After a long break

It has been a long time since I wrote something on this blog. I have been doing some brainstorming lately for the next few posts.

The first post for next month is going to be basics of Digital Marketing. We will take it from there...

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Roadmapping - I

What a beautifully deceptive depiction of road-mapping! Well if one has a fixed roadmap in this rapidly changing environment... I will leave it up to you to complete the sentence.


Instead the product roadmaps are curvy and bumpy rides! Sometimes with adjustments in the destination too.

So coming back to road-mapping. I recently read a book where the author beautifully explains the correlation between company vision , business strategy , product strategy and product vision.

The road-mapping techniques and intervals are heavily dependent on the vertical , market trends, product phase and technological advancements.

I would like to add an example of mobile app products. I have been working on the android products and have seen huge behavior change with newer operating systems. The challenges of kitkat and nougat are very different and the product map was altered based on the technological developments.


A lot of times the user feedback and feature usage/acceptance shapes the product roadmap.

With the market segment and product maturity , there can be goal - oriented or feature based roadmaps.

For example , A matured product in a dynamic market , a goal oriented roadmap will be more useful than the feature based roadmap. The markets trends can make a huge shift in the feature requirements and hence Goal oriented roadmaps are more helpful.

In another scenario in a stable market and a mature product , feature based roadmaps will be more useful. As the market is stable and the product is mature enough , it will be better to stick to the feature based roadmaps .


One thing I would like to emphasis is that roadmaps are dynamic, its important to adjust these as per the business strategy and market requirements 

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Do you know your customer?

As we get into more details on product management , one most important question to be answered..
Do you know your customer ?

It is one difficult question with no correct answer! I would love to answer "Yes" but I wish it was that easy. There are literally hundreds of ways to segment the users. With all different slicing and dicing and trying to understand the end user , the product manager has to go through a long ride.

There are numerous systems developed and deployed to understand the user behavior. With tremendous resources spent on market research , we get data from multiple reliable sources.

The more interesting and important task here is defining the correct KPIs . Many a times, its not about what all data we have from the user but its about defining the right KPIs.

There are multiple strategies one can apply to understand the customer , starting from the customer journey maps to user segmentation , analyzing the historical data based on the time of the day , Day of the week , Week of the month , season of the year !

Understanding the end and having an impeccable customer experience are two key tasks owned by the product manager.

From what I have realized is nothing can beat conducting the end user interviews and accompanying them in the real life scenarios. When you are actually with the end user in the real life scenario , you tend to understand the issues. You see when is the end user delighted and when does he isn't happy with your product. It gives you details on improving the user experience.

As an example, the placement of the option and the changed priority can actually improve the feature utilization 2X!  (I have experienced it !)

Sometimes its not about only understanding the user's problems but also about learning what features he likes. That can lead to feature comparison and hence improved product..

May be there are some characteristics of the well accepted features that can be ported to not so liked features and TAAA DAA! It has the potential to change not so liked feature into a widely accepted one!

In a nutshell , Its all about concentrating on the end user. As product people we are bound to be the advocates of our users.

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The art of storytelling!

As a product manager , one is telling stories.. All the time.. Stories to the customers so they like the product, stories to the stakeholders so that they have confidence in the product.. Stories to the developers so that they are excited to work on the products.. Stories , Stories and some more stories...

Wait, let me clarify before I get into trouble! We are not making up stories.. We are telling the facts with a flow that keep the listener interested! Funny Hmn!

I came across this wonderful book - "Storyscaping" which is not directly related to Product management but definitely a good read. (http://www.storyscaping.com/)

This book is about moving from simply creating ads (storytelling) to creating worlds where the real customer connections happen through shared experiences. The concepts in the books are beautifully defined.
One of the concepts about "Insight to Desire" talks about driving consumer insights and consumer journey into brand strategy and product positioning.

It gives some tools to understand the user behavior and accordingly driving the advertisements (Product in our case).  As a product manager we are supposed to keep the customer first and
this book provides wonderful ideas and case studies around the same. The X Games - ESPN is an insightful case study.

Many of the ideas in the book can be used by Product managers in multiple situations.

Just before we get carried away from all our learnings from the disney course and the book let me end this post by a thought from the book -  "Great storytelling alone wont save your business (Product in our case)"

So the wonderful story wont save a product!
If you are reading this line , is it an indication that I am getting better with the storytelling-storyscaping? :) :)


Another resource that I used this month :

Storytelling course on Khan academy by Pixar.
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/storytelling

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Strategy and more strategy!

