How To Create Your Own ‘Toolbox’ Like A Product Manager

The basic methods and frameworks every PM should follow

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To put it simply, the product manager’s ‘toolbox’ is the set of methods and frameworks that a product manager can always rely on to help make decisions and to prioritise the problems or features that need to be addressed or built. No matter which industry and for what product, it’s critical that every aspiring and practicing product manager to have something they can fall back on — the set of methods, processes, frameworks and decision-making trees that make their life easier when making the tough, tough decisions that come with being a product manager.

In my experience, the following types of techniques, methods and frameworks should always be part and parcel of the ‘toolbox’ for any product manager:

1. User Interview Techniques

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When discovering a problem to solve or a new feature to build, chances are you’re going to want to have a chat with some of your users to see if they have any pain points or suggestions to make your product better than it is today.

However, even if you have users lined up ready — eager even — to answer your question, the conundrum still remains. What do you ask them? How do you ask them? What kind of questions are required so that you really do get to the root cause of the problems that they are facing.

Using the Five Whys technique, popularised by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup, is a good method to use when interviewing a customer for the first time to figure out if there is a problem to solve or a new feature to build. Asking the customer ‘Why?’ five times or more helps to flesh out not only the issue that they are facing at the moment, but also any underlying problems in the system, interaction or workflow that they would love addressed as well.

Chances are that, by using the Five Whys technique, you’ll be able to uncover the root cause of what’s causing the problem or identification of the new feature in the first place, which might help you make a different decision from…