowing what gets prioritized and accepted into a development cycle gets released into production on time, every time. Find Market Problems Worth Solving: Instead of coming up with new ideas, invest time to clearly describe the problem you have identified and then imagine a world where it has been solved. See the product in the world instead of seeing the world through your product. Imagine a world where you have solved the problem — how did it change, did your product create any valuable impact on consumer’s life? If it did, then it’s worth building. If the solution seems impossible, sell that product’s vision to stakeholders. A Business Is Not a Democracy: As a PM, it’s your responsibility and not the engineers or sales teams to decide which features to add to your product. Doing so will lead to sub-optimal products that customers may never use, and from the business perspective, will lead to huge operational losses. But, you simply cannot issue edicts and expect everyone to follow because PM is a synthesis role; you need to make decisions about tradeoffs and compromises by consulting with all cross-functional teams. Agility Is Key to Product Management Success: Despite having little authority over product decisions, a PM can ensure his/her success by being flexible and having organizational agility. Flexibility means changing a course easily given a set of parameters. But, it does not mean caving in on every suggestion. You should know when to be firm and flexible. Managing organizational agility includes factors company size, company culture, where you fit into the organization chart and how you view your role within the organization. Essentially, it means communicating with stakeholders to move your initiatives forward. Tap Into Your Customers: In order to make the best decisions about product features, packaging, marketing messaging, etc., you need to tap into your customers and know what their underlying needs are. Doesn’t matter what you think, only your customers’ perception does as they’re the ones paying for your product. Integrate your customers’ perspectives via customer interviews, surveys, and testing your marketing messages/emails. Doing this will lead to creating a product that the customers really want. Determine Your Marketing Approach Early and Wisely: Determine your marketing approach early — at least twelve months prior to launch — and you will essentially avoid wasted energy, course correction, and effort with no return. It’s the difference between “product readiness” and “market readiness.” Instead of generating marketing buzz via “spray-gun marketing” and PR that management loves, focus on what/who influences your product, do they need trial period, what drives their buying decisions, your company’s current brand image, metrics that you use, and so on. Let the Customer End the Debate: PMs act as a debate moderates, often deciding what suggestions to take from different stakeholders. But this can often lead to disagreements and will result in a sub-optimal product that customers are unhappy with. One way to stop this debate is to equip yourself with real customer feedback from solid market research. After all, they’re the ones buying the product. Differentiation Isn’t Enough, You Have to Be Better: Product differentiation isn’t enough to compel a customer to switch from using your competitors’ product. You need to offer something “better” that provides the greatest value to the customers. To do this, focus on these 3 areas — 1. what customers want. 2. what you’re good at. 3. where competitors are weak. The intersection of these three is where you can define, develop and deploy a product that is more likely to succeed. Act Like a Child: The best way to get to the core of the customer’s pain points is to keep asking “Why.” By consistently asking this, you arrive at a core problem that will help you design a product that successfully solves the customers’ problems. (This is similar to the Five Why technique used in Lean Startup methodology.) Decide What You Are Going to Do and Not Do: Companies have limited resources and time and must decide which market segments to pursue and which to avoid. Companies in mature markets require more resources to better position their product while in an emerging market can provide better growth opportunities using fewer resources. Deciding what not to do is based on whether the market makes sense to the overall organizational goals and objectives. Trust and Leadership Through Good Relationships: Along with the technical skills, it’s important for PMs to have social skills which can help motivate and encourage cross-functional teams and facilitate better communication. One of the important skill that a PM should have is conflict management. By simply asking someone what they’re working on, you can establish a relationship with people and facilitate mutual trust and camaraderie. Great Execution Trumps a Great Product Idea: Focusing on execution is often challenging, especially for PMs because they have to make several small decisions when bringing new products to the market. They can be classified by — 1. Market, customer, product, and functionality 2. Sales and distribution 3. Usability 4. Technical, engineering, implementation, maintenance, and support. To overcome these problems, PMs must understand from where the derived requirements stem and solicit a good evaluation of trade-offs and downsides from experts in specific technical areas. Great execution is all about establishing the right requirements and goals for the product. Be All You Can Be: Despite having less authority, the one thing that PMs do have is influence and they can use this to act as a General Manager — usually responsible for all aspects of the business including the P&L (profit and loss) and revenue and growth goals. While thinking about the overall context of your product, consider analyzing market dynamics, customer and share of the market, business model, pricing and value, total customer experience and operational impact, product lifecycle management. I Can See Clearly Now: The Power of Transparency: Product creation is a high-speed, market-driven undertaking. PMs have to keep up with the constant stream of ideas from various stakeholders and one effective way to do this is to create a document that everyone has access to. This provides certain transparency and invites collaboration that can help teams work on projects effectively and allows you to go through the feedback loop, fail faster, and avoid wasting massive development costs. Always Be Learning: Keeping current in all trends — technology, business, industry, political, culture — requires a passionate desire to study. Doing so helps you create a better understanding of your job and live up to your stakeholders’ expectations. Talk to your teammates, learn a discipline that complements your skills, learn about your industry and expand to other industries. Learning is a life-long process and the more you do it, the more likely you’re able to create a product that will meet your customers’ expectations. These Are Our Rules. What Are Yours?: Rules are designed to prevent failure and, in particular, the repetition of failure. The majority of rules in the book emerged from the personal, observed, or near-failures of each rule’s author in bringing a successful product to market. The rules contained in this book can help by provoking you to think differently about how you do your job and manage your products. Now it’s time for you to make your own rules!