PRODUCT

MANAGEMENT
Introduction to Product Management
What is a Product
A product is any item or service you sell to serve a customer’s need or want. They can be
physical or virtual.

Physical products include durable goods (such as cars, furniture, and computers) and
nondurable goods (such as food and beverages).

Virtual products are offerings of services or experiences (such as education, software, and
other digital products).

A product may be a hybrid and include both physical and virtual elements.

Hybrid products are becoming more common, as traditionally analog products are
incorporating digital technology as a way to better reach and serve customers.
Product Classification

A products are popularly classified by the following ways:

● Customer types
● Purchasing behaviour
● Business Product
● Industry
Customer Types

You can start by splitting products among two major customer types —
consumer and business.

● B2B - Paystack, Flutterwave, Quickteller, Mastercard

● B2C - WhatsApp, Twitter, TikTok, Binance,
● B2B2C - Event Ticketing Software, meta, Wakanow, Uber,
Business Product

Business products on the other hand help companies create their own products or operate their
business. Examples of business products include raw materials, equipment, component parts,
supplies, and business services.

Business software is used by companies to support key business functions.

Examples of business applications include accounting, customer relationship management

(CRM), human resource management, and strategic planning software. Business applications are
further categorized by the size of the company — small and medium businesses or enterprises.
Industry

Products are also described by the industry they serve. Industries are broad
categories such as energy, healthcare, financial services, or information
technology.

This is when you see FinTech, HealthTech, EdTech, AgriTech etc.

Complete Product Experience
A product is more than just the physical or virtual item that
is sold. Of course, the features and benefits a product
provides are important. Value is based on whether your
product provides the essential features and benefits a
customer expects, value-added features and benefits that
exceed expectations, and future enhancements.

You need to consider and optimize every way a customer

interacts with your product and company. This concept is
called the Complete Product Experience (CPE). Brian de
Haaff, Aha! co-founder and CEO, defines the CPE in
Lovability — the #1 Amazon bestselling book for company
and product builders. The following is an excerpt from
Lovability:

"In the world of software and technology, the Complete

Product Experience (CPE) has seven main components,
What is Product Management

Product management is the practice of

planning, developing, marketing and
continuous improvement of a company’s
product or products.

The main objective of product management

is the development of a new product. Its
ultimate goal is making sure you’re building
the right product and building the product
right.
Most notably, product management is linking the
development team on the one side and marketing,
sales and customer success teams on the other side,
while ensuring the process is aligned with the business
vision.

In other words, product management is supposed to

translate business objectives into engineering
requirements and vice versa, explain the product
functionalities and limitations to the commercial teams
who are responsible for marketing, sales, and
customer communication.
Who is a Product Manager
A product manager is the person who identifies the customer
need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature
will fulfill, articulates what success looks like for a product, and
rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality

Broadly speaking, though, a good product manager will

spend his or her time on a handful of tasks.

● Understanding and representing user needs.

● Monitoring the market and developing competitive
analyses.
● Defining a vision for a product.
● Aligning stakeholders around the vision for the product.
● Prioritizing product features and capabilities.
● Creating a shared brain across larger teams to
empower independent decision-making.
The need for product management

The product management role is a revolutionized role.

That is, it is an existing in software development but
duties are being handled by somebody else.

But as customer expectations changed, the roles and

responsibilities of people taking care of product
management activities increased until it was viable to
have a dedicated employee to oversee the product and
help the team improve it in the best possible manner.
Career Path in Product Management
Product Manager Vs Product Owner
Product Manager Product Owner

Works with outside stakeholders Works with internal stakeholders

Helps to define the product vision Helps teams execute on a shared vision

Outlines what success looks like Outlines the plan for achieving success

Owns vision, marketing, ROI Owns team backlog and fulfillment work

Works at a conceptual level Involved in day-to-day activities

Product Management Vs Project Management
Introduction to Product Thinking

These publications are

recommended
Product Thinking 101 | UX Planet
 Product strategies
User Experience Research & Product
Requirement Document
User Research
Experience ● User research
● User Persona
● User Stories
 ● Describe user research
● Important notion relating to

Learning Outcome user research

● Important definitions
● User research expected
outcome
● Practicals
What is User Research

User research is the methodic study of target users—including their needs and pain
points—so designers have the sharpest possible insights to work with to make the best
designs. User researchers use various methods to expose problems and design
opportunities, and find crucial information to use in their design process.
User Persona

A user persona is an archetype or character that represents a potential user of your website or app. In user centered-design,
personas help the design team to target their designs around users.

How to create a user persona

Creating a user persona starts with user research. By observing users, UXers can understand their behavior and motivations, and then
design accordingly. There are plenty of user research techniques that help UXers capture this information, such as:

● task analysis (card sorting, first click testing etc.)

● feedback (contextual interviews and focus groups)
● prototyping (experimenting with ideas prior to developing them)
User Stories

A user story is a short statement or abstract that identifies the user and their need/goal. It determines who the user
is, what they need and why they need it. There is usually one user story per user persona. As we touched on
above, there are often multiple user personas – it’s a good thing that user stories are brief!

