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March 2, 2019
Ask about who you’ll be working with on your core and extended team. Find out how much of your time will be spent writing specs and how much you’ll be working with designers. Learn where the balance is between PMs, designers, and engineers in making product decisions.
Ask about who you’ll be working with on your core and extended team. Find out how much of your time will be spent writing specs and how much you’ll be working with designers. Learn where the balance is between PMs, designers, and engineers in making product decisions.
In an experiment, you can measure specific metrics for the new feature, such as how many people click a new button you added, as well as overall success metrics like user engagement, retention, and revenue. By comparing the success metrics between the experiment and control groups, you can tell how successful the new feature is.
In an experiment, you can measure specific metrics for the new feature, such as how many people click a new button you added, as well as overall success metrics like user engagement, retention, and revenue. By comparing the success metrics between the experiment and control groups, you can tell how successful the new feature is.
Prioritization is one of the product manager’s most important functions at this point; if the team were to fix every bug and build every new feature idea, the product would never launch. The PM needs to consider all of the new requests and decide if they should be prioritized for the current release or punted to a later time.
Most online-software teams run A/B tests (also called multivariate testing or online experiments). In an A/B test, a new feature is released to a percentage of users. The behaviors of the experiment and control group are later compared to see if the new feature improves the experience. Because companies in online software collect more data, it’s important that these PMs are skilled with data analysis and designing experiments.
Data-driven PMs can do very well working on consumer products because they’re able to make a strong case for their proposals, and
they often can come up with features that will make a difference to the core metrics the company cares about.
Product managers are responsible for identifying problems and opportunities, picking which ones to go after, and then making sure the team comes up with great solutions, either by thinking of the solution themselves or by working with the designers and engineers. This is why product sense—having the intuition to recognize the difference between a good product and a bad product—is so important for product managers.
Marketing folks focus on getting users into the product, while product managers define what happens once the user is in the product.
Not trusting the engineers’ estimates and promising other teams that the work will be done sooner than the engineers agree to is one of the fastest ways to ruin your relationship with the team.
As Microsoft adjusts to its new reorganization as a devices and services company, the spec-heavy process is being replaced with a more agile and iterative approach on many teams. Teams are starting to launch faster and more frequently. A/B testing is becoming
more prominent.
It might sound crazy, but for any product or feature you’re working on, think about how it could change the world. If this is hard for you, here are some tips: See if you can tie the benefits to fundamental human needs like safety, friendship, or self-esteem. Start your brainstorming with the phrase “If I had a magic wand...” Write down your practical objections, then keep going. Find a teammate to play the practical pessimist role in your brainstorming. Write yourself a reminder to always think big. Start your feature planning by writing the press release.
