Product Management 101

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT 101
Actionable tools & techniques to discover,
design & launch great products
+ + =

Goal of this deck:
Providing you with a toolbox of
concrete product management
techniques so you can build great
products
2

“The job of a Product Manager is to discover a
product that is valuable, usable and feasible”
Marty Cagan
Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group
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“Discover” means that the Product Manager identifies
problems and finds appropriate product-related solutions,
working closely with business stakeholders, designers and
developers. He’s neither a designer nor a developer.

6
“Valuable” means that the Product Manager needs to find
solutions that are viable from a business perspective. He often
needs to find product-market fit.

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“Usable” means that the Product Manager needs to find
solutions that makes sense for users: they need to be simple
and engaging. To reach this goal he often works with UX
designers.

8
“Feasible” means that the Product Manager needs to find
solutions that are technically realistic. That’s why he works
closely with software engineers, who will assess whether
they’re able to code the envisioned solution.

9
That’s why we often find this meme to
describe the job of a Product Manager

10
“A good product manager
must be experienced in at
least one, passionate about
all three, and conversant
with practitioners in all.”
Martin Eriksson
Founder, MindTheProduct

“The product manager is the CEO of the product”
Ben Horowitz
Founder, Andreessen Horowitz
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Another frequent phrase to describe the job
of a Product Manager

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“The product manager is the CEO of the product”
A controversial phrase because it led some
PMs to think they can act like bosses

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But if we look at the number of teams a PM can
interact with in their job, the comparison with a
CEO sometimes makes sense
Source: CEO of the Product Revisited

Resources to go further
“CEO of the Product Revisited” (Silicon Valley Product Group)
“Product Managers - You Are Not The CEO of Anything” (MindTheProduct)
“The Minimum Viable Product Manager” (The Black Box of Product Management)
“The 99 Types of Product Managers” (Product:belief)
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Now that you understand what a
Product Manager (PM) does, let’s
start!
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Identifying problems
Finding solutions
Prioritizing solutions
Testing and launching

17
Finding solutions

18
To your users you
shall listen
Data you shall
measure

19
To your users you
shall listen
Data you shall
measure

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How likely are your users to recommend your product to
a friend?
Data Users’ voice
1. NPS = Net Promoter Score

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-21 68614240
Sources: NPS Benchmarks, Statista
Data Users’ voice
Identifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems

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Implement it in your product from scratch or use these
tools
Data Users’ voice

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Check how your app ratings evolve over time
appbot is a great tool to do so
Data Users’ voice

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Those are great tools to measure the general feeling about your product...
Data Users’ voice
NPS, App ratings
Overall satisfaction of your product

25
...But you’ll only get powerful insights by navigating through the dark
waters of your product
Data Users’ voice
Behaviour of your users
Demographics of your users

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Rayman and the Raving Rabbids, first released in 2006, has been quite a
successful release, acclaimed by video game players.
Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems

27
But when Ubisoft digged into user behaviour, they realised a majority of
players where only playing the dance mini-game, which was only a small
feature of the main game.

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Hence Ubisoft decided to launch Just Dance, a game dedicated to dancing,
in 2009.

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Just Dance is Ubisoft’s 2nd biggest hit, just behind Assassin’s Creed.
They’ve sold over 55 millions copies of their game!

Hence the importance of studying user behaviour, not just user
satisfaction!
Demographics of your
users

How to study user behaviour?
Demographics of your
users

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Use the AARRR framework
Data Users’ voice
Startup Metrics for Pirates by Dave McClure on SlideShare (2007)

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For each category, try to identify 1 or 2 key metrics that
are important to your business

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Beware of vanity metrics
Only measuring acquisition doesn’t tell you if your product is convincing users
to sign up… Traffic might be artificially driven by a strong marketing push!
VANITY

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Sanity is good but not enough!
Measuring activation enables you to check if you convinced users to give your
product a try. But it won’t tell you if they’re hooked in the long run.
VANITY
SANITY