For example: “As a UX Manager, John oversees all the design projects, including assets creation and prototyping
efforts, at the design consultancy where he works. He needs easy access to a design tool that allows him to
centralize UI libraries so that multiple designers to work simultaneously on a prototype.”
Benefits to your Design Process

User stories help to document practical information about users, such as the different needs and motivations for accessing a software.
They also help the development team estimate a roadmap needed to deliver the end product.

How to write a user story

It’s super simple to write a user story.

“As a [role], I want [feature] because [reason].”

For example: “As UX Manager, John wants centralized assets management so that his designers are in sync.”
Assignment

3. Create user persona for you respondents. Using “https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona ”

To be submitted via email: moshood@trevotechng.com cc: moshoodabiola114@gmail.com.

Due Date: Saturday, 18th Feb. 12PM.
Product Requirement
Document
How to Write PRD
What is PRD?

A product requirements document (PRD) contains all the requirements for a

product so that the product development team can understand what that
product should do. PRDs are typically written by a product manager before the
team begins work. The goal is to communicate what you are building, who it is
for, and how it will deliver value to end users and to the business.
Pros and Cons of PRD
PROS CONS
● Outline highlevel direction for the product ● Requires experience to write effectively
development
● Becomes irrelevant if team are not
● Avoid assumptions for goals and scope of engaged
work
● It might not be useful in agile
● Documents timeline and area of ownership
methodologies
● Details functionality and user experience
● Provides needed context for cross
functional team
● It enables the development team to focus
scope of the work
Agile Team and PRD

Agile is an iterative approach to project development

PRDs in an agile world. Oxymoron?

Only if you are a pedant for process and semantics.

Agile software development teams need requirements too.

The secret to getting it right is when product owners focus on high-level requirements and encourage
engineering to focus on implementation. Product managers are then responsible for providing all of the
background information and direction that the team needs to move forward together — from the vision
for the product to business goals to customer personas to the actual roadmap.
What should PRD Contain
The following is a basic outline of what should be included in a PRD:

● Objective/Goal: Explain why are you building this and what do you hope to accomplish.

● Features: For each feature, you should include a description, goal and use case at a minimum.
Additional details may be helpful or necessary depending on the complexity of the feature, such as out-
of-scope items.

● UX Flow & Design Notes: Most organizations complete the UX design of features after the PRD has
been reviewed and accepted. However, this is the diagram that shows relationship among features.

● System & Environment Requirements: Which end-user environments will be supported (such as
browsers, operating systems, memory, and processing power, etc.).

● Assumptions, Constraints & Dependencies: List out what is expected of users, any limits for the
implementation to be aware of and any outside elements required for the final solution to be functional.
The final batch of ingredients for a PRD is the Assumptions, Constraints, and Dependencies.

● Assumptions are anything you expect to be in place (yet isn’t guaranteed), such as
assuming that all users will have Internet connectivity.
● Constraints dictate something the eventual implementation can’t require, be it a
budgetary constraint or a technical one.

● Dependencies are any known condition or item the product will rely on, such as
depending on Google Maps to add directions for a dog walking app.
Steps in Creating PRD
Align with
Utilize the Align with
Understand JTBD Customer Conclusion
User Stories Devs
point of view

Product management Author the Align with Address the Conclude and perfect
should first consult the PRD based on the
document, business concerns & feedback of cross-
with
utilizing notes and stakeholders and clarification from functional tea,
product marketing to
ensure there’s a full
user feedback hand the PRD engineers and
understanding of the captured for each over to update in the PRD
business drivers for feature being engineering team if necessary. Then
the specific release included in the hand-over to
being described in release. UI/UX team,
the PRD quality assurance
etc,
PRD Sample

● https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YYhacFCFDjC30AzDm9IjuuOgNq9Z
Pwbv-DoLpiWusMQ/edit?usp=sharing
- Complete PRD

● https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PQo2cqC_NVZ-gDsnaO8jrcCN5Qah
X3Ma45eUnDjk2N4/edit?usp=sharing
- Agile PRD
Flowchart
Data flow chart
Work flow chart
What is Flowchart
A flowchart is a visual representation of the sequence of steps and decisions needed to perform a
process. Each step in the sequence is noted within a diagram shape. Steps are linked by connecting
lines and directional arrows. This allows anyone to view the flowchart and logically follow the process
from beginning to end.
A flowchart is a powerful business tool. With proper design and construction, it communicates the
steps in a process very effectively and efficiently.
Flowchart Symbols

You'll notice that the flowchart has different shapes. In this case, there are two shapes: those with
rounded ends represent the start and end points of the process and rectangles are used to show
the interim steps. These shapes are known as flowchart symbols.

There are dozens of symbols that can be used in a flowchart. If you're new to flowcharting, it's
important to know what they represent before using them. Just as word usage conveys a certain
message, flowchart symbols also have specific meaning.
How to make flowchart
A good flowchart should communicate a process clearly
and effectively. When starting out, it's a good idea to
focus on a couple of things.

