An Intoduction To Product Management

 Oh Hi There!

It's been a minute. I had a take a step back to rearrange my thoughts. 

Moving forward, we will be taking a different route. I want to take it back to the basics a bit. The point of this blog is to teach and inspire and if that is not the outcome, then what is the need right? 

With that being said, I will be starting with the basics of Product management then we can move back to Product marketing.  I hope you're excited.

Today we will be addressing the basics of product management specifically; Digital Product Management. So, without further ado, let's jump right in.

Digital product management thinking is a collection of systematic practices and skills that integrates analysis, business modelling and cross-functional team coordination to ideate, create and deliver compelling digital products that customers love to use and will keep using over and over again. 

So in clear English, Product management is putting together a strategy and collaborating with a set of people that can execute this strategy to bring a product to life and take it to the market so that people can use it and the continuous process of improving it over and over so people can keep using it. Simple! Easy right?

What are digital products? They are mobile apps and websites, in the large context of things. Examples of them are social media platforms, banking apps, games etc.

What are the general/popular characteristics of digital products? They are desirable, useful, useable, reliable and efficient. All digital products are to have these characteristics. If a product is not useful, no one will be interested in it. If a product is not reliable and keeps crashing people won't want to use it. Or imagine you download an app that is not efficient and doesn't do what it is supposed to do, you'll uninstall it and move on right?

How are digital products different? What differentiates one digital product from the other?

• Connected: digital products are connected to different servers that serve the purpose of each unique product.
• Personalized: each product is personalized to solve the problem and meet the specific need of the target market of the product
• Updateable: each product has its time to update and each update has its own addition to the product as a whole. For example, you can update your Snapchat and see a new filter, but it doesn't mean that when you update your Instagram you'll see the same filter or it would be a similar update.
• Replaceable: digital products are replaceable. For example, if you think you don't want to use the Bolt app again, you have other options like Uber, InDriver or anything else. Different products solve the same problem.
• Interdependent: different products are interdependent on different things. For example, to use the Bolt Driver app, you need to have a car, and to use a food ordering app, you need to include an address. 

Now,  let's go a bit deeper and talk about Digital Product Management Thinking, shall we?

The product thinking stage is basically a phase of defining an idea and driving it till it becomes an actual product that people can use. 

Digital product management thinking consists of 4 important parameters and I will be explaining them extensively;

1. Operating within or designing a business model. The work to be done here is;

• uncovering the needs, pain-points of your customer segment
• create and use the best ways to leverage existing customer relationship
• designing and delivering a compelling value proposition that is better than a customer's alternative, that is, your competition in the market.
• use the next most effective marketing and delivery channels to reach your customers
• use modern monetization models to create new ways to generate revenue. 

2. Hypothesis-driven development. This is more about testing to be sure what you want to build is what your customers want and will use;

• customer discovery, data testing/validation in early development
• identifying clear, testable customer outcomes and creating focus around them

3. Integrating and using analytics to drive decisions. Now, you have tested and your product is one that is needed in the market;

• analyze growth, engagement and monetization using qualitative and quantitative methods.
• prioritize features
• define the product roadmap.

4. Cross-functional team coordination. Here the product manager will be collaborating with; designers, developers, data analysts(if need be) and key sponsors to make sure the product is a success. 

With everything I have said, it's clear how companies come up with ideas and how they drive them and plan till they get to play store/AppStore or till they become websites or any product in general.

I guess now you can confidently explain who a product manager is and what we do.

See you next time. 

Franny.