DEV Community: Foluso Ayodele

What is product management?

Foluso Ayodele — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 19:09:03 +0000

Hi there, welcome.
Before we get into it, I just want to let you know that

Having said that, let's move.
The title of this article is one question many people want to be answered, you can tell that from Google trends. It's a cool question that opens a whole new world, so today, I'll be answering this question in texts, quotes, and memes.
Grab your snack and let's dive in.

What is product management?

Product Management can be defined as the general business structure within a company/organization that oversees and manages all the activities related to a product throughout its life cycle. Those activities include planning, development, launch, marketing, and many more.

Product management is about creating value for the customer and putting in place the necessary activities to ensure that. Since customers won't make use of products that are not solving their problems, the goal should be to develop solutions to customers' pain points.

A person who does product management is called a product manager.
If you're looking to become a product manager, the quotes below should give an insight.

“At the heart of every product person, there’s a desire to make someone’s life easier or simpler. If we listen to the customer and give them what they need, they’ll reciprocate with love and loyalty to your brand.”
– Francis Brown, Product Development Manager at Alaska Airlines

“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”
– Deep Nishar, Vice President of Product at LinkedIn

As a product manager, you'll find people asking what you do exactly. Chances are there that your family and friends don't actually understand anything you're doing. Here's something you'll love, and it describes what happens.

And at times, you'll hear people calling you something you're not, "project manager", no you're not, I wrote on the differences between both roles, click here to read it.

Like I mentioned earlier, you are involved in everything that relates to a product. Typically, in a company, this is where you stand.

You stand at the middle of everything; you stand at the intersection of business and tech. You represent the customer in the company. You lead the teams to come up with outstanding products that solve problems.

Product management should always start with the question of WHY. Janna Bastow, Co-founder & CEO, Prodpad Software. puts it a question, she asks, what problem are you trying to solve?.

Qualities of a product manager

As a product person, here are some things that should define you;

1.Vision; a product manager must be a visionary, you should be able to see beyond what the others are seeing, your vision should be rigid and you must continually shout it for everyone to hear it.

Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.
– Jeff Bezos

2.Execution; execution is a very important trait of a product person, remember, products are timely and they mustn't get to the market late, so how do you get everyone to work in line with that vision for the product to be out at the right time, execution is key.

At the end of the day, your job isn’t to get the requirements right — your job is to change the world.
– Jeff Patton

3.Leadership; this is not just about being the head of a team or the product, but it's the ability to get everyone to buy into your vision, the art of inspiring people to run with your vision is leadership, and for you to be great product manager, leadership must be learned and mastered.

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.
– Carlos Ghosn

4.Good Communication & Storytelling: this is the superpower of any product manager, you need to come up with the best method and style to communicate the thoughts, ideas, and feedback to your team.

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
– Walt Disney

Some things that sum up product management are;

Representing the customer needs and wants
Evaluating many ideas to see the one that solves the customers' need
Defining the product vision
Aligning stakeholders to the vision
Setting strategy
Prioritizing features
Defining releases
Studying and analyzing metrics to be data-informed
Understanding tech trends and how they affect the market

And now, you're thinking,

Great choice, getting into product management is great, you'll stand at the fore-front of solving problems and helping people live better lives while solving their problems.

However, I should let you know,

You'll have a lot to do from coming up with roadmaps, to meeting with the different other teams(marketing, sales, etc.), to convincing your CEO that the product at hand is best, meeting stakeholders, you have quite a lot to do, but once it's all properly planned out, you're good to go.

Product management is not exactly easy, since it's about products made for people, it's going to be tough, but there's a way through it. Watch Janna Bastow's advice on how we can get through it.

This is very important. You should never forget to talk to people, know their pain points, and then come up with the solution to that problem. NEVER build a solution without understanding what the customer needs, and the way to know it is by talking to customers.

Conclusion

Getting into product management is cool, and the need is rising, hop on the train, solve problems and help people live better lives.
if you have questions or you will continue the conversation, you can send a DM to me on Twitter: @ayfolut.

Why Products Die

Foluso Ayodele — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 23:41:19 +0000

Was there a product that you loved using, but now it seems to be out of the market? Is there a product you remember older folks told you about, but now it's off the chart? I bet some names are coming to mind.

Are you wondering if products die? Yes, they do, sadly. But are they supposed to? I guess they are not. In the product life-cycle, after a product has been developed, it is then introduced to the market, and it is expected to grow, but until it gets to the maturity stage, it is then usually expected to die, but some products have defied this law and others have just lived in accordance to it, because of some reasons that we’ll look at.

