Success as a product management leader requires understanding customers’ expressed and latent needs, the ability to identify and assess the business value in solving these problems and developing products and solutions that deliver on these values. The following activities are key.
- Customer Insights – Developing a clear understanding of customer pains and challenges, and identifying the value of solving them is fundamental to building great products. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods help build a more complete picture of the spectrum of target customers and results in delivering better solutions.
- Compelling Solutions – Solutions always start with a hypothesis on what value they will deliver. Delivering solutions that target this value and measuring whether or not they actually deliver on the promise are core to creating compelling products and ensuring teams can identify when changes are needed and respond quickly.
- Customer and Product Evangelism – Helping others stakeholders understand the customer, their challenges, and how to make their lives better drives alignment and empowers people to make better decisions for their role. Working to build and evangelize a shared vision creates buy-in, keeps teams aligned, articulates comprehensive mid- and long-term strategies, and results in a more productive and agile team.
Over my career, I have delivered many different types of products including consumer electronics, entertainment products, collaboration, and communications solutions, medical devices, and information technology products and services. Many of the products I have worked on are listed below.