ProductGuy

Product Roadmap – For Enterprise Product Course on Udemy

My course on Udemy has gone LIVE recently – https://www.udemy.com/product-roadmap-101/

I have made this course FREE for a limited duration. Beyond that duration, please join us to get a DISCOUNT COUPON to the course.

Why a course on Product Roadmap so important?

In an era where technological advancements have been rapidly changing customer behaviors, the role of Product Management is…

How to become a better Product Manager?

I often notice lots of questions about what are the resource to become a better Product Manager. Honestly none. Books, blog articles, video, online courses, MBA degree etc will provide you a better head start into Product Manager by equipping you with necessary tools, frameworks to perform the role well (i would not say better) To get better at something, you need to face the real world,…

Any development methodology has its own fallacies unless we appropriately use them. With MVP too, we have to be cautious not to fall into a trap of probably relying on it too much (or rather should I say abusing it). MVP formulated by Eric Ries is an excellent way to build a product through an incremental process of build, measure and learn. Nevertheless, it does not entitle Product Managers…

Building enterprise products for uncertain future

The only certainty about future is uncertainty. The change was always constant occurring ever since the evolution of mankind. But what differentiates this era with foregone is the velocity at which change is happening. In my earlier blog post, I have shared my thoughts on customers’ needs and outcomes are increasingly becoming moving targets – an unendorsed challenge of building enterprise…

Should Product Manager prioritize defects?

I have seen many debates on Quora and other related forums regarding how Product Managers should prioritize defects against product requirements. Now my belief is that both are different and I am a firm believer in ‘Engineering owns quality’. Even though quality precedes everything, Product Manager does not pitch defects against product requirements. No product is defect free and every…

Prioritizing defects vs new features

I have seen many debates on Quora and other related forums regarding prioritization of defects against product requirements. Now my belief is that both are different and I am firm believer in ‘Engineering owns quality’. Even though quality precedes everything, Product Manager does not pitch defects against product requirements. No product is defect free and every requirement added to the product…

Building enterprise products for moving target of customer needs

The primary emphasis for building a great product is to discover a right problem and getting married to it. However, customers’ needs and problems are increasingly becoming moving targets. The needs and problems evolve, so do the solutions to address them (i.e. the outcome too evolves) triggering an uncertainty of which needs or problems to address and what outcomes to deliver. The biggest…

Creating a chatbot using API.ai

When you start learning ML and become fascinated by it, you will never stop with learning certain models. You will try to understand how it applies to some real world problems or outcomes. One such outcome is chatbot, I have been wondering about the possibility of creating a chatbot using NLP (with actual algorithms) and not using any tools. However, my learning is not progressing briskly to…

Addition of new Product Manager – Can it be an opportunity to add new perspective to the product?

We all heard a lot about dos and don’ts for a Product Manager during first 30 days to make herself familiar with i) People or Stakeholders, ii) Product and iii) Market. However, one important element that almost everyone missed to talk about is the constructive role that a hiring manager or a mentor could play in making the initial 30 days effective. The arrival of a new Product Manager is an…

5 ingredients to building great products

Building great products is a mindset with multi-disciplinary skills. Every Product Manager would learn those skills only through hard way of building products, validating those products with customers and reinforcing the feedback back into building better products. Based on my experience, I have listed 5 key essential ingredients to building great products. Audacious problem– Pick an audacious…

Why PMs should learn Machine Learning

Machine Learning (ML) is becoming ubiquitous and every single product out there is attempting to use some flavor of Machine Learning to better address customer problems and delight them. ML is no more a fad and it is not restricted to those familiar use-cases of image recognition, page ranking, spam detection, autonomous cars etc. Appropriate use of ML algorithms is essential to differentiate…

The WHY behind the Product, Have you identified it?

What is ‘THE WHY’ behind the product? Why it is essential for every Product Manager to identify it? THE WHY of the product defines its purpose that can unambiguously articulate why is the product built both from the perspective of Organization and customers. Further, the Organization beliefs lay the foundation for the purpose, together they define how the product is built and evolved, and they…

Step-by-step guide for ROI computation of new product

ROI computation of the new product after determining the pricing and the model (SaaS or a perpetual model) is a simple sequence of steps. Product Manager with a flair for mathematics would get rid of this phase with utmost ease as long as (s)he is able to forecast units sold for each quarter for the entire lifetime of the product. Yet, some of us falter as ROI computation is not a everyday…

Hierarchy of need of B2B customers

Maslow defined the hierarchy of needs for human beings. The hierarchy defines needs in a pyramid structure where the needs at the bottom are the most important needs. Human beings meet those needs first before proceeding to other needs in the hierarchy. For human beings, food, shelter, clothing, financial security, love forms the basic needs. Probably communication comes next in Internet era.…

Cross pollination of agile and waterfall

Our traditional approach to product development has always been the waterfall model. Nevertheless, while we embarked on our journey to build the new product we built the product upon the foundation of waterfall methodology while introducing agility within it. The ability or willingness to experiment with processes or methodologies should be fundamental for any new product development. The…

Every incumbent products has its vulnerabilities

What does success stories of Tesla and Waze teach every Product Manager?  Every incumbent product is vulnerable and there is an opportunity to beat even awesome products. How many of us would have believed that there is a possibility for a new player to emerge (leave alone succeeding) in the luxury car market, beating the likes of Audi, BWM, Mercedes, Lexus, etc? Yet, Tesla zoomed to the top…