Products are not built in a vacuum

Products are not built for the sake of technology alone. To illustrate, electric vehicle technology existed for more than a couple of decades but it required a Tesla car to change the way we consume this technology. Products are built to address an unmet need in the market. Technology enables you to get there quicker but it’s not the goal in itself. Thus, before building a product, every individual on the product team (A product team is composed of engineers, designers, data scientists, etc.) must ask themselves — “Why does this product matter, why us and why now?”. As a PM (product manager), it’s your responsibility to answer this question on behalf of everyone on the product team.

In order to answer this question, a PM must be context-aware.

• Market context — How’s the market for my product? What does success look like in this market? Who are the players to beat? What are the underserved needs?
• Customer context — What are the top customer pain points, unmet needs? How does a day look in the life of our <insert your product persona>?
• Business context — What are the top priorities of my organization? Which internal outcomes (higher revenue, enter a geography, or something else?) are we looking to serve through this product? What are the constraints (funding level, hiring, geographies, etc.)?
• Time context — What’s the cadence of product release? Is it sufficient? What are the important events in your industry?
• Team context — What are the skill sets of your product team? How’s the culture? Are we addressing the needs of the extended team (sales, marketing, customer success, support, etc.)?
• Technology context — What are the technology trends in this market? How does the product architecture help address the customer use case?
• Product context — What’s the stage of the product (not yet launched, early, growing, mature/captive customer base)? Is the pull for your product greater than the need to push (aka product market fit)? How successful were the past releases of the product?

Being context-aware will not immediately help a PM. The missing piece is — generating insights a.k.a product discovery. This will require you to engage the entire product team and the extended team to find the right tactics for success (almost like being a detective). As the context changes, share it with the team, test your hypotheses, and only then begin the execution process. This is 50% of the job of a Product Manager and the most often ignored in the drum roll of execution.

World-class products need patience

It takes patience to build a world class product (on that note, check out version museum). Great product teams are learning and execution juggernauts, built over years of iteration. However, in a world where moving fast is valued, this hard reality goes for a toss. There are many reasons why a product team can lose its patience — senior execs might want something out of the gate ASAP, sales team is banging on product’s door for a new release, the marketing team has identified a product launch event as a “make or break” opportunity. In these times, it’s the PM’s responsibility to maintain sanity and set the right expectations for everyone — including themselves. Unlike many other professions, there is a long gestation period to see the fruits of your efforts or ideas, at scale. So, don’t be unreasonable for your own self- you probably won’t be able to build Google Maps in 1 year. So how do you know if the product is headed in the right direction, if success takes time? Read the next point.

Thinking Agile

No one goes to a supermarket to buy the latest version of Google. Unlike physical products, software products can not only be delivered over the internet, moving up to the latest version is much less of an issue. If this wasn’t enough, most products connected to the internet can also measure how users actually interact with the product. Building a product for a fast-changing environment becomes much more seamless if you can measure and learn in order to improve your product in the next iteration. For software products that operate in an environment where requirements are unclear and failures can be tolerated (in comparison to building a rocket), product features can be thought of in smaller chunks. The idea is simple — think incrementally about customer needs, address that need, get feedback, and work on it in the next iteration or release. This avoids the pressure of waiting for 2 years before knowing the result of a product development effort. Through my own experience as a PM, I’ve realized that thinking incrementally is a skill that takes practice to master.

Noticed that I didn’t use the word agile to introduce this concept. Because it is often misunderstood. Agile has become a dreary word and associated with processes like Scrum/Kanban, backlog grooming, etc. While I’m not denying that those processes could be a good way to implement the agile way of thinking, it’s important to not lose focus of the forest for the trees. Point to note — the original agile manifesto has no mention of those concepts.