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Retention = Reality
If your product retains users in the long term, this means you’ve probably
managed to solve a real problem. That’s what investors are looking for!
VANITY
SANITY
REALITY

37
One of BlaBlaCar’s value incentivizes its employees to
constantly look for reality metrics.

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Data Users’ voice
Retention is often measured in cohorts

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Data Users’ voice
Retention is hard!
Weekly retention by industry (source: Mixpanel)

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Data Users’ voice
If you want to know more about this topic,
my friend Adrien Montcoudiol has worked
on great decks about AARRR strategies

Studying your users’ behaviour is insightful but can hide some realities

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On paper, Facebook activity metrics look bright...
Source: Statista

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But if you look at specific demographics, Facebook is losing its grip on
young people
Source: Bloomberg
2015
71% 51%
2018
Percent of kids ages 13-17 using Facebook

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Hence Facebook’s reaction: launching (or acquiring) new products to
retaliate against new entrants seducing teenagers
vs

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Hence the importance of studying user demographics, not just users’
behaviour!
Data Users’ voice

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Which tools to use?
👍 Enables to standardize
the trackers among
many services
👎 Expensive
Data Users’ voice
Tracking tool Analytics tools BI tools
👍 Easy to setup dashboards
👎 No history
👎 You can’t track everything
(e.g. sales, marketing
data)
👍 You can literally track
everything
👍 Keeps history before setup
👎 Harder to setup dashboards

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To your users you
shall listen
Data you shall
measure

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Why listening to your users?
It helps companies to stay on top of their
customers’ pain points

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The Tesla example: 6 days from customer feedback to PR announcement

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Those tools will help you listen to your users
Data Users’ voice
Customer support
App Stores
Social listening
UX analytics
Identifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems

51
Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems
Example of an internal analytics tool developed at BlaBlaCar thanks to
the customer support team, by using Google Forms and Spreadsheets

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What if I build something
from scratch?

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Build a pool of “beta testers” who are interested in your
feature / product
New feature on an existing product
5-10 beta testers
New product
50-100 beta testers

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Data Users’ voice
Keep track of your beta testers in a lightweight CRM
Notion is an amazing tool to create these kind of tables and link them with notes,
to-do’s, calendars…
Identifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems Data Users’ voiceIdentifying problems

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Test your ideas as often as possible with your beta testers
✅ Define what do you want to validate / discover
✅ Recruit the right users (avoid UX experts)
✅ Ask them about their problems, not their solutions
✅ Build a scenario (tasks they have to complete)
✅ Don’t influence them (avoid yes/no questions)
✅ Observe first, then ask

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Data you shall measure:
- NPS, app ratings
- AARRR framework
- Behaviour and demographics
To recap
To your users you shall listen
- Customer support
- App reviews
- Social listening
- Build a pool of beta testers

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Finding solutions

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Finding solutions
Benchmark other
products
Do design
sprints
Use the right
tools

59
Finding solutions
Benchmark other
products
Do design
sprints
Use the right
tools

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Drawing on paper will enable you to :
✅ Express your ideas quickly
✅ Trash the irrelevant ones
...without spending days figuring out details that are unnecessary at this stage
(colors, fonts, size of buttons, etc.)
1. Drawing
Tools BenchmarkFinding solutions Sprints

61
Low-fi prototyping will enable
you to:
✅ Turn an idea into an interactive
user flow without design or code
✅ Test your idea with real users
2. Prototyping (Low-Fidelity)

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2. Prototyping (Low-Fidelity)
Some tools you can use
My favourite one

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Benchmark other
products
Do design
sprints
Use the right
tools
Finding solutions

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💡 Finding solutions Tools Benchmark Sprints
Source : Laws Of UX

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Example: To display items on a map, no one has reinvented the wheel...
Tools BenchmarkFinding solutions Sprints💡 Finding solutions Tools Benchmark SprintsTools BenchmarkFinding solutions Sprints

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What to benchmark?
Get inspired from the world’s largest and most talented product teams:
Consumer
apps
B2B
companies

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Check out UX patterns on those sites:
https://pageflows.com/
https://pttrns.com/
http://littlebigdetails.com/
What to benchmark?

