Wrap Up Product Manager Role With The Lean Product Playbook
On this occasion, I will summarize something I am currently studying: product management. This summary contains the role of the product manager based on the writings of Dan Olsen, one of my favorite authors in his phenomenal book "The Lean Product Playbook."
Regarding the product, Many startups are thinking about how to make a great product. The best product which has spectacular features provides the highest technology. But the product failed many of them. The problem is that the product can't find the target market properly.
As product managers, we must build a hypothesis about the target market. A product must have a significant customer value so that the product will meet real customers. A bias commonly happens when the target market is wrong. For example, the product's market target is the millennial generation. But the fact is, the millennial occupation is broad. So, are you sure that your product's market is fit for all the millennial generation?
So, according to The Lean Product Playbook, there are several processes in making a product:
We can also apply The Lean Product Process when we're not building a whole new product, such as when we want to add some functionality or features or improve a product. The most important in this process is to set the "Minimum Viable Feature."
The first step that we have to do is to decide who the target customer is by exploring and determining the needs.
So, let's jump to an example case: High-level need for transportation ->
We look at examples of citizens who may have the same age, generation, and distance from home but differ in lifestyle backgrounds. With the difference in needs, the ideal product of both parties is also different. The housewife has an ideal product with a minivan car, while the executive has a sports car for the ideal product.
The second step is to identify underserved customer needs. The Lean Product Process teaches an important concept: separating problem space and solution space to achieve product-market fit-in and provide ideal products to customers.
In a basic concept, Problem Space is used as a place to explain customer problems, the needs or benefits of the product that must be directed, and the requirements of a product. Meanwhile, the Solution Space is where the specific implementation of the customer needs is explained.
Why should we separate the Problem Space and Solution Space? doesn't the customer need a concrete solution? Let's look at an example illustration below:
The mistake from the illustration above is product is not a solution to the problem, and whereasrast, the product that is built is part of the solution. Therefore, we must ensure the problem is urgent and has been dug to the roots properly to create a solution, namely a product. Getting to the source of the problem can use the "5 Why" technique.
In addition to determining the relationship between customer problems and the resulting product, the Problem Space and Solution Space are also useful for some requirements. For some examples:
In the figure above, Problem Space and Solution Space are applicable as mappings to find competitors based on problems.
Problem Space and Solution Space are also useful for determining product levels, as shown in the image below:
Like the example in the figure above, the user desires to consult a doctor. The problem is that after consulting, the user wants to get a drug prescription, and the user also wants to get the drug. Once we've figured out the most significant problem users are experiencing, we can start brainstorming and diverting the primary problem coverage into more complex problems.
After determining what the Problem Space is and the various solutions found in the Solution Space section, we must be able to choose which part should be a priority. It would be better if we prioritize based on customer value.
For maximum results, we can use the framework: Importance and Satisfaction.
Importance measures how critical a particular customer's need is to a customer. While satisfaction is a measure of how satisfied a customer is with a specific solution from the offered solution in the product. Different products/features in one product will have different levels of importance and satisfaction for each customer.
This framework is able used for potential product opportunities, to evaluate recent products, or to improve product features.
So how do you measure what is important? We can distribute questionnaires to customers with scalable answers. The example that will be presented is GoFood, one of the features of Gojek. Questions that can be asked in the questionnaire are: "When you use GoFood services, how important do you think the service is for drivers who deliver food on time?". We can use answers on a scale of 1–5, namely:
1. Not all important
2. Slightly important
3. Moderately important
4. Very important
5. Extremely important
Next, for satisfaction, we can ask, "Are you satisfied with the food delivery times using GoFood in the last six months?"
1. Completely dissatisfied
2. Mostly dissatisfied
3. Somewhat dissatisfied
4. Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
5. Somewhat satisfied
6. Mostly satisfied
7. Completely satisfied
You can map questions with five points to multiples of 5 of 0.25,50,75,100 and questions with seven points to 0,16.7,33.3,50,66.7,83.3,100.
The following is an example of a framework application with an average result of 13 features that are asked of users.
It can be seen that the feature is in the highest position at an average of 98 points, and the feature with the lowest rank at an average of 41 points. With this framework, we can focus on improvising features that are in a quiet position.
After identifying underserved customer needs, we can define the value proposition. A good product is designed to focus on the customer's needs. So some points that we have to take concern are :
1. Which user benefits are we providing?
2. How are we better than our competitors?
Let's try to see an example of a value proposition table with competitors :
Based on the figure above, do we have to overtake all competitors by providing all the same features as competitors, saying "yes" to all elements to be superior to competitors?
The explanation from Dan Olsen was not. Many people feel that the product will be superior if it provides all of them. Inspired by Steve Jobs, the strategy means saying "no."
“Innovation is saying no to 1000 things.”
We need to start by selecting the customer we need to address. We have to pick our battles, and we don't have to beat everybody in every dimension. Even if we could, it wouldn't be well positioned.
After we understand the value proposition of the product we are going to make, the next step of The Lean Product Process is to perform a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) specification.
Many people ignore reliability by saying “it’s okay with bugs, it’s just MVP,” or ignore usable by saying “no need to worry about architectural information, it’s just MVP,” or miss delightful by saying “we’ll take care of the user interface later, it’s just MVP.” These four components must be in one MVP.
On the first release, it will not be perfect yet because we have to test it out. We should do a test of the hypothesis or validate the idea on the MVP of our product.