Bringing focus and clarity

In the agile world, it’s really easy to run in different directions after every iteration or release. Thus, it becomes necessary for a PM to bring the team’s focus on solving only the highest priority issues. One way to do that is by setting clear outcomes and measuring against those frequently. A tactic I’ve seen work is taking along members of the product team to meet a customer or sharing notes from your customer interviews with everyone on the team. Distractions can also come in many other forms, especially from the top of the corporate ladder. It will be hard to ignore the head of sales when he or she gives differing marching orders to the product team for the upcoming release. As a PM, you need to be engaging with stakeholders early, learn the art of managing up, be wary of the highest paid person’s opinion (HiPPO effect), and filter out the noise for the product team. Who said being a PM is easy?

Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!

As you may have realized by now, communication is probably the most important skill in the life of a PM. Communication doesn’t just mean being able to launch your product like Steve Jobs on stage. It includes all the softer aspects as well — picking up on what’s not being said, active listening skills, and very high emotional quotient to deal with tough situations. Remember, everyone, especially your top customers, will have an opinion about your product. Sifting through all the voices, deftly asking the right questions to get to the bottom of people’s real needs, and then maybe even saying a diplomatic “no” requires a high level of empathy. In these situations, it’s always useful to have a well thought out opinion on most aspects of your product yet being open to changing it in the face of new information. The mantra I live by — “Strong opinions, loosely held”. Till now, you must have felt there is not much of written communication in this process. In reality, however, quite the opposite is true. On any given day, you’ll find a PM most often working on user stories, product roadmaps, or a requirements doc.

Always in service of the team…

Products don’t build themselves and I’m glad they don’t. It’s intrinsically a human endeavor. Here is the truth — as a PM, you’re not at the forefront of this endeavor. It’s essentially the Product team’s journey and the role of the PM is to serve the team through this journey. Some PMs often take up an unhealthy level of interest in execution metrics (burndown chart, sprint velocity ) and use them to push the team’s productivity. However, always remind yourself that you can’t dictate terms or deadlines to the team. PMs only exert influence over the outcome without any authority. Truly embracing this is the hardest part of the PM journey.

So, how does a PM serve the Product team? By empowering the team! There are many ways to do this — sharing the changing context with the team, unblocking any major engineering or architecture decisions, inspiring and motivating the team, etc. A service-oriented mindset is the key here. There are many books I’ve been reading to understand servant leadership and what motivates people — Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, Drive by Daniel Pink to name a few.

A great product isn’t everything

It’s easy for PMs to get carried away and believe that product is at the center of the universe. Over time, I’ve learnt that there are many other factors responsible for success — great sales teams, brand positioning, operational efficiency, target market, and much more. One of the single biggest ingredients for success of your product is team culture and values. Only in the right environment can innovation thrive in any organization. As a PM, there will always be many aspects beyond your sphere of influence. In these cases, you have to play the best game with the cards you have been dealt with. While this might sound unexciting, great products have been known to single handedly change the fortunes of companies. The best PMs are always optimistic about the future and keep pushing for a change with the actions under their control.

Do you want to be a product manager?

The field of Product Management has gone through a revolution of sorts in recent years. As the success of Silicon Valley spreads across the world, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Product Management has gone from being a nondescript career to being perceived as the secret behind the success of tech companies. So, how do you become a product manager?

In the past, most people stumbled into product management from related careers. There wasn’t even a clear path into this field. However, it’s becoming much more systematized in recent years. There’s even a master’s program for people interested in this field. From my own experience, I’ve found that nothing trains you more than actually working in this field.

Is it necessary to master tech and computer science to become a PM? The answer is no. Technology keeps evolving over time and what’s relevant today might be completely irrelevant tomorrow. Hence, I’d put more emphasis on curiosity and the ability to quickly grasp the basics. However, having a high-level view of how different systems interact and the functions performed by various parts of the stack can come handy when interacting with various stakeholders. Setting up 1–1’s with engineers on the team in order to learn what they do is a great way to get this understanding.

Lot of learning resources out there!

https://www.sachinrekhi.com/top-resources-for-product-managers

Story Mapping for telling user stories

Good PM vs. Bad PM

Design Thinking

System Design — Martin Donne

There will be a better tomorrow

This has to be said first. “Gloom and doom” seem to be the theme of most news stories and conversations with friends. Why are nihilistic tendencies so woke right now? Remember that this is the same human species that has gone into space and made such incredible progress with our science. There are millions of examples from history where we have emerged from arguably worse times.

