You Need to Know These Frameworks & Techniques as a Product Manager

As a Product Manager, you’re well aware of the array of frameworks available to support different aspects of product management and development. From PRDs to understanding your target audience, customer insights, marketing strategies, and beyond — these frameworks are essential. In this blog, we’ll dive into some essential and useful frameworks tailored for Product Managers. And remember, knowledge never goes to waste, so even if you’re not a PM, there’s always something to learn.

As a Product Manager, you are well aware of the various stages of a product’s development. In each of these stages, frameworks are available for you to use. These frameworks serve as valuable tools to help you gain a deeper understanding of your product and improve its metrics.

Lets now learn about a few important frameworks,

1. Storytelling

As a Product Manager, you are aware of the concept of storytelling. Every PM needs to learn this art of storytelling — yes, you heard it right, I won’t call storytelling a framework, but an art. As a product manager, you must be able to articulate your thoughts in a simple and easy-to-understand manner, ensuring that your audience comprehends the entire topic and grasps the significance of your ideas.

Storytelling plays a vital role in writing effective PRDs where you explain how features or products will work to your developers and team members. Thus, mastering this art is essential for every PM. Every story you tell or write serves as your requirement document. Each storytelling journey has a beginning, body, and end (result).

A storytelling Product Manager is someone who excels in using storytelling techniques to communicate and present product ideas, strategies, and concepts. They go beyond merely sharing information; they craft compelling stories that emotionally engage stakeholders, customers, and team members.

2. CIRCLES

The CIRCLES framework assists you with problem-solving and decision-making. As a product manager, it guides you on how to approach any situation. Every word in CIRCLES stands for a term. The CIRCLES framework covers vital aspects for product managers in product development. It guarantees to address customer needs, manage risks, promote collaboration, and make data-driven decisions through experimentation and success measurement. Let’s dive deep into each of these terms.

1. Comprehend the Situation
   Understand the environment that gives rise to the need for the product. A product manager must comprehend the environment that drives a product’s requirements. Conducting thorough research and analysis is an essential task for a product manager. This aspect of the framework addresses the question of What? Who? Why? and How? regarding the requirements.
2. Identify the Customer
   Once you have a complete understanding of the complete requirements, your next task is to begin considering the users who will utilize the feature. Building upon the accumulated requirements, we need to develop a persona for the average customer.
3. Report the Need of the Customer
   After comprehending the situation and developing user personas, the next step involves understanding the motivations behind why the customer would use our product. During this phase, it is essential to compile a list of the reasons that might drive the customer’s need for the product.
   User story → As [a user persona], I want [to perform this action] so that [I can accomplish this goal].
4. Cut Through Prioritization
   Provide an evaluation of your product’s position with respect to the market, followed by an estimated return on investment (ROI) analysis.
5. List Solutions
   List the potential solution to the problems for the identified user personas.
6. Evaluate the Tradeoffs
   Every product will involve trade-offs. Understand your priorities and design the product accordingly.
7. Summarize
   Provide a summary of your design that includes all of the points. Here you mention everything about the requirement, what is the requirement, the complete recap, and why your product will stand out versus others.

3. AARRR

AARRR funnel, also known as the Pirate metric or funnel due to the way it sounds, is a simple framework used to identify customer behaviour. It’s an agile framework. AARRR commonly denotes a user flow on the application and each word here stands for a term,

1. Acquisition
   Plan to acquire new customers. In simple terms, it means how many people do you reach? how did they become aware of your product?
2. Activation
   How many people visit your website, the customers you acquire, and what is their initial experience? how many of them have registered? how many of them use your product?
3. Retention
   Of the users who are registered on your platform or use your services, how many of them return back? In simple terms of the activated users, how many of them continue to use your product?
4. Revenue
   How many of those activated/registered users actually pay you?
5. Referral
   Do users who use your product like your services enough to refer to it?