How to make a flowchart in a few simple steps:

1. Determine the purpose or function of the flowchart

2. Add steps and connect them with arrows

3. Add decisions or split paths

4. Show any loops back to previous steps

5. Insert your flowchart into Microsoft Word®, Excel®,

PowerPoint® or any other app
Types and Uses of Flowchart
Flowcharts were originally used by industrial engineers to structure
There are a wide variety of flowchart types. Here are just a
work processes such as assembly line manufacturing.
few of the more commonly used ones.
Today, flowcharts are used for a variety of purposes in manufacturing,
architecture, engineering, business, technology, education, science,
● Swimlane flowcharts medicine, government, administration and many other disciplines.
Here are some of the ways flowcharts are used today.
● Data flow diagrams
● Influence diagrams
● Project planning
● Workflow diagrams
● Program or system design through
● Process flow diagrams
flowchart programming
● Yes/no flowcharts
● Process documentation
● Decision flows
● Audit a process for inefficiencies or malfunctions
● Map computer algorithms
● Documenting workflow
 What is workflow diagram
A workflow diagram depicts a series of actions
that define a job or how work should be done.

A workflow diagram visualizes how tasks will

flow between resources, whether they're
machines or people and what conditions allow
the sequence to move forward.

A workflow chart is commonly used for documentation and

implementation purposes since it provides a general
overview of a business process. It's often the foundation for
other documentation including flowcharts,
data flow diagrams, projects, and more.
What is data flow diagram (DFD)

A data flow diagram (DFD) illustrates how data is

processed by a system in terms of inputs and
outputs. As its name indicates its focus is on the
flow of information, where data comes from, where
it goes and how it gets stored.
Assignment

Determine a process and build workflow chart.

Use: https://www.smartdraw.com/

Due date/time: 25th Saturday, 2023/2:00PM

Agile Development and
Scrum Framework
 Objective
Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that
helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches.

The traditional way of development is that which follow the sequential

where design -> development -> testing etc. is performed whereas, in
agile development, all of this is done in every iteration/sprint.

IDEAS BEHIND AGILE METHODOLOGIES

● Instead of betting everything on a "big bang" launch, an agile team delivers work in small, but
consumable, increments.
● Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously so teams have a natural mechanism for
responding to change quickly.
● Agile isn't defined by a set of ceremonies or specific development techniques. Rather, agile is a group
of methodologies that demonstrate a commitment to tight feedback cycles and continuous
improvement.
Why Choose Agile

● Ability to make changes based on feedback without

derailing from initial planning
● Ability to collaborate with customers and teammates
in reasonable time which is more important than
predefined arrangements.
● Ability to deliver working solution to the customer's
problem in required timeframe which is more
important than hyper-detailed documentation.
● Each team sets their own standards for quality,
usability, and completeness. Their "definition of done"
then informs how fast they'll churn the work out.
12 Principles of Agile Methodology

In 2001, the Agile Manifesto surfaced. It wanted to change the software

development process. The manifesto has four central themes, but not many
people know that there are also 12 Agile Principles.

The world of software development has also changed drastically. It’s

interesting to revisit the agile principles, see what they mean, and assess
whether they still matter.
 ● Early and Continuous delivery of valuable software
● Embrace Change
● Frequent Delivery
● Business and Developers together
● Motivated Individuals

The Principles ● Face to Face Conversation

● Working software
● Sustainable Development
● Technical Excellence
● Simplicity
● Self-Organizing team
● Regular reflection and adjustment
 ● Early and Continuous Delivery of ● Embrace Change
Valuable Software

As the first principle says, “Our highest priority is to
satisfy the customer through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software.”
The second principle states, “Welcome changing
requirements, even late in development. Agile
processes harness change for the customer’s
competitive advantage.”

Development happens with someone’s time and money,

therefore, such person only cares about DONE.

Example, Albert Johnson wants to be able to upload

image on her portal and your engineers said they want to
be storing files in the cloud not code storage folder. What
Albert does cares about is I want to be able to store my
images. You have consider the Albert’s time and what he
wants.
 ● Frequent Delivery
The next principle is to “Deliver
working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of
months, with a preference to the
shorter timescale.”
We no longer regard a release cycle of “a couple
of months” as agile. The industry has evolved to
daily or weekly releases.
● Business and Developers Together
“Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.”
Having the business and developers work closely
together reduces (but doesn’t eliminate) this risk.
Even in the modern world of distributed teams,
we should try to work together closely on a daily
basis. Catching misunderstandings early and
getting regular feedback from each other helps in
producing successful outcomes.
 ● Motivated Individuals

There’s also “Build projects around motivated

individuals. Give them the environment and
support they need, and trust them to get the job
done.”