Humans thrive in a group; not by living alone

I understand that we are in a social distancing mode. However, let’s not forget — humans thrive in a group. Over the last couple of centuries, we’ve formed elaborate mechanisms so that we can work effectively together, not alone. Think about the food in your kitchen. If you went back a couple of centuries, it wouldn’t be surprising if you grew, harvested, cleaned, cooked food, all by yourself. It’s not the reality anymore and this has freed up a lot of our time to focus on more high-value activities.

Democratic values should be cherished

One of the institutions that has emerged in the last couple of centuries is democracy. That has truly improved the quality of life over the last couple of centuries. Democracy is participative, empowers the individual, and thrives on trust built by strong institutions (judiciary, legislature, and other public institutions). Just think about the progress in science which has been engendered by democratic values from the medieval times of religious interference. To think that totalitarian institutions can bring more stability and progress can be tempting but ultimately will prove to be false. Here’s an article I wrote about how these democratic values are being imbibed even in our computing technology.

Overcoming short-termism

If there is one way to describe the issues of the present then this is it — short-termism. It has entered almost every single aspect of our lives. Most of us live only in the present and can’t think beyond immediate needs. Our public companies also don’t usually think about financial results beyond a quarter or two. Fast fashion has exponentially reduced the half-life of a piece of garment in our closets. This has only been further fuelled by the rise of social media. In fact, I’m sure very few readers of this article will even reach up to this point because they may have already lost their focus.

We simply don’t have the capacity to fathom risks beyond a certain time horizon. If it’s not happening now, then no one cares. Climate change and the current pandemic crisis could have been well averted if we had the ability to think beyond the short term.

If there is one thing you take away from this article, remember this — balance your own short-term tendencies, build your mental capacity, and think longer term. This applies to all of us, including me.

Start investing in a better future

This pandemic has laid bare the reality of the modern world. The health outcomes of the most prosperous countries are directly linked to that of an individual in the poorest corners of the world. While many privileged folks continue to happily live a life of social distancing, inequality has worsened the lives of those living paycheck to paycheck or those whose houses are less than 6 ft wide. We can’t turn a blind eye to these realities. We need to invest in a better future today.

Do you disagree with what you read here? Reply to this post and start a conversation! This post originally appeared here.

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

Since time immemorial, technology has been shaped to serve human needs. As our social interactions evolve, our expectations from technology also change and this leads to innovation and discovery. For most of the medieval times, across the world, human society was highly stratified and controlled by a small section of society. Technology also evolved in a limited way to serve only the needs of that section so that they could perpetuate their control over the masses. However, over the last couple of centuries, we’ve embraced newer social and political structures that are much more open and inclusive. Technology evolution has flourished under this new system and it continues to evolve to meet our needs.

Take the case of the internet. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that the technology was inspired by and also follows the newer social structures of the times — democracy and the various “freedoms” (speech, movement, identity, etc.). In fact, even the current challenges of the internet are similar to the ones we have in democracy — trust in its institutions.

In this article, I make the argument that newer forms of technology emerging right now in the computing domain will follow a similar evolution path. We are already witnessing this, so most of these points will not be a surprise to anyone. However, this thought process forms a decent framework when looking at what is the potential of future tech innovations.

1. No-code experience for everyone

Democracy literally means “rule by the people” in Greek. Everyone should be able to participate in it, irrespective of their skill level in order for its success. This ideal is translating to the world of software. Today, it is becoming a must for software products to be made more inclusive. Everyone should be able to use it irrespective of their skill levels.

Back in the 1990s and 2000s, software was designed to be feature-rich with complex functionality, designed for the expert. In fact, if you look around, you’ll find an entire cottage industry still dedicated to teaching people Microsoft Excel. However, the future is no-code and, going one step further, it will be about beautifully-designed software products with an almost zero learning curve. Even the enterprise software world that has been notorious for poorly designed products will see a renaissance in this upcoming wave. A major reason behind the rise of popular cloud service providers like AWS and Azure is to make the task of provisioning computing resources as low-code (and no-code) as possible.