Below is an image showing the rise and fall of a product in the market, following the general product life-cycle.

Let’s look at some reasons today why some products have died. Please note that the death of products that is being referred to here doesn't mean that the products are not still in existence, some of them are, however, are just in the shadow of what they used to be.

1. Little or No Continuous Innovation:

When products fail to innovate or adapt to changes, they become obsolete. A product that is the king of the market today, maybe thrown out tomorrow, if there is no innovation. Problems scale, so for a product to remain relevant and strong in the market, that product must also scale to the problem’s level to solve it. Customers will always demand more, there will always be upgrades in technology, any product that doesn’t innovate in time, will die. Examples are;

2Go; a free social networking application developed by 2Go interactive Ltd in Cape Town, South Africa. As of 2012, 2Go had 12million users, beating Facebook's 6.5million users in Nigeria. 2Go simply did not innovate, data-cost was still high, gocredit was still required to do some things, it was still limited to some phones and meanwhile, WhatsApp was being built to be free and accessible on almost all kinds of phones, which made it better than 2Go in almost all ways.
BlockBuster; a rental service giant for home movies and video games in 1985. At its peak period in 2004, Blockbuster had employed 84,300 people worldwide having 9090+ stores, but they were unable to innovate and adapt to the rising technology. Netflix offered to sell their company to BlockBuster for about USD 50 million, the CEO rejected it, years after, Blockbuster started losing money and filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Altho, the last blockbuster was still open as of April 2019.

2. Failure to solve problems:

When products do not solve problems or address our needs and want, we simply don’t use them. Before a product is brought to market, it is expected to be a solution to a problem and if it will thrive in the market, it is expected to continue solving problems. However, in the bid to drive higher profits or some other reasons, some products deviate from the original intention, and since it doesn’t solve problems anymore, people start dropping it until it eventually dies out. An example is;

Google Video Player; the player was launched by Google in January 2005 and it did some nice stuff, like allowing you to watch videos from Google and watch videos in full screen, something a bit challenging as at 2007, but it did not solve any problems, we had video players already, so there was no use in having another, by the way, YouTube had even been acquired by Google then.

3. Copy Products:

When some products are out, and you compare them to existing products, at times, you cannot even tell the difference. Many have had ideas and have just executed them without finding out if there are other existing products and ways that those products could have been improved on. Customers cannot see the reason why they should move to the new product, not different from the existing product, then those new products die. Examples are;

Google Buzz; Another promising product released by Google in February 2010, social networking, microblogging, and messaging tool. It was a Google-type clone for social networking app, Twitter. It was integrated into Gmail and users could post images, links, status updates, and videos, but there was no major upgrade over Twitter so people had no reason, Google eventually closed it up in 2013.

4. Bad Products:

When a product functions less than it is supposed to, it repels users, and what is a product without users? Let me share some examples of products in this category;

TwitterPeek; a peek device made to receive and make tweets. It sucked at the only function it was made for, made an annoying buzzing sound, and was very stressful to use. The iPhone 3G was even out by then, in 2009, so why would anyone want to use this?. The product was bad, and it died.

5. Poor Timing:

When products are not brought into the market at the right time(when they are either too early or too late), it may cause them to die. At particular times, the market may not be ready, at some other times, technology may not be helping. Products released at the wrong time have a higher tendency of dying. An example is;

z.com; an entertainment website at that time, had all it needed to be sustained –money, a great business model, and incredible Hollywood talents– but the technology wasn’t ready for it. Broadband penetration at that time was low and before users could view the videos, they would have to do some technical tweaks, the product was closed up in 2003, but as soon as Adobe solved that problem, YouTube took off.

Conclusion

Products die, but they are not supposed to. Keep innovating, adapting to changes, and listening to problems. What other reason do you think makes products die? Please share with me. You can reach me on Twitter to continue the discussion; @ayfolut

Product Life-cycle and Process of Development.

Foluso Ayodele — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 18:58:12 +0000

Hi friend, welcome back! 🧘

Understanding how products come alive and how they live is a very interesting experience. This article will do justice in giving you an exposition to that concept.

As a Product Manager, you need to know this because you'll always be into products, and the success of your product is very much dependent on your decision (As I stated in my last article, click here to read it ). I'd be sharing with you, the process that products undergo and the life-cycle of products.