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💡 Finding solutions
Benchmark other
products
Do design
sprints
Use the right
tools
Finding solutions

69
Design sprints enable you to iterate fast to find the right
feature, before building anything
The Design Sprint by Google Ventures

70
💡 Finding solutions Tools Benchmark SprintsTools BenchmarkFinding solutions Sprints💡 Finding solutions Tools Benchmark SprintsTools BenchmarkFinding solutions Sprints
Here’s the agenda of a design sprint week

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See Identifying problems ⏫

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The Crazy 8’s is a great brainstorming
method

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The Crazy 8’s is a great brainstorming
method

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See Prioritizing solutions ⏬

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See Finding solutions ⏫

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1. The Usability Testing Session
1. Welcome (4 min)
2. Questions to the user (3 min)
3. Give context (3 min)
4. User tries the feature (30 min)
5. Summary and questions (5 min)
👍 Deep insights
👎 Heavy logistics to organize

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2. The “Guerilla Testing”
5 minutes focused on the core feature
you want to test
👍 Easy to organize
👍 Forces to get out of the building
👎 Insights are more superficial than real
usability tests
👎 Users are less targeted
Read more: Usability Testing gone wild (BlaBlaCar)

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When you’re convinced of what to build, you
should work with a product designer to build the
“high fidelity” version of your feature

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Build interfaces... ...& animate them with a prototype

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Benchmark other products
- Reference consumer/B2B
apps
- UI/UX patterns directories
Do design sprints
- Sketch: The Crazy 8’s
- Test: Usability and
Guerilla testing
Use the right tools
- Draw
- Prototype (low
fidelity)
To recap
Finding solutions

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Finding solutions

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Build a roadmapAssess the cost/benefit

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Cost/benefit Roadmap
Cost/benefit = Estimating Return on investment
for each project
Source: Ruthless Prioritization (The Black Box of Product Management)

85
Prioritizing solutions ⚖ Cost/benefit Roadmap
Cost/benefit = Estimating Return on investment
for each project
Unfortunately, this isn’t
always as simple...
Source: Ruthless Prioritization (The Black Box of Product Management)
Cost/benefit RoadmapPrioritizing solutions

86
“Customer value” is a mix of value for the company and value for its
customers. You need to find the right balance!
Value for the
company
Value for the
customers
Ideally all product initiatives should be in this area, but that’s not always the case...

87
Some companies implement features that generate short-term value but
destroy their credibility in the long run
Those are often called “UX dark patterns”

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The balance between “value for the company” and
“value for the user” is what differentiates:
Read more: The 6 Types of Product Teams You’ll Be Working In
User-centered product teams Growth-centered product teams
vs

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Many other prioritization methods are available out
there…
Source: RICE: simple prioritization for product managers (Intercom)
- Reach: How many people will this
impact?
- Impact: How much will this impact
each person?
- Confident: How confident are you in
your estimates?
- Effort: How many “person-month”
will this take?
The “RICE” framework

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There’s no ideal recipe...
You should iterate on your own
prioritization framework!

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What is a roadmap?

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Turning this messy list of projects into a visual
summary
Prioritizing solutions ⚖ Cost/benefit RoadmapCost/benefit RoadmapPrioritizing solutions

94
Why a roadmap?
It enables the product team to plan and
communicate the view of the future that you have
for your product.
Above 50 employees, it becomes critical to build
consistent, focused roadmaps.
Prioritizing solutions ⚖ Cost/benefit RoadmapPrioritizing solutions ⚖ Cost/benefit RoadmapCost/benefit RoadmapPrioritizing solutions

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A few tips on building
roadmaps

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Avoid GANTT diagrams
They are a source of headaches and never respected

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As much as possible, avoid giving deadlines
More about this topic: Running in Circles (Basecamp)
In software, requirements
often change and there’s a
high part of technical
uncertainty that makes it
tricky to announce a launch
date too much in advance.