By monitoring the five pirate metrics, you can gain a complete view of user actions, identifying strengths and areas for improvement. The most difficult to improve in this framework are Revenue and Referral.

4. HEART

HEART framework, initially developed at Google hence also called as Google framework. The HEART framework is a method used to measure the user experience and analyze the quality of products or services. The acronym HEART stands for Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task success.

We use HEART as the form of a table in order to judge the performance according to the metric. Rows are the steps and columns are the parameters.

Steps

1. Happiness
   This measures the attitude of the user. That can be user satisfaction, and overall enjoyment when using the product or service.
2. Engagement
   How many users use your product? how actively users are interacting with the product?
3. Adoption
   This measures the number of new users that you gain. Adoption evaluates how well users are incorporating the product into their daily routine.
4. Retention
   Retention measures how many users keep using the product. In simple terms, among gained users, how many are coming back?
5. Task success
   Among the task assigned to the users, how many have been completed? This metric looks at how well users can get things done using the product.

Parameters

1. Goals
   High-level goals that have been considered to make your product
2. Signals
   User signals that indicate the +ve or -ve trajectory of the product, rating your product 5 stars, spending more time on your product, staying active, etc.
3. Metrics
   Official quantitive metrics that you monitor to determine success. These can be any metrics, for example, NPS, Avg. session length, feature adoption rate, churn rate, and crash rate.

5. 4 Quadrant of time management

The 4 Quadrants of Time Management categorize tasks into four groups based on their urgency and importance. Every task that you pick as a product manager has a deadline and priority(importance) assigned to it. This is a simple metric as mentioned in the image the x-axis determines the deadline(urgency) and the y-axis determines the priority(importance).

1. Urgent and Important
   Tasks in this quadrant need urgent attention and are critical. They often involve important issues.
2. Not Urgent but Important
   Tasks in this quadrant are important but not time-sensitive. These include activities like planning and strategizing.
3. Urgent but Not Important
   Tasks in this quadrant are usually distractions that demand urgent attention but don’t contribute significantly to your long-term goals.
4. Not Urgent and Not Important
   These are activities that provide little or no benefit and should be avoided or eliminated.

The 4 Quadrants of Time Management help everyone prioritize tasks by focusing on what’s important and minimizing time on non-goal-oriented activities.

6. 5 Why

The “5 Whys” is a simple method in product management to find the main cause of a problem. You ask “why” multiple times, commonly five, to investigate deeply and find the actual reasons for the problem. This helps managers to understand problems and fix the actual root causes instead of just the surface symptoms. Repeatedly asking “why” helps reveal what’s actually going on, leading to better decisions making for improving the product.

7. Prioritization

In product management, prioritization means deciding what tasks and features come first. It ensures resources go to the most important areas, making the product successful and efficient.

8. 4Ps of Marketing

The 4Ps of marketing, are also known as the marketing mix. The 4Ps of marketing provide a framework outlining the important elements for a company to consider when developing its marketing strategy. These elements are used to design a successful marketing campaign and promote the product. It also allows you to conduct analysis for product design and all the steps until it releases. The 4Ps stand for:

1. Product
   Complete summary of all features of the product from its need and its design to its branding. In simple terms ‘What are you selling?’
2. Price
   How much it costs? Price lists, discounts, and depreciation over time may and should be considered. This element helps with the amount of money customers are willing to pay for the product.
3. Place
   Where can the customer get it? Supply chain, where to store, how to transport, market to be sold. Also known as distribution, this refers to the channels and methods through which the product or service reaches the customer.
4. Promotion
   How do you tell people about it? Public relations, online promotions, offline campaigns. This refers to the different tactics and strategies used to communicate and promote the product to the target audience.