If you’re building a product today which involves someone taking a day-long course to learn how to use it for the first time, you will need a really really good reason for this.

2. Self-service on the rise

No democracy should tolerate power only in the hands of a few privileged members of society. Democracy gives a sense of empowerment and freedom to the individual. Technology is being shaped in the same manner today — empowering the individual. This technology evolution is causing a silent revolution in enterprises today.

Rewind back two decades, and you would find a sharp divide between the IT (information technology) division and other functions of a business. Call up customer support of a business and chances are that you would probably need to wait a day before your ticket gets resolved after the issue is fixed by IT. Even now, quite a few individuals working in business units feel stifled by the software they use, managed by IT, and this directly affects their productivity. The rise of enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies tries to break this dependency by providing software to make individuals in different business functions of an enterprise more self-sufficient. Also, if you think self-service is only a trend in the enterprise software world, you have probably not visited an Amazon Go store yet.

If you’re building a product today which enables the user to be less dependent on someone else to achieve their primary objective, you are on the right track.

3. Trust is the foundation

Democracy can’t work unless individuals trust its institutions (judiciary, legislature, government) and believe that it will work in their best interests. This will hold true for technology as well and we can already see its effects around us in both consumer and enterprise products.

Self-service and no-code alone will no longer make a product successful. Trust is essential and can’t be an afterthought. It comes in many forms for software products — a highly secure experience, ensuring privacy for everyone and safe interaction among different stakeholders. However, building trusted products remains harder than ever. Yet few companies have made enabling trust, core to their business model and tech stack, like Airbnb.

If you’re building a product today and trying to move fast and break things, without focusing on trust, you need to think twice before following your role-model’s every spoken word.

4. And it will eventually democratize every other industry…

As computing seeps into every aspect of life, it will democratize the core functions of every industry, especially those which are consumer-facing. Computing technology has changed the core expectations consumers have from their interactions with businesses. If you work in an industry that has a high service component or end-consumer involvement (financial services, education, health care or retail), chances are that this has already touched you in some way.

Take the case of the financial services industry here in the US and then compare it to India. After coming to the US for my graduate studies, I realized how truly inefficient the financial system really is. Even though the modern financial economy had moved beyond the traditional nine to five, it still takes more than one business day to transfer money across bank accounts in the US via the automated clearinghouse (ACH) system. Developing countries like India had already shifted to modern payment systems like the unified payment interface (UPI) which brings the transaction costs between two parties to real-time and at nearly zero cost. In a country with more than a billion people, such technology is truly bringing democratic ideals to everyone’s doorstep.

Are you excited about the future of technology? Do you disagree with what you read here? Reply to this post and start a conversation!

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

One of the most undefined roles in the world of tech is that of a Product Manager (PM). A Product Manager owns the overall product experience but none of the engineers who actually build the product report to them. If you think the role is odd, then you aren’t mistaken.

But ambiguously defined roles like these attract people like me, who cannot be neatly boxed into any one particular function. One of the many hats I wear in this role is that of a detective. Obviously I don’t solve crimes and the only encounter I’ve had with a real detective is in the books of Arthur Conan Doyle. Then why do I compare my role to that of a detective?

I represent the voice of the customer in the team. Being the voice requires managing diverse information sources about the customer. I tend to look at these information sources in the form of a matrix. The two axes of this matrix represent the structure of this data and how it was acquired. Let’s take two examples to understand this better. Support tickets are a treasure trove of qualitative information of the issues users are facing in the product. They are initiated by the user and hence it’s acquisition is passive. Now lets take a look at A/B testing in the diagonally opposite quadrant. A/B tests are, in its essence, questions posed by the Product team to the user and thus a form of active data acquisition. The data you acquire from an A/B test is quantitative and needs to be interpreted based on statistical analysis. Just like a detective would, a Product Manager must pick and choose the information sources (and the quadrants) which make sense for the customer and users they represent. This is more of an art, trained by intuition, than an exact science.