● Face to Face Conversation

And there’s also the principle that states,

“The most efficient and effective method
of information to and within a
development is face-to-face conversation.”
 ● Working Software
This is the primary method of measuring
progress
This agile principle states that the primary way of
measuring progress is working software.
Finished analysis, complete models, or beautiful
mock-ups have little meaning if they aren’t
converted into working software. They may be
necessary, but if you haven’t put at least a small
portion of that into a working product, then you
haven’t created value for your customer.
● Sustainable Development
The eighth principle goes as follows: “Agile
processes promote sustainable development. The
sponsors, developers, and users should be able to
maintain a constant pace indefinitely.”
The core idea of this principle is that everyone
involved can keep up with the pace at which the
software is being developed.
 ● Technical Excellence

There’s another saying, “Continuous attention to

technical excellence and good design enhances
agility.”

● Simplicity

“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the

amount of work not done—is essential,” is
yet another principle.
 ● Self Organizing Team

One of the last principles is that “The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.”

Developers are still regarded as factory-line workers that can be fed requirements. But software
development is work that requires much more. The team needs to be allowed to organize itself to
deliver.

The other side of the story is that agile software developers should take on this responsibility. An
agile team requires developers taking on responsibilities beyond just writing code.
 ● Regular Reflection and Adjustment

Finally, there’s the last principle that says, “At

regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its
behavior accordingly.”
Agile Frameworks
 ● Scrum Framework
● eXtreme Programming (XP)
● Dynamic Systems Development Method
(DDSM)
● Feature Driven Development (FDD)

The Frameworks
● Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
● The Crystal Method
● Lean Software Development (LSD)
● Disciplined Agile (DA)
● Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
● Rapid Application Development (RAD
● Kabban
 ● How to choose best framework

There is no one-size-fits-all way to practice agile software development. Many factors

may influence which framework you choose to work with. Such as:

● Company size
● Team structure
● Available resources
● Needs of stakeholders
● Structure/size of your product portfolio
Scrum Framework

What is Scrum Framework?

In an agile context, Scrum is an approach to project management. Typically the Scrum agile framework favors moving projects forward
via short-term blocks of work called sprints, which are usually confined to two-week intervals. Teams working with this framework are
self-organizing and not top-down or hierarchical in nature.

Why Scrum is so Popular?

Its principles and lessons can be applied to all kinds of teamwork. Often thought of as an agile project
management framework, scrum describes a set of meetings, tools, and roles that work in concert to help teams structure
and manage their work.
Discussing about the Scrum Framework

People often think Agile and Scrum are the

same thing because of its centralization around
continuous improvement which is core principle
of agile.

Scrum is structured to help teams naturally

adapt to changing conditions and user
requirements, with re-prioritization built into the
process and short release cycles so your team
can constantly learn and improve.
Scrum Artifact

These are the pillars of scrum management, They are the tools
used in solving problems and are to be revisit and invested on
overtime.

● Product Backlog
● Sprint Backlog
● Sprint Goal
Sprint Backlog

This is the list of items, user stories, or bug fixes, selected by the development team for implementation in
the current sprint cycle.

Before each sprint, in the sprint planning meeting the team chooses which items it will work on for the sprint
from the product backlog.

A sprint backlog may be flexible and can evolve during a sprint. However, the fundamental sprint goal –
what the team wants to achieve from the current sprint – cannot be compromised.
Sprint Goal/Increment

Is the usable end-product from a sprint. It is sometimes called “Increment”.

During the end-of-sprint demo, where the team shows what was completed in
the sprint.

This is often referred to as done on the list of the sprint. It maybe called a
milestone, the sprint goal, or even a full version or a shipped epic.

It just depends on how your teams defines “Done” and how you define your
sprint goals.
Product Backlogs

Is the primary list of work that needs to get done maintained by the product owner
or product manager.

This is a dynamic list of features, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that acts
as the input for the sprint backlog. It is, essentially, the team’s “To Do” list.

The product backlog is constantly revisited, re-prioritized and maintained by the

Product Owner because, as we learn more or as the market changes, items may no
longer be relevant or problems may get solved in other ways.
Ceremonies in Scrum Framework

These are the lists of terminologies or activities in agile framework

● Organize the backlog
● Sprint Planning
● Sprint
● Daily Scrum or Standup meeting
● Sprint Review
● Sprint Retrospective
 ● Organize the Backlogs: Sometimes known as backlog grooming, this event is the
responsibility of the product owner. The product owner’s main jobs are to drive the product
towards its product vision and have a constant pulse on the market and the customer.

● Sprint Planning: The work to be performed (scope) during the current sprint is planned during
this meeting by the entire development team. This meeting is led by the scrum master and is
where the team decides on the sprint goal. Specific use stories are then added to the sprint
from the product backlog. These stories always align with the goal and are also agreed upon
by the scrum team to be feasible to implement during the sprint.

● Sprint: A sprint is the actual time period when the scrum team works together to finish a task.
Two weeks is a pretty typical length for a sprint, though some teams find a week to be easier
to scope or a month to be easier to deliver a valuable increment.