9. 5Cs of Pricing

The 5 Cs of pricing is a framework that helps businesses decide their pricing strategies based on multiple factors. All these factors start with the letter “C,” making it easier to remember. The 5 Cs are:

1. Cost
   How much your product costs you? This includes the production and operational costs involved in creating the product.
2. Compatibility
   Your pricing strategy should always match the company’s sales goals and overall objectives.
3. Customer
   The value of the product’s delivery must align with its price. Understand how customers observe the value of your product or service.
4. Competitors
   How much do other similar products in the market cost? Analyze how the pricing you offer compares to similar offerings from competitors in your domain.
5. Channel
   How much does the transportation and distribution channel inflate your costs? Evaluate the distribution channels you use and how they might impact pricing.

10. REAN

It’s a framework mainly used in digital marketing to help through the stages of a customer’s journey from initial awareness to becoming a loyal customer of your product. Here’s a breakdown of each stage:

1. Reach
   Reach the highest number of people you can. In this stage, you ideally aim to target your audience and make them aware of your brand.
2. Engage
   Once you’ve gained the audience’s attention, the next step is to engage them. You can engage with them through campaigns, competitions, videos, etc.
3. Activate
   Activate your consumer base and have them communicate with you. At this stage, your goal is to convert engaged prospects into customers.
4. Nurture
   Nurture the customer you have gained through regular communication

11. AIDAOR

The AIDAOR framework is a model for marketing that shows how customers react to marketing messages. This model helps market your product to the highest number of people possible. Each letter represents a stage of the process:

1. Awareness
   The first step is to create awareness for your brand and what it stands for.
2. Interest
   Through your marketing strategy generate interest in your product and highlight its benefits to your customers.
3. Desire
   Once you determine their interest in your product, create a desire for your product by building an emotional connection with your target audience.
4. Action
   CTA, tell your prospective customer what they should do if they want to procure your product.
5. Retention
   Offer your customer a great experience so that they return to your product.

12. RFM

RFM stands for “Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value.” RFM is a method used in marketing to group and target customers based on how often they buy.

1. Recency
   This refers to how recently a customer purchase was made.
2. Frequency
   This measures how often a customer makes purchases within a specific time.
3. Margin
   This represents the amount of money a customer has spent on purchases.

By looking at these three things, responsible teams can classify customers into groups like high-value, medium-value, or low-value. If all of the above are large enough, that translates to the ideal profitable customer.

13. 5 Forces

It helps you figure out how tough the competition will be for your product in the market. Also known as Porter’s Five Forces.

1. The Threat of New Entry
   Will the entry of a new, similar product impact your position in the market? How easily new companies can enter the market?
2. The Threat of Substitution
   How easily can the consumer find an alternate product that does what your product does?
3. Supply Power
   To what extent does your supplier determine the cost and availability of your product?
4. Buyer Power
   How easy is it for your buyers to bring about a change in the price of your product?
5. Competitive rivalry
   How robust and well-established are competitors’ products?

By studying these forces, businesses can decide how to compete better and where they fit in the current industry.

14. DIGS

DIGS is similar to the storytelling framework. Each letter represents a stage of the process:

1. Determine the issue.
2. Indicate and outline the alternatives.
3. Go through the solutions you have came up with.
4. Summarize the product you will offer.

15. 5Es

This model helps you with simulating the experience of the user while using your product. Each letter represents a stage of the process:

1. Entice
   Understand the requirements of the customer, and analyze why the customer is coming to your product.
2. Enter
   How does the customer reach your product?
3. Engage
   How easy is it to use your product?
4. Exit
   How easy to complete a task for the user? what issues did he face?
5. Extend
   Once the task is completed how do you follow up with the customer?

16. RICE

The RICE framework is a method used for prioritizing tasks. Each letter stands for a criterion:

1. Reach
   How many people will be affected by the task?
2. Impact
   What is the potential positive outcome of the task?
3. Confidence
   How confident are you about the projected outcomes?
4. Effort
   How much time, resources, and work will be required to complete the task?

By assigning scores or values to each criterion we determine how important the task will be. (R x I x C)/ E ⇒ higher the number imp the task.

17. JTBD

You can find the blog on Jobs To Be Done here.

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