However data alone isn’t enough to make solid product decisions. I can’t emphasize more the importance of stitching together a narrative based on the information. Collecting data for the sake of it is akin to the popular management consulting philosophy — boiling the ocean. It’s important to form the set of hypotheses and questions first which will help you understand the customer better and advance the cause of your product. I personally like it when the narrative reads like a story with the product personas forming the central characters.

At the end, like a detective, a PM needs to rely on their instincts to make decisions. Over many cycles of taking successful or unsuccessful product decisions, a PM builds their intuition for the product and the customer. For me, this is the most attractive part of this profession (and the most risky as well).

Note: Like what you’re reading? Let me know!

If there is one quote from the book which I will remember, it’s this remark from Nietzsche which Frankl mentions multiple times.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Essentially, as I look at it, Frankl takes us inside a concentration camp and tries to understand what are the psychological attributes of those who survived such camps. According to him, most of the survivors had some sort of “meaning” in their life. This “meaning” in life wasn’t a general purpose meaning but a specific goal which “differs from man to man and from, moment to moment”. The second part talks about his self-defined theory of “Logotherapy”. I found this a stark departure from the usual Freudian way of looking at mental ailments and highly practical in nature. I particularly liked the concept of Noö-Dynamics which flies right in the face of commonly-held beliefs.

What man actually needs is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call “noödynamics,” i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it.

This book definitely requires a second read to get a deeper understanding of the concepts in Logotherapy which Frankl has proposed. However, it is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in deep diving into the mind of a concentration camp prisoner and taking away interesting insights from it.

To be honest, I felt this would be yet-another-psychology-self-help book. But I was pleasantly surprised.

The books included in the list have been carefully chosen, in line with my conviction that one must be well-read in diverse topics to contribute effectively to the world.

Fiction

Mystery/Crime

• The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson

Magic Realism

• One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Beloved — Toni Morrison

Historical Thriller

• The Lost Symbol — Dan Brown
• Inferno — Dan Brown

Science Fiction

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
• Foundation — Isaac Asimov

Classics

• The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy
• Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger

Non-Fiction

Business

• The Intelligent Investor — Benjamin Graham
• The Innovator’s Dilemma — Clayton Christensen

Politics/Biographies

• The Story of My Experiments with Truth — Mahatma Gandhi

History

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Travel/Adventure

• Into Thin Air — Jon Krakauer

Leadership/Entrepreneurship

• Turn the Ship Around! — David Marquet
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz

ETC

• Thinking Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
• Creativity, Inc. — Ed Catmull
• Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl

— — — -

Other books

• Business Adventures — John Brooks

It was in 2004 that I first got fascinated by African long distance runners. It was this year that my city, Mumbai, hosted its first international marathon. I vividly remember spending the next few weeks trying to mimic their running style in my neighborhood park. Since then, whenever I have indulged in long distance running, I have wondered what makes them a dominating force in this sport.

A few weeks back, I chanced upon a documentary on this. You can find this here. The story of Bro. Colm O’Connell, arguably the greatest athletics coach ever, has fascinated me. While there are many takeaways from the documentary, what stood out for me were the four things which he looks for in his athletes, which he abbreviates as F.A.S.T.

• Focus on the track
• Alignment of the body
• Stability of the core
• Timing of the feet with the ground

Anyone who has ever run more than 15 minutes at a stretch can relate to this. He goes on further to say how he tries to build an appreciation for athletics as a discipline, with its nuances, and not just as physical exertion as most view it. To achieve this, training sessions are kept relaxed and not intense.

For most of us, competitive long distance running maybe out of reach. But the lessons may hold true nonetheless. In our everyday pursuits, while its obviously important to focus on our goals, its even more imperative to be relaxed about it. Similarly, it’s essential to cancel out the noise outside and nurture a balance within.

Sounds tough, doesn’t it? Well, as I see it, the only real way to imbibe the spirit of these lessons is to actually experience them.

It’s time to wear your running shoes then!