The more complex the work and the more unknowns, the shorter the sprint should be Dave West (Scrum.org).
Daily scrum or stand up: This is a daily super-short meeting that happens at the same time (usually mornings) and place
to keep it simple. Many teams try to complete the meeting in 15 minutes, but that’s just a guideline. This meeting is also
called a ‘daily stand-up’ emphasizing that it needs to be a quick one. The goal of the daily scrum is for everyone on the
team to be on the same page, aligned with the sprint goal, and to get a plan out for the next 24 hours.
Questions in stand up meeting: What did I do yesterday? What do I plan to do today? Are there any obstacles?

Sprint review: At the end of the sprint, the team gets together for an informal session to view a demo of, or inspect, the
task. The development team showcases the backlog items that are now ‘Done’ to stakeholders and teammates for
feedback. The product owner can decide whether or not to release the increment, although in most cases the increment
is released.

Sprint retrospective: The retrospective is where the team comes together to document and discuss what worked and
what didn’t work in a sprint, a project, people or relationships, tools, or even for certain ceremonies. The idea is to create a
place where the team can focus on what went well and what needs to be improved for the next time, and less about what
went wrong.
Essentials in Scrum Success

A scrum team needs three specific roles: product owner, scrum master, and the development team. And
because scrum teams are cross-functional, the development team includes testers, designers, UX
specialists, and ops engineers in addition to developers.

● Scrum Product Owner

● Scrum Master
● Scrum Team
Kanban Framework

Kanban is a popular framework used to implement agile and DevOps software

development. It requires real-time communication of capacity and full
transparency of work. Work items are represented visually on a kanban board,
allowing team members to see the state of every piece of work at any time.
Kanban Board
The work of all kanban teams revolves around a kanban board, a tool used to visualize work and optimize the flow of the
work among the team.
 Product Roadmapping
Roadmapping, Prioritizing and Backlogging
Roadmapping

Product roadmapping is the process of

outlining all of ideas to put in place when
building product.

We need to recall where all these ideas

come from: Customers feedback, Technical
team, Sales and Marketing team.
What Should PM do in Product Roadmapping

The PM should have the following in mind when organizing and building product
roadmap

● Align with product vision: Where the product is going and

How?
● Communication: Gain Consensus of every stakeholder
● Simplicity: It must not be difficult to understand
● Delivery Date
Input and Consideration when roadmapping

The PM should always consider the following when building roadmap of a product:

● Understand the key problems

● Understand the solutions for these problems
● What is goals of the product
● Higher level mission of the company. How do I build it?
● Setup collaborative roadmapping session with stakeholders only & foster healthy team debate --
Engineer, UX, product designer, customer success and sales & marketing.
● Organize features:
○ Start by big and narrow down
○ Align to themes and drive why
● Prioritize:
○ Core product value
○ Work with dev team
Prioritization

Prioritization in product management is the disciplined process

of evaluating the relative importance of work, ideas, and
requests to eliminate wasteful practices and deliver customer
value in the quickest possible way, given a variety of constraints.

The reality of building products is that you can never get

everything done — priorities shift, resources are reallocated,
funding is scarce. As product managers, it’s our job to make sure
we’re working on the most important things first. We need to
ruthlessly prioritize features before we run out of resources.
Effort can be stated in
person/weeks or simply has
high/medium/low. Impact can be
graded on a scale, for example 1–
5, 5 being the highest, or again as
high/medium/low.
Once you have the numbers in
place, it’s a matter of picking the
features that give you the best bang
for the buck. But that’s where things
get a little bit tricky. To see why
let’s plot the tasks the Effort/Impact
axis:
As with most models, the idea is
compellingly simple — dividing the space
into four quadrants helps us see how
projects stack up.
● The Low/Low quadrant on the bottom left represents
small incremental improvements to the product. Every
product backlog has many of those and they play an
important role as fill-ins, although they are often lower
priority.

● The High/High combination encompasses bigger projects

that promise major returns. These are the big bets that
more ambitious teams like to take on

● Most desirable is the combination of high Impact and low

effort on the upper left. Everybody wants easy win

● And finally there is the low impact / high effort combo at

the bottom right — the so called Money Pit, Thankless
task, or White Elephants.
and now prioritization is quite
straightforward:

● First we eliminate
anything that’s in the
Money Pit (good
riddance)
● Next we mark easy wins
at the top priorities
● And finally we create a
mix of Incremental and
Big Bet projects based
on available resources
and our appetite for big
or small projects.
Roadmap Templates

● Timeline roadmap - Monthly, Quarterly

● Board roadmap
● Goals roadmap
● Gantt chart roadmap -
Assignments

1. Every member of the class should write solution description for our Delivery
Service System
2. For the process submitted earlier, create trello workspace which includes
product backlog, roadmap and sprints.

To be submitted via email: moshood@trevotechng.com cc: moshoodabiola114@gmail.com.

Due Date: Saturday, 11th March. 12PM.
 ● Definition of product design
● Product design job

Product Design ●
●
Process of product design
Tools for product designing
● Product design for product
Product designing and user
manager
experience
● Practical
What is product designing

Product design describes the process of imagining, creating, and iterating products that solve users’
problems or address specific needs in a given market.

