Product Management: AWS Portfolio website - part 1, identifying opportunity
Tags: productmanagement, product, webdev, aws
Published: 2023-03-29 15:34:09

## Introduction
Welcome to my blog series post where I'll be going back to my Cloud Resume webpage to implement some Product Management tools and techniques. In this blog I will be covering the section of identifying an opportunity.

The methods shared here I have picked up from [The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Product-Book-Become-Great-Manager-ebook/dp/B071HFBGXR) by Josh Annon and Carlos Gonzales De Villaumbrosia from Product School and the Udemy course [Become a Product Manager](https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-product-manager-learn-the-skills-get-a-job/) by Cole Mercer and Evan Kimbrell.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6cu30gtqc75ixb3pl4mf.jpg)

## Strategically understanding a company

This section is all about defining the company's context such as goals and position in the market. In this case, it's a company of one - me, myself and I. 

**Why does the company exist? What is the mission statement? What the vision?**

I want to provide something that proves my ability and skills in Product Management and Software Development, so that potential employers can be confident in the potential value I can bring. 

**What is the company already building?**

The company is already building (built) a portfolio website hosted completely within the AWS Cloud.

**What stage is the company at?**

Growth stage. I want more people to be aware of my personal brand and the skills that I have. (compared to increasing revenue or satisfying existing customers)

**What does it do better than competitors?**

The company (I) has(ve) skills in software development and is knowledgeable about the technology side of things.

**5C Framework**
- Company = experienced software developer who can create website. Vision is to improve personal brand and provide proof of skills.
- Customers = Hiring managers are likely to use the product to validate experience. In terms of market segments, it could be hiring managers of software developers or product related roles. These could be further segmented into industries or size of companies. They make buying decisions based on amount of experience or location bases.
- Collaborators - this involved AWS to host the website. Education course leaders to help build the product. Etc.
- Competitors - all those people who have also completed the AWS Cloud Resume Challenge and have similar skill sets. Potential competitors are those looking to complete the challenge.
- Climate - tech is start to trend towards cloud and AI. Increasing skills into these areas would be beneficial.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2nl4x47woxt5xyadf65p.jpg)

## Creating an opportunity

**Establishing goals and metrics**

Company vision - improve skills and prove those skills to potential employers.

High level goal - develop a side project. This can be achieved by developing a portfolio website, deploying on AWS cloud and advertising to my network.

Key success metrics:
- User Engagement: Measure user engagement by tracking the number of visitors to the website. This could be expanded to average time spent on the platform, amount of users that get in contact. ---> _This is an example of a funnel, if the customer was to visit the website but not get in touch this would be an example of leakage and could suggest that the skills demonstrated are not enough or the contact form is too clunky or hard to find etc._ <---
- Feedback: Collect feedback from users through surveys, feedback forms, or direct conversations with mentors. Analyze the feedback to identify areas for improvement and iterate on the product accordingly.

**Opportunity hypothesis:**

Potential employers (user/customer group) have the problem that they have no real proof of my skills in Product Management apart from experience within a software team developing an app product (pain point). The company believes that by developing a product, the portfolio website hosted on the AWS Cloud, and displaying Product Management techniques for creation of the product (proposed solution) we can solve this problem by creating value in the sense of proving the experience and success in this field. We will know this to be true once the Product is successfully deployed to AWS and available to end-users. (key metric/expected outcome). If this is successful, we can capture value through the responses of potential hirers acknowledging the skills, and improvements to be made and value shown (monetization strategy).


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x7l29kb74nm3vxqp3yyr.png)

## Validating the hypothesis

**Introduction**

Before rushing head first into this new product (which could cause negative opportunity cost), I want to validate that the idea actually would prove valuable and help achieve my goals - otherwise it would be a big waste of time, effort and money. 

**Market research**

This can be anything from determine the amount of competition, to where you market niche can be, to the amount of success there is to be had. Here I will do just a short intro.

According to a survey conducted by Indeed, a job search website, 83% of hiring managers said that they prefer to see personal portfolio projects during the hiring process. Additionally, 75% of hiring managers said that a candidate's personal projects can be as important as their work experience. This proves the value of this opportunity hypothesis.

**Gathering feedback**

This could come in the form of customer interviews, surveys or other project management tools. In this case, it would be wise to gather feedback from my network. For example, I could gather the thoughts of those software developers and product managers about how successful they think this project would be in terms of convincing them of the skills I have.

**Minimum Viable Product (MVP)**

I could develop a MVP version of the portfolio website. This could be a set of [wireframes like the set I have developed on the tool Figma](https://www.figma.com/file/iSGQ6qg5hHOLMgb6Znjw56/AWS-Cloud-Resume-website?node-id=0-1&t=Kx7jJz8taePKIoL3-0) or just a simple front-end with HTML. Just the basics that get the idea across but still provide functionality. I could then complete A/B testing, where I test two different versions, with this or just gather feedback to establish the potential value of the product.

**Agile development**

The product will also be developed in a agile fashion, where it is iteratively improved on in small sprints. This gives opportunity for change at every step of the way and essentially gives more validation and therefore more value to the product.

## Outro

Thanks for reading! Watch out for my next post where I will covering taking the idea to action.