Product Management 101

We are ambitious as product managers, but sometimes we play incremental, sometimes we play small. The purpose of this course is to help us go big - to have a greater impact on our companies and our products. This lecture introduces some things we should do more of, and some things we should do less of.

We introduce the company Motive in this lecture - which will use as an example in the upcoming lectures - and we pose a question

In this lecture, we discuss customer analysis - and why a deep and intuitive understanding of our customers is the foundation of excellent product management.

The first rule of excellent product management is to interview customers early and often. We talk about the basics of customer interviews in this lecture - talking directly to real customers (in person or via Zoom), testing our new product concepts, avoiding all bias, and asking lots of open-ended questions.

In this lecture, we go through five steps for interviewing customers (recruit, interview, test product concepts, analyze, share) - using Motive's driver safety product as our example.

Let's do a practice interview with office chairs - easy and fun. We'll assume we are product managers at Steelcase.

Personas are a very useful way for us product managers to capture and share customer insight. Personas help us humanize a target customer - capturing their goals, a day-in-the-life, and what they care deeply about.

The Kano model is an excellent tool for analyzing customer needs.  In this lecture we discuss how to separate user needs into basic, performance, and attractive needs - using international flights as our example.

We look at the London-based publishing marketplace site Reedsy, and practice using the Kano model

The product teams at Motive and Steelcase do a nice job finding deep customer insight. In this lecture, we look at their work with electronic logging devices and office chairs.

Test your knowledge around customer analysis, ethnographic research and the Kano model.

In this lecture, we talk about market analysis and identifying market segments using needs-based segmentation. We use DNA testing as our example - with the companies Ancestry and 23 and Me.

Let's do a practice activity - identifying LinkedIn's needs-based segments.

In this lecture, we look at describing a market segment (needs-based segment) using a table format, and also a persona. Template attached.

As product managers, we should size our market segments - quantifying how big are our markets and how fast they are growing. This is tough for many markets, but rough sizing is better than no market sizing.

Test what you have learned about market analysis and market segmentation.

In this lecture, we discuss why we should analyze competition, and talk about direct competition and disruptive technology

In this lecture, we look at analyzing direct competition, with a focus on competitors' revenue, market share, and longer-term trends

We focus on analyzing our direct competitors' strategy, strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and go-to-market approaches in this lecture - and talk about how to find this competitive information.

We look at side-by-side product comparisons of our products vs. competitors and discuss competitive product teardowns.

In this lecture, we talk about competitive positioning, and using a competitive positioning matrix - with one of Motive's products as our example

In this lecture, we dive into disruptive technology and why companies (and product managers) get blindsided.  We use Kodak as an historical example - and autonomous trucks and generative AI as current examples.

We'll talk about product vision, product objectives, and product strategy - and why we do all this work.

We'll talk about how to craft a product vision and objectives in this lecture, with an example.

Create product objectives for an oyster technology mobile application in this practice activity.

We'll talk about four steps to create a product strategy: Reviewing our goals and insights, finding our best strategic options, evaluating and comparing our options, and picking 1-3 to take forward.

Let's track the success of our product strategy over time. Are we making progress toward our product vision and objectives?

Check what you have learned about strategy development.

We'll talk about the importance of prioritization in this lecture, and introduce the example of eBird

We look at various styles of roadmaps in this lecture - charting our longer-term product evolution

Objectives and key results (OKRs) convert a longer-term strategy into this quarter's goals. We'll talk about how to create and use OKRs in this lecture.

Using eBird as our example, let's write an OKR

We'll talk about using development buckets  - which help us focus on big impact items

Let's practice using development buckets - the Canadian company Radley Robots is our example.

To guide our development teams, we want a prioritized backlog. A value effort matrix can help.

Check what you have learned about prioritization and roadmapping

Discovery and delivery is a fast, productive, iterative style of new product development - we'll look at the basic steps in this lecture.

We practice discovery & delivery methods with Big Agnes backpacking tents

Stage-gates is a commonly used new product development process. In this lecture, we'll look at stage-gates, and also compare it to discovery and delivery.

We'll look at different ways to test new product concepts in this lecture.

We'll look at two examples of product concept testing in this lecture - Next Insurance and Radley Robots.

Product analytics offer us a powerful set of information to optimize our products.

Hardware - with IOT - can offer great insight to guide new product development, and provide valuable information for our customers.

Running product experiments can give us a powerful way to optimize our products and improve key metrics.

Product management has rapidly evolved over the past years - we'll talk about the new flavors of product management in this video.

Test your knowledge about discovery & delivery.

In this lecture, we look at the importance of impactful launches

In this lecture, we'll look at two companies who are very good at impactful launches.

Check what you have learned about creating effective product launches

We'll talk through positioning and communication for our products, and revisit personas.

Value propositions are simple statements that clarify our target customer, key benefits, and competitive differentiation.

We'll create a value proposition for Ancestry's DNA testing service in this practice activity.

In this lecture, we'll talk about how to create benefit trees - which are a useful way of mapping a hierarchy of product benefits.

Check what you have learned about positioning and communication

In this lecture, we look at the importance of pricing - and its impact on profitability.

We look at the "3C's" of pricing in this lecture - cost of product, competitive environment, and customer value - and link these to three different pricing approaches.

Subscription prices for SaaS products can be a little tricky. We'll look at different options.

In this lecture, we look at the eight steps product managers go through to price a new product, or revise pricing for products in the market today.

Answer three questions about LinkedIn pricing in this practice activity.

Test your newfound knowledge on pricing

In this lecture, we'll start the discussion on how we can best support a sales team.

In this activity, you'll read Rich Mironov's blog post on working with sales teams.

Excellent sales enablement tools can help win deals (and win friends)

In this lecture, we'll talk about on-going processes to support a sales team.

Test your knowledge on how to best enable sales teams.

In this lecture, we will look at using sales channels as partners to co-create customer value.

We'll look at HP sales channels in this practice activity, asking three questions.

In this lecture, we'll look at adding new sales channels and editing your current channels.

Test what you have learned about sales channels.

In this lecture, we will talk about three "rules of the road" for managing product support issues.

We'll use two African transportation and logistics companies to discuss how to best manage product support issues.

Check what you have learned about product support.

In this lecture, we will look at growth strategies throughout the product lifecycle.

Let's try to find growth ideas for your product

In this lecture, we'll look at product-led growth, with companies like Slack, Zoom, Koan, and Calendly

In this lecture, we'll discuss the history of Udemy - and how the company found rapid growth.

Test what you have learned about finding growth as a product manager.

In this lecture, we will look at obsoleting products, and freeing up time for more impactful parts of your work.

Check what you have learned about obsolescence.

We'll talk about 7 big themes from the course in this lecture - 7 themes to help you become a more impactful product manager.

We'll talk about how to keep learning as you go forward.  Then we'll finish the course. Congratulations!

Let's look at a customer interview example. This interview is from our course "Insightful Customer Interviews for Product Managers." I've included the link to the course, plus links to my other Udemy product management courses. Hope you'll check out these other courses!