The key to successful product design is understanding the end-user customer, the person for whom the
product is being created. Product designers attempt to solve real problems for real people by using
empathy and knowledge of their prospective customers’ habits, behaviors, frustrations, needs, and wants.
Product Design Job

● UX Designer
● Graphics Designer
● Motion and Animation design
● User researcher
● Prototyper
● Product Designers
Product Design Process

1. Empathize with people

2. Define the problem
3. Ideate a solution
4. Build a prototype
5. Test the solution
Tools for Product Designing

Figma
Adobe
Graphics design app
Design Thinking for product management

https://productschool.com/thank-you-slide-unlock/
Product Quality
Assurance Software testing
Product Testing
Does software testing falls under PM role

The software testing will come under product management as what is being built
will have to be tested before shipping to the customers. Though product managers
doesn’t need to manage the QA team directly but it is role of the product manager
to ensure testing is done and certified before shipping product to customers.

Product manager must ensure the quality of product is not getting compromised
and team ships high quality product to the customers. Product manager owns the
requirements so it is imperative that they ensure requirements are completely
build and customers are happy with the current release.
What is QA and Testing

Quality assurance ensures that your software meets the technical requirements identified in the planning stage of your
sprint. Generally speaking, it is an ongoing, preventative measure that occurs throughout your software development
process.

Testing ensures that there are no bugs that could disrupt your software’s usability. Generally speaking, this is a corrective
measure that happens at the end of each sprint.

While QA and testing are technically separate parts of the development process, us developers group them together
because they have the same end goal: make a high-quality product.

While you probably don’t need to understand the finer details of QA and testing, there are a handful of helpfuls that can
boost your effectiveness as a product manager.
Why you should care about QA

Imagine this common scenario.

Your development team finishes a new feature and pushes it to staging. You, responsible for this feature,
review it on staging and since it seems to work, you sign off.

This feature gets pushed to prod, and soon after, an angry customer emails you, saying the key workflow they
rely on doesn’t work. They threaten to switch to your competitor. You have a bad day.

You go to your development team, wondering how this could have happened.
Types of Testing

1. Unit Testing
2. Functionality Testing
3. Integration Testing
4. Regression Testing
5. User Acceptance Testing
Things you should know about QA

1. Bugs are normal

2. Ownership must be clear
3. Automate most time-consuming part
4. Never skip User Acceptance Testing
Technical Product Manager

1. Database administration
a. Understanding SQL, MySQl, MongoDb, MariaDB etc.
b. Querying data
2. Understanding APIs
a. Understand meaning of status code
3. Deep knowledge on PRD
4. Understand how git works
Application Programming Interface (API)

APIs are mechanisms that enable two software

components to communicate with each other
using a set of definitions and protocols.

For example, the weather bureau’s software

system contains daily weather data. The
weather app on your phone “talks” to this
system via APIs and shows you daily weather
updates on your phone.
Status Code

Status Code
10X - Successful
20X - ok; 201- Resources is ok
30X - Error - Redirection or software error
40X - Error - Clients error
50X - Server Error
Classwork

https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users Get, post

Test case - Username must be unique for every users

Predict the age of a person based on their name. => https://api.agify.io?name=meelad

Note: name = *** is the name of the person you want to predict their age.

Test case
1. The user should be able submit empty name --- Passed
2. The name to be predicted should not accept number/string and special characters --- failed
3. The name field should not be case sensitive --- Passed
Data Management for Product Managers

Data is for a Product Manager what a good
sword is to an assassin — a means to
executing the job better.
Important aspect of data for PM
● Data-oriented mindset
● Proficiency in data querying (SQL)

For a job that revolves around decision ● Proficiency in data visualization (PowerBI, Tableau)

making and making bets, having solid data ● Proficiency in Hypothesis testing and A/B Testing

to back our conjectures will often yield ● Basic Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
better outcomes and help counter our
● Grasp over Product Analytics and Event Mapping
biases or omissions.
Proficiency in Data Querying SQL

In terms of the benefits of being able to query data through SQL, they are multiple fold. If you
want to make decisions on the go, you can always query the relevant data in a matter of minutes
instead of hours or days for the engineering/data team to view and respond to your request.

Additionally, knowing the data for your product helps you understand your product better. And
finally, your engineers/analysts will thank you taking some workload off their hands and helping
them concentrate on other tasks.
About SQL

● Structured Query Language (SQL), or ‘Sequel’, is a way to manage data and communicate
Relational Database Management Systems (RDMS). Most of our data is stored in Databases,
Data Warehouses, and Data Lakes. As your product scales, it becomes increasingly difficult
and complicated to manage it, and RDMS is one of the ways to manage the data.

● SQL is a programming language that can help you perform CRUD operations in a relational
database: Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete. As a Product Manager, the most important
operation for you would be the ‘Retrieve’ operation to analyze existing data.