What is a Product? 🤔

A Product is anything that is offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. A product can be physical or virtual. You should know that understanding the concepts of products is not just for a Product Manager, it is for everyone.

Products range from simple to complex and can be managed by one person or a hundred. This is one of the many reasons why understanding the process and life-cycle of products is essential. Let's move 🚀

Bad product managers fall in love with solutions, Good product managers fall in love with problems, Great product managers fall in love with the process.

Products Process 🧘

The product process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to get a product into the market. Below are the steps involved in the product's process;

Discovery: In the discovery, brainstorming sessions for a product idea are the talks of the day. Problems are being discovered and discussed, requirements for the product are being gathered and the idea is curated.
Building: In this stage, the development team gets to work, and of course, a bit of discovery is still going on. As a product manager, you ensure that what the development team is doing at this time, matches what you have planned out.
Launching: This is an exciting stage💃, everyone gets happy and as a PM, you should consider treating your product team to dinner (PM Jokes). As soon as it has been launched, your product team, including you, should watch the product closely for about 48 hours, to see to any anomalies or breakdown.
Maintenance: Since we know that products never ship bug-free, the team will be engaged in fixing up any bugs, and also new features could be added.

Product Life-Cycle :

The product life cycle is the cycle through which every product goes through from introduction to maturity or death. We will look at it in five(5) phases;

Development: This phase spans from when an idea is conceived to when it has been built and is ready for deployment.
Introduction: This phase is when the product is introduced to the market and the customers. At this stage—it is expected, and in most cases—the sales of the product shoot up. Much work is usually done at this stage to get customers to know more and use the product.
Growth: If the product has a successful introduction, it then moves to the growth stage. This is characterized by growing demand from the users and expansion in its availability.
Maturity: When a product gets to this stage, its sales decline, usually because of market saturation. Even advertising is no longer very fruitful.
Death: No product team wants their product to get to this stage. The sales would drop very massively and customer behavior would change as there is less demand for the product. If a product team cannot re-plan such a product to be relevant again, it would eventually die out.

Conclusion :

As a product manager, the product process and life-cycle should be well understood as it will help a lot in planning your product and all other steps involved.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me on Twitter: @ayfolut.

Reference

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/product-life-cycle.asp

Product Manager Vs. Project Manager

Foluso Ayodele — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:53:14 +0000

About five years ago, I came into the tech world and started coding C++. Later on, I got into other things like Full-Stack Web Development, Robotics, Mobile and Desktop App Development, etc.

Along the way, I came across the role of Project Manager and researching in-depth, I also came across the role of a Product Manager, and earlier this year, I became a self-taught product & project manager in Tech.

What is the difference between a product and a project manager? Are you correct using the terms interchangeably?

I've taken some time to break both concepts down in this article and glad to want to share what I've learned so far.

Who is a Product Manager?

A product Manager is one saddled with the responsibility for setting out the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for a product or product line.

As a product manager, you must have an in-depth knowledge of how that product works because you'll need to make strategic product decisions. You should be able to answer questions like why this product? why is it coming at this time? what strategy is best for the development of this product? etc.

You'll also be the one to define the requirement of the product, the desired user experience. With the right mindset, you've got the greatest job on Earth. Let's call you, the Visionary.

Who is a project manager?

A Project Manager is one tasked with the responsibility of starting, planning, designing, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing a project.

As a Project manager, you must have a combination of skills from general management skills, human relations, critical thinking, etc. You are the one to make the decisions that affect the execution of a project, and every decision you make must be beneficial to the project.

You will need to familiarize yourself with Project Management Softwares that help make work easier and faster. With the right mindset, you have the best job on Earth. We'll call you, the Executor.

Connecting the Dots

Product and Project managers work hand-in-hand to see to the successful completion of a project. The Project Manager gets the details, the vision, the strategy of the product from the Product Manager, then draws out a convenient and workable plan on how the project is to be executed by the development team.

The one who always calls or texts you to ask for deadlines, day and night, is the Project Manager. In a team where both a Product and Project managers are present, the Product manager is always echoing why the project should be done, the vision behind it, and talks of such, while the project manager is always echoing the deadlines to be met.

Conclusion

However, in most cases, we have seen one power person, play the two roles.

I have two questions for you;

Which are you; the Visionary or the Executor?
How effective can one be when trying to manage the two roles?

I can’t wait to hear your amazing contributions. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to hit me up on Twitter: @ayfolut . Special thanks to @lordghostx , for helping out with editing this article.