As a product manager one deals with a word thats used millions of times! Strategy!
I came across this article sometime last year and somehow I am reminded of it again.

https://hbr.org/2015/05/what-is-strategy-again

So the author makes it simple-simple and simple for us.. It is doing something more efficiently than competition or doing something new! I know we all know this.. And there isnt anything I am adding here.. What I am saying is that "Product Strategy" is something one comes across as a PM.

So here it goes. How does the strategy come into picture.. It depends , it can be based of company vision , customer needs , market trends , technology changes and many more factors.

Is strategy - product roadmap ? Yes and No.. These two are in a complicated relationship!
Strategy fuels the product roadmap.

Broadly strategy can be disrupt the market (do something that no one is doing) or make it more efficient (Do something better/cheaper than the world!)  - By I don't know who but sadly not me...

This sentence just takes away the complexity around the word strategy..It is so much helpful to look at it with the simpler perspective , especially as a Product Manager...

A lot of times , when one is presenting the product , the classic "WHY US?" question pops up! Instead of putting lot of bells and whistles , It's better to show the data and prove why us!

In the next couple of months I am going to focus on road-maping and some insights around it..  The future of the product is shaped by the core business and product strategy! It is the vision that the product and company follows , it is the goal that the company works towards..

As a product manager , one is involved in strategy meetings where we work with divergence/convergence methods.

What can be done? What should be done and How can it be done?

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The one with the customer experience

A new year does mark new beginning! It actually may not be true if one goes by facts but the mindset some of us have helps us believe it! I am big on the new year resolutions and making changes so a new year does mark new beginning for me

Why not start with the topics of customer experience this year! Yes one can build interesting , innovative products but if the user doesn't like it...then.... Do I really need to complete the sentence?

We are in the age of cut throat competition , there are 100 different options for the consumers. Then why one should use my product ? What is it that will attract a new user or have an existing user stick with my service/product ?

The attention span for any new app/service is lowered. If I am looking for a certain solution , I generally do not give more than 60 seconds to one option. Even 60 seconds is too high for certain cases.
If I have a limited span of attention , how am I conveying my message? Am I doing it in a right way?
Every time someone uses the product , it is showtime for us.. It's like you are ready on the stage and the curtains are going up! You want to give your best every single time..


Instead of making it more dramatic , lets get back to the plan for this year. I recently came across a good article from HBR : "The Truth About Customer Experience : Alex Rawson , Ewan Duncan , Conor Jones (FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2013 ISSUE). The authors have discussed customer journeys very well.

Its all easy to say that its important to improve on customer experience but how? Unless something is well quantified , it can be tricky to improve on it. The data gathered from internal/external can help but is it sufficient? What shall I do as an advocate of the customer? Do I really understand the problem of my end user? And so on..I am sure passionate product managers have faced such questions at some point.

So lets start with basics , the basics of understanding the end user. The customer journey. It need not be the journey throughout the product life cycle. It can be much more simplified. It can just be the journey from clicking the app icon - login - first screen of the app.

Lets get into more details starting next month!

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To be or not to be!

Mr Shakespeare , said it right centuries ago.. To be or not to be... The opening phrase of hamlet represents the dilemma of the investors , board of directors , management and just everyone....

How does it affect Product Managers! In smaller companies where one has to be very careful about utilizing the available resources , To Be or Not To Be is a very valid question.. Yes its a question thats difficult to answer... Especially when you are thinking of new products/ideas..

Sometimes , it gets too close to decide whether or not to pursue the plan.. Sometimes the convincing presentations don't work... The business plan doesn't make strategic sense..

And it gets to a situation where you believe in the idea and need to convince the stakeholders , get the backing from the solutions architect , get the technical evaluation done and guess what the timeline was yesterday! Did you just forget the sales team ?


I am working on some easy prototyping and technical evaluation templates... It might be seem simple but I am sure , people who have been there will have a different opinion..

What has helped me so far is creating a plan that has shows the resource utilization and most importantly the effect on the other projects..

This is where I started using Proto.io... The tool has actually helped tremendously to get a clear picture to the teams , stakeholders , customers and everyone..

I think prototyping has been traditionally used but with the improved functionalities of the prototyping tools , its been much more easier for everyone to visualize and improvise without putting a lot of time.

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