Lean Product Management

Successful products from fuzzy business ideas

Mangalam Nandakumar

• Editorial: Packt Publishing
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788832977
• Categoría: Computer Science
• Categoría: Software Development

A guide to product management exploring the best practices: identifying the impact-driven product, planning for success, setting up and measuring time-bound metrics, and developing a lean product roadmap.

Key Features

• Identifying Impact-Driven Products
• Investing in Key Business Outcomes
• Value mapping to maintain a lean product backlog
• Utilizing time-bound product metrics
• Eliminating process waste

Book Description

Lean Product Management is about finding the smartest way to build an Impact Driven Product that can deliver value to customers and meet business outcomes when operating under internal and external constraints. Author, Mangalam Nandakumar, is a product management expert, with over 17 years of experience in the field. Businesses today are competing to innovate. Cost is no longer the constraint, execution is. It is essential for any business to harness whatever competitive advantage they can, and it is absolutely vital to deliver the best customer experience possible. The opportunities for creating impact are there, but product managers have to improvise on their strategy every day in order to capitalize on them. This is the Agile battleground, where you need to stay Lean and be able to respond to abstract feedback from an ever shifting market. This is where Lean Product Management will help you thrive.Lean Product Management is an essential guide for product managers, and to anyone embarking on a new product development. Mangalam Nandakumar will help you to align your product strategy with business outcomes and customer impact. She introduces the concept of investing in Key Business Outcomes as part of the product strategy in order to provide an objective metric about which product idea and strategy to pursue. You will learn how to create impactful end-to-end product experiences by engaging stakeholders and reacting to external feedback.

What you will learn

• How do you execute ideas that matter?
• How can you define the right success metrics?
• How can you plan for product success?
• How do you capture qualitative and quantitative insights about the product?
• How do you know whether your product aligns to desired business goals?
• What processes are slowing you down?

Who this book is for

If you are leading a team that is building a new product, then this book is for you. The book is targeted at product managers, functional leads in enterprises, business sponsors venturing into new product offerings, product development teams, and start-up founders.

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Lean Product Management

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Table of Contents

Lean Product Management

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Contributors

About the author

About the reviewer

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Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

Part 1 – Defining what to build, who we are building for, and why

Part 2 - Are we building the right product?

Part 3 - Are we building the product right?

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Reviews

I. Defining what to build, who we are building for, and why

1. Identify Key Business Outcomes

We are driven by purpose

Business context defines everything we do

What influences product success?

A business model

Case study

Defining business outcomes that the product can deliver (why?)

Defining the value proposition that the product will create for the customer (what?)

Defining the execution plan (how?)

Business constraints and market influence

Minimum Viable Product versus Impact Driven Product

Key Business Outcomes

Summary

2. Invest in Key Business Outcomes

Investments

Time-bound priorities for Key Business Outcomes

Trade-offs in time-bound planning

Investing in Key Business Outcomes

So how do we know which trade-offs are worth making?

How do we decide which learning, feedback, or customer insight is important?

Playing the Investment Game–what outcomes will the business bet on in the next one-to-two months?

Buy a Feature game

Summary

3. Identify the Solution and its Impact on Key Business Outcomes

Finding the right problem to solve

To build or not to build?

Creating an end-to-end view of the user and business (product/service) interaction

Estimating impact on Key Business Outcomes and derive value scores

Deriving value scores

Visualizing our priorities using a 2 × 2 matrix

Summary

4. Plan for Success

What does success mean to us?

Defining success metrics

Mismatch in expectations from technology

Cost of technical trade-offs

Defining technical success criteria

Summary

5. Identify the Impact Driven Product

Understanding product impact

The cost of creating an impactful product experience

Defining the Impact Driven Product

Value mapping

Deciding to build, buy, or not at all

The cost of a digital solution

Risks of not building something

The cost-impact matrix

Summary

II. Are we building the right product?

6. Managing the Scope of an Impact Driven Product

Are we there yet?

Faster is not always smarter

Minimum Viable Product (mvp)

Missing pieces in the mvp model

A brief time lapse on car making

So, what is the most impactful product?

Products for an unexplored market versus products for mature markets

How do we know if we have defined the right Impact Driven Product?

Validate market needs based on key business outcomes

Validating if customers will adopt our product

What is the smartest way to deliver impact?

