Product Management 

Product management is an inside out process. All too often, it's backward as well. Getting product management right is getting your products and services right. The Product Manger's job is to see that it does. 

Run it like a business. Know your budget; define your targets; manage your people; serve your customers; live your mission and make sure the rest of the team does too. Product Managers are people managers with lines dotted above and below. My relationships and resources are the best tools I have. 

Product thinking, like design thinking, can apply more broadly than the name suggests. Products, projects, programs and even managing people can benefit from this mindset. This is obvious if the product is the business, but when you are embedded in a large organization, it's a different ball game.

Customer/Business Engagement
It's important to know what you are building, and for whom. As a product manager, I not only engage with users, I engage the team with users. How many times has your firm missed the mark, solved the wrong problem, the right problem twice or just not solved anything at all. Engaging with the customer if fundamental to solve the right problems, the fewest number of times.

If you are in a large institution, you may have a business you need to answer to, or in today's world, mutually transform into one seamless entity. Doing this is not easy, but the firms who succeed will prosper. It is the PM's responsibility to drive the product forward, but work in partnership with the business to set the course.  

Technology Development
An agile development team is key to most projects in most big organizations. Each product is different and has different needs and requirements to make it successful. Agile's flexibility is key. Teams can respond more quickly, alter course when needed, reorganize to address key aspects of the project, but most importantly, it makes it easier to align with the business and its strategy. Oh, and it's more fun.

Product thinking and product management are critical to digital transformation. The days of senior executives writing 36 month strategies and tossing it over the fence to their tech "partners" has passed. The new hierarchy is the dotted line matrix. In this new word, agile processes, user experience design and product thinking are the foundation for digital transformation.

Learn

Flow Maps
User Research
User Stories
Personas • User Journeys
Customer Interviews
Stakeholder Management
Requirements Gathering

Analyze

Competitive Analysis
Market Analysis
Customer Segmentation
Feature Definition
Agile • Jira • Epic • Story
Prioritization & Resourcing

Marketing & Design

Sketching
Wireframing
Low & High Fidelity Mockups
Prototyping
Design System & Language
Branding
Social
Mobile 

Build

POC • MVP • Lean
HTML • CSS • Javascript
Service Design
UI Implementation & Toolkits
Test & QA

Launch

Market Strategy
Pricing & Packaging
Support
Training & Documentation

Measure

Usability Testing
A/B  Testing
Usage Analytics

Run

System Monitoring
Continuous Integration
DevOps
Continuous Improvement

Tools

Axure • Sketch • InVision
Adobe Creative Suite  • Office
Visio • Basecamp • Clarity