Janet Brunckhorst ·
We just received our copies of O’Reilly’s latest Product Management title, Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century, by Matt LeMay.
Product management is notoriously difficult to define. This book is the most succinct, honest definition of the role of product management I’ve come across. I’d recommend it to anyone who:
- Is a new or aspiring PM;
- Is changing companies as a PM;
- Is working as a PM and finds there is a lack of clarity around the role;
- Works with PMs and isn’t sure what they do;
- Leads PMs and isn’t sure how to support them.
- In theory, product management is about building products that people love. The real-world practice of product management is often about difficult conversations, practical compromises, and hard-won incremental gains.
- In the tough business climate that we are entering, product managers will be expected to take the lead and ensure that their products and solutions are managed effectively in the market. You are required to understand your market and how to compete in it, to ensure that you generate sufficient market share and profit from your product portfolio.
- This course is for product managers, whether they are experienced or new to the role, who wish to adopt best practice and manage their product portfolio profitably. It is particularly relevant for product managers who need to be more market-focused and ensure that their actions deliver profitable results.
- Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century Matt LeMay. 4.6 out of 5 stars 116.
The real-world practice of product management is often about difficult conversations, practical compromises, and hard-won incremental gains. In this book, author Matt LeMay focuses on the CORE connective skills- communication, organization, research, execution-that can build a successful product management practice across industries, organizations, teams, and toolsets.
It’s a short book, so I’ll keep this brief as well.
There are three things that I appreciated about this book. It distills insights and knowledge in an accessible way; it validates my experience as a product manager; it challenges me to identify areas for growth.
Distillation
Matt proposes a new skill model for product managers, which he calls CORE (Communication, Organization, Research, and Execution). He says, “because product management is a relatively new discipline, and because the role can vary so much from organization to organization, it is tempting to describe product management as a hybrid of other roles.” But it’s not that, and his CORE concept helps to re-frame the conversation.
Validation
As a working product manager, your work can feel a bit all over the place. Each day’s tasks are pretty clear, but when you step back the big picture can be a little fuzzy. A lot of what is written about product management seeks to bring order to this chaos, which is a laudable goal. Product Management in Practice, though, stays true to its title and embraces the uncertainty of PMing IRL. It’s clear that Matt gets it, and his advice is based on deep experience. And let’s face it, even if you’re not looking for PM therapy, it always feels good to have your own experience validated so you know you’re not alone!
Product Management In Practice Journal
This quote particularly resonated with me: “For all the books that I had read and all the methodologies that I had studied, the only thing I was left with when I sat back down at my desk was, “What the hell am I supposed to do every day?” … In theory, product management is a masterfully played game of chess. In practice, product management often feels like a hundred simultaneous games of checkers.” If you’re a PM, you’re nodding. If you’re not a PM, maybe you just stumbled onto our little secret!
Challenges
The book is organized around some guiding principles attached to each of the CORE skills. Matt returns to these concepts–“clarity over comfort”, for instance–again and again in different contexts. He also includes stories from product managers working in a variety of companies. He does a great job of gently pointing out the common ways we stray from these core principles, and suggesting how we can get back on track. Each chapter ends with a checklist of things you should make sure you’re doing.
As I read the book, I started pulling out the areas that I need to work on the most and creating a personal checklist of my own. For me, it was a great way of keeping track of the insights that were most immediately applicable for me, using a framework suggested by the book. Here’s my checklist:
- Don’t be self-deprecating. It undermines the ability to build alignment on the team.
- Create a document like “Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager” specific to our organization.
- Use “disagree and commit” in meetings.
- Work on accommodating different communication styles. They’re not bad, they’re different.
- Socialize a “North Star” version of Agile during kickoffs.
- Document process changes and goals as a project progresses (maybe adapt the experiment template from this post, which outlines a structured approach to experiment planning).
This is an accessible, entertaining book. There’s already a waiting list for my copy, so you’ll have to order your own from Amazon or O’Reilly. While you’re waiting for it to arrive, take a look at Matt’s post The Past and Future of Product Management.
Related Posts
Product Managers have an enormous amount of responsibility. But you knew that already. Did you know however that your company is placing a huge amount of trust in your hands? You did. Well then let’s dig a little deeper and take a look at some product management best practices.
Not only do you have to fit your product into the overall business model, but you need to keep track of the competition’s products as well ensuring that yours stays relevant and in high demand. Sounds overwhelming, but your talent and hard work is what you got you in here in the first place.
Here’s a way to ensure you use the best product management practices.
To help keep you on top of the curve, follow these 5 tips of product management best practices and keep doing what you do best.
1. Direct Customer Interaction: Keep them Engaged
The most efficient way to turn customer needs into product requirements is to interact with your customers first-hand in order to actually understand their needs. Yes, this may seem tiresome, but setting daily quotas will help make this more than doable. Be accountable for these metrics.
Product Management In Practice
As a manager, you know the importance of sticking to your daily goals for success.
2. Clear Product Vision: Roadmaps for All
This is your chance to bring the product to life. Don’t assume that product roadmaps are clear and accessible to the whole team, just because you sent out an email stating so. Schedule time
to present the new features and functionality, allowing time for questions. People consume information differently and creating an open platform to display the product’s ingenuity and importance is one of the product manager’s best practices in ensuring the whole team is on board- living and breathing the product into a success.
3. Strategize: An all Encompassing Plan
![Practice Practice](/uploads/1/3/7/7/137767801/723871967.png)
Time is money. As your list of responsibilities grow, your time management is essential. Focusing on strategies that include a product’s full life-cycle allows you to give equal importance to all stages of a product release and not just focusing on the delivery. It is common to invest most of your energy in this step of the process, but a product manager’s best practices of strategy enable better prioritizing, causing fewer hold-ups and overall better management of resources.
4. Using Data as a Decision Tool: A Product Manager’s Best Practices
Numbers become your best friend before board meetings and performance reviews in order to prove your case. So why not use them to your advantage year-round? KPIs should be analyzed before making decisions, translating them to help you understand if the needs of your target audience are being met and how well your product is perceived in the market. Do not ignore the data to protect your product. Rather use the data to assess where your product’s success lies and where you need to make changes.
5. Apply New Technology Trends
There are two elements you need to consider: product growth and guaranteeing its success. To ensure both, a product manager’s best practices is to follow technology trends. Technology benefits the growth of your own product, using functionalities your target audience is already comfortable with or perhaps answers one of their needs more efficiently, but it also enables you to fully understand market trends and predict the success rate of your product in relation to technology trends.
To be a product manager is to market your own product to the right audience. But to be an excellent product manager is to follow product manager best practices and that includes knowing the ins-and-outs of the market, your competition, and the different aspects from within your own company as well. Stay well-informed and well-read and your capabilities and talents are endless.