Iterate on scope

Happy customers at every phase of the product

Summary

7. Track, Measure, and Review Customer Feedback

Why do well-made products fail?

Understanding customer context

Feedback blind spots

Types of customers

Understanding the perceived value of our product

What aspect of our product experience matters most?

Creating product loyalists

Knowing who the real user is

How and when to collect feedback?

External feedback channels

In-built feedback channels

Is the consumer ready to share feedback?

Summary

8. Tracking Our Progress

The need for gratification

Is our product working well for the customer?

Benchmarking

Metrics that validate or falsify success criteria

Contextual qualitative insights

Is our product working well for the business?

Delayed gratification

Summary

III. Are we building the product right?

9. Eliminate Waste – Don't Estimate!

Why do we need estimates?

Why can estimates not be accurate?

What should be the outcome of an estimation discussion?

Summary

10. Eliminate Waste – Don't Build What We Can Buy

Selling an idea

What got you here won't get you there

To build or not to build

Feature black holes that suck up a product team's time

Summary

11. Eliminate Waste – Data Versus Opinions

Defining the hypothesis

#1 – data we need before we build the feature idea

#2 – data we need after we launch a feature

The problem with data

Summary

12. Is Our Process Dragging Us Down?

Business and organization context

Reason #1 for process waste – striving for perfection

Reason #2 for process waste – striving for efficiency

Reason #3 for process waste – striving to maximize throughput

Solutions to eliminating process waste

Solution #1 – don't strive for perfection, instead set up outcome-driven timelines

Solution #2 – don't strive for efficiency, instead foster collaboration

Solution #3 – don't strive for throughput, instead restructure teams based on outcome-driven timelines

Summary

13. Team Empowerment

Tenets of lean software development

Decision making

Collaboration

Summary

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Index

Lean Product Management

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First published: May 2018

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Contributors

About the author

Mangalam Nandakumar has over 17 years of experience in product management and software delivery. She is an entrepreneur and has founded two start-ups. She has worked at Citigroup, Ocwen Financial Solutions, ThoughtWorks Technologies, and RangDe.Org. Mangalam presents a vibrant perspective on product management from her diverse experience of working with start-ups, enterprises, and nonprofits, both in product companies and software consultancy organizations. She has a strong foundation in Agile and Lean methodologies. She has also coached teams on their Agile transformation journeys.

Mangalam started her career as a programmer and soon transitioned to business analysis and product management. She has consulted for businesses in various functional domains and has helped them articulate their product vision, strategy, and roadmap. She has led many software teams through successful product deliveries. Mangalam cofounded her start-up, AIDAIO in 2014, to enable businesses to enhance their customer engagement strategies. AIDAIO was shortlisted under the Top 10 Promising Start-Ups by CII in 2015. Moreover, AIDAIO’s innovative platform to design, build, and launch white-labeled native iOS and Android apps for events and conference was a finalist in the Best Event Technology category at MICE Asia Pacific, 2015.

Mangalam has also spoken at various conferences on topics related to Agile and product management. She started her writing journey by blogging on topics related to product management, team processes, and diversity at workplaces. She is passionate about mentoring women and is a vocal advocate for diversity at workplaces. She was instrumental in founding organization-level initiatives to coach and guide women to speak at conferences. Mangalam is also an artist and paints in various mediums. She ran an art school and has conducted art workshops as well as exhibited and sold her artworks. She lives in Bengaluru, India and enjoys playing and watching movies with her son.

Writing this book has been a dream come true for me. It has been harder, but more enjoyable than I thought. It took a lot of encouragement, patience, and support from everyone—family, friends, and colleagues to make this happen. This is such a special milestone for me, and I want to thank everyone who helped to make this book a reality.

First, to my dearest little boy, Siddharth. You compiled your first book when you were eight. You’re my inspiration and my superhero! Thanks for encouraging me to write, for giving me my space and reviewing all the quotes in the book. Thanks for all the hugs too. You keep me going.

Mom and Dad, thanks for always believing in me. I could never have made it this far without your unconditional support and love. You taught me to aim high and never settle for less.

Jaiku, Uma, Viku, and Shruti, thanks for always cheering me on and for making me feel special. To my besties, Arundhati, Sujata, and Subhashri. Thank you for always being there for me. To Gru, for being my sounding board and helping me think t...