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As much as possible, avoid giving deadlines
Front publicly shows the
projects currently being
coded but doesn’t give
any deadline.
More about this topic: Running in Circles (Basecamp)

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Source: Talk from Paul Adams, VP Product at Intercom, during Inside Intercom Tour 2017 (Paris)
Intercom’s compromise to work in harmony
with marketing and sales
→ Announcing a list of prioritized projects every
quarter
→ Announcing launch dates 2 weeks in advance

100
Focus on problems, not on features

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Prefer visual roadmaps over spreadsheets

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Ex: Slack Platform’s open roadmap

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Great tools to build roadmaps

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Build a roadmap
- Avoid GANTT diagrams
- Avoid deadlines
- Use visual tools like Trello or Notion
To recap
Assess the cost/benefit
- Estimate benefit for users/company and
product/tech effort
- Get inspired from other prioritization
methods (e.g. RICE)

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Finding solutions

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Soft launch A/B testsSmoke tests

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Soft launchSmoke tests A/B tests
Smoke tests enable you to validate your concept
with your users without engaging in software
development.
(sometimes also called “Proof of Concept - PoC)

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Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B tests
The “Fake Door”
Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching
Maze is measuring the appetence of its users for a “Hire Testers” feature with a button
that redirects to a message telling us it’s not ready yet.

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The “Mechanical Turk”
Wealthfront is an automated
investment service firm.
When they launched back in
2008, the “automation” was
just plain old humans sitting
at desks.
(Source: Tivix)

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The “Mechanical Turk”
Amazon Mechanical Turk
enables you to hire a
on-demand workforce to
perform such manual tasks,
before you have an
up-and-running technology.

112
Ads
Launch an advertising campaign,
for example, with Google Adwords
or Facebook Ads.
The landing page doesn’t need to
be good-looking. Your only goal is
evaluating if people are interested
in the product based on the ads.
More about this topic: Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research

113
The “Pre-Order”
Before embarking on a costly
development, you can measure
the appetence for a product and
get some working capital by
getting your customers to
pre-order your product.

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Video
Before the technology behind Dropbox
existed, its CEO Drew Houston
demonstrated how Dropbox works, with
a simulation he made on his computer,
and recorded with a screencast video.
He gathered 75K signups within a day.

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Launch gradually to avoid backlash / anticipate any tech issues
1% of your users
then 5%
then 20%
then 50%
finally 100%
Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsSoft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching

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Facebook tests most
features in New Zealand
(2M users) before rolling
out globally
Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsSoft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching

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A/B testing (= testing 2+ variations of the same
page, by splitting the traffic) can be used for a
feature launch if you have doubts about how
it’s going to impact some metrics.
Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsSoft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching

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Airbnb oftens A/B tests page redesigns before fully rolling them out
Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsSoft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching
More about this topic: Experiments at Airbnb

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A/B testing should be used with caution.
It be can be very tempting to test many things (Content, placement of
a button, forms, navbar / menus) and become quickly time-consuming,
defocusing from the core features bringing value to your users.
Building and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsBuilding and launching Soft launchSmoke tests A/B testsSoft launchSmoke tests A/B testsTesting and launching

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Soft launch
- Progressive roll-out
- Small markets
A/B tests
- Use them in case of
strong doubt
- Use them with
caution!
Smoke tests
- The Fake Door
- The Mechanical Turk
- Ads, Pre-Order, Video
To recap

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Get in touch
@lucdid
lucas.didier@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/lucdid
Enjoyed this presentation?
I’m available to help you on your
product strategy & user experience!

Product Management 101

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