● There are multiple ‘flavors’ of SQL, i.e. MySQL, PostGRESQL, SQLite, and MSSQL, but with
minor deviations,
How much of SQL do I need to know as PM?

● Depending on the size, stage and type of company

you are working with. However, in a company with
mature product collecting data, it becomes
imperative to know your way around data

● A PM is not expected to maintain and create DB.

However, it is required of PM to perform simple
query, sort and group data, and some aggregate
function particularly you must be able to join tables
in SQL
Database Schema/Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)

A relational database is a set of multiple data sets organized by tables, records and columns,
much like a series of excel sheets.

These tables can communicate with each other based on specific fields in the database which
are known as keys.

An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is used to visualize these relationships in a database.

ERD is also helpful in database design and engineering.
Components ERD/DB Schema

● Entity: A place, thing, or person to be tracked in a database.

● Attribute: Various properties and traits of Entities.

● Relationship: In an ER Diagram, lines are used to connect entities together and show a
relationship. ERD Cardinality further defines these relationships.

● Fact Table: A central Entity in a RDMS that holds Foreign Keys and numerical data.

● Primary Key: A unique, never changing, never-null, and identifiable attribute.

● Foreign Key: Same as the Primary Key, but located in a foreign place.
Example of DB Schema
 ● What is product launching
● Purposes of product launching
● Checklist of product launching
● Product Launch
Product Launching process/formula
● Difference between successful
launching and failed launching
● Why product launching fails
● Building product launching plan
and its template
Product Launching

A product launch refers to a business’s planned and coordinated effort to debut a new product to the
market and make that product generally available for purchase.

Purpose of Product Launch to Organization

A product launch serves many purposes for an organization—
● Giving customers the chance to buy the new product is only one of them.
● It also helps an organization build anticipation for the product, gather valuable feedback from early
users, and create momentum and industry recognition for the company.
Checklist of Product Launching
● Execution of strategic roadmap
● ●
Standard QA of the product
● Draft and distribute sales and marketing
collateral
● Train the sales team on the new product
● Train the customer support department on
the new product.
● Complete the product’s support and/or
technical documentation
● Awareness of product launching
Develop and review the customer journey
● Develop all management tools such as CRM,
User’s behaviour and bug tracking.
● Develop metrics to measure success or failure
● Conduct a product launch pre-mortem
Conduct a product launch pre-mortem— where
your product team thinks through possible
problems or missteps that could hurt your product
launch and prepares plans of action for each
potential problem in advance.
Product Launching Formula

No Formula!

1. Launch before you’re 100% ready.

-Launch MVP first.

2. Build for the whole user

experience.

3. Start with the end in mind.

 Launch before you’re 100% ready.
One strategy that often works is to launch your
product as soon as you’re confident it provides
value to your users—even if it’s before you’ve
perfected it or developed every feature you wanted
to include. You can improve and iterate on the
product based on early user feedback.
Launch before you’re 100% ready.
Another proven strategy is to focus not only on
the product itself. It’s also important to focus on
every aspect of your customer’s experience.
Review your sales literature and ads, buy the
product, contact your company for support.
When an organization broadens its thinking and
builds a product launch (and post-launch) plan to
make the best possible experience for every
aspect of the customer’s journey, that business is
far more likely to enjoy a successful launch.
Start with the End Mind

Finally, product teams should avoid the temptation to jump right in and start building a new product.
Success begins with a lot of upfront strategic thinking and decisions on a long-term vision for that product.

When businesses use this approach, that vision helps to set a number of product goals. These goals should
be designed to solve the unique problems of your target users. Once you have those goals for the product,
you can begin to translate those goals into a strategic blueprint: the product roadmap.

Finally, when you’ve built your roadmap and your stakeholders have approved it, you can begin to break
the roadmap high-level strategic plans into specific user stories and features and put these task-level items
into your product backlog.
Difference between Product Success and Failure

A successful launch requires much more than simply activating the “buy” button beneath your product. It
needs to be a company-wide effort that involves the coordination, effort, and enthusiasm of departments
across your company.

Product Success: Answer these questions
● Who is the product aimed at?
● What benefit will they expect
● How to plan to position the product
within the market
● What is the competitive advantage of
the product?
Product failure: Answer these questions
● High level of executive push of an idea
that doesn’t fit market
● Over estimated market size
● Incorrectly positioned Product
● Biased market research
● Key channel partners were not informed
Why Product Launches Fail?
● The company cannot support fast growth - mosquito
magnet

● The product short falls of claims and get bashed -

Window MS Vista

● The new item exist in “product Limbo” - Coca Cola C2

● The product defines a new category and requires

substantial consumer education—but doesn’t get it. -
Febreze Scentstories

● The product is revolutionary but no - Segway

How to Avoid Failure

● Have a plan to ramp up quickly immediately the product

takes off

● Delay your launch until you’ve checked all your checklist

● Perform standard QA to make sure the product will sway

the users

● If the users can’t quickly get how to use your

product, work on the user experience
● Don’t gloss over the basic question, who are the users and
how much?
KPI for Measuring Product Success

● Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

● Bounce rate
● Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV or LTV)
● Retention rate
● Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
● Churn rate
● Daily Active User/Monthly Active User rati
● Number of sessions per user
o
● Number of user actions per session
● Session duration
● Net Promoter Score (NPS)
● Traffic (paid/organic)
● Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Metric to Forecast Success

● Annual Revenue Rate

● Customer Lifetime Value
● Customer Acquisition Cost
Run Rate
Revenue Run Rate Formula
Run Rate = Revenue in Period / Number of Days in Period x 365

The Revenue Run Rate takes information on present financial performance and extends it over a longer
time period. Consider the following example: Company XYZ generates revenue of $5 million in the first
quarter of 2017. The company’s president wants to find out how much revenue his company is likely to
generate for the rest of the year if conditions don’t change. He can use the Revenue Run Rate for this
purpose. In this case, Company XYZ is operating at a Revenue Run Rate of $20 million a year.

Revenue Run Rate can be a very helpful indicator of financial performance for a young company that has
only been in business for a short period of time. Revenue Run Rate can be an especially powerful tool if
the company is relatively sure that the financial environment won’t change drastically.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV/LTV)
The customer lifetime value (LTV), also known as lifetime value, is the total revenue a company
expects to earn over the lifetime of their relationship with a single customer. The customer lifetime
value calculation accounts for the customer acquisition costs, operating expenses, and costs to
produce the goods or services that the company is manufacturing. Many companies tend to
overlook the LTV metric but the lifetime value of customers is essential to the growth of a
company.
 How to Calculate LTV Factors and Improving LTV
● Average purchase value – It is calculated by dividing the Factors Affecting LTV
company’s total revenue over a period of time by the total
purchases made by its customers during that same timeframe. ● Churn rate.
● Brand loyalty
● Average purchase frequency rate – It is calculated by the total
purchases made over a period of time by the individual customers How to Increase the LTV?
that made those purchases during that time.
● Good communication
● Customer value – It is calculated by multiplying the average value
● Re-engage customers
of the purchase by the number of times the purchase is made.
● Increase brand loyalty
● Average customer lifespan – It is the average number of years
that a customer continues to buy the company’s goods and
services.

● Lifetime value calculation – The LTV is calculated by multiplying

the value of the customer to the business by their average lifespan.
It helps a company identify how much revenue they can expect to
earn from a customer over the life of their relationship with the
company.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost
related to acquiring a new customer. In other
words, CAC refers to the resources and costs
incurred to acquire an additional customer.
Customer acquisition cost is a key business
metric that is commonly used alongside the
customer lifetime value (LTV) metric to measure
value generated by a new customer.
Example of calculating CAC
Tim is the marketing manager of ABC Company and is due for a performance review in the coming
weeks. Over the last year, he launched several marketing campaigns to attract new customers and
would like to determine his customer acquisition cost prior to his performance review. Tim’s annual
salary is $45,000. Below is information related to ABC Company’s marketing campaigns last year:
Importance of Customer Acquisition Cost
● Improving ROI: Understanding the cost to acquire new customers is
crucial to analyzing marketing return on investment.

● Improving Profitability and Profit Margin: Understanding its CAC

provides a business with the ability to fully analyze the value per customer
and improve its profit margins. For example, assume that the value of each
customer to a business is $60. In relation to this:
Metrics to Analyze and Grow User Engagement
Customer-Oriented metrics will show you how your product
development efforts transform into user interactions.
● How many users find and use your product?
●
How much time do they spend using it overall or a
particular feature?
● How do customers react to a specifically planted
action or feature?
● Also, these metrics include data on those who
stopped using a product abruptly (bounce rates).
● Daily Active Users - Monthly Active users
Ratio
● Session Duration = total session/no of
sessions
● Avg time on page = total time on a
page/(page view - total exts)
● Traffic - organic and paid traffic
● Bounce Rate
PRODUCT GROWTH
Product-Led Growth

A go-to market strategy that put the product at the forefront of the customer
journey and leverages the product as the key vehicle to achieve
● Acquire
● Convert
● Retain
● Expand
PLG = Evolution from sales-led or marketing-led GTM strategies
It's capitalizes on consumerization of B2B or B2C product
Who Drives PLG Strategies

Product managers and leaders are typically the drivers behind product-led
growth strategy as the product becomes main vehicle for driving growth and
retention.

However, successful PLG Strategy requires cross functional alignment and

involvement across the entire organization.
Why PLG Matters

● Improve user experiences

● Improve product adoption leading to improved ROI and business metrics.
● Aligns products to users’ business needs, driving adoption, renewals and expansion through product
itself.
● Shapes the users’ perception of the organization, the value of the product and ultimately influence
product and business success

Why PLG is a growing movement

❖ Providing immediate value from their product through free-trial accounts and on-the-spot
onboarding
❖ Offering frictionless experience
❖ Iterating on product feature based on real, actionable user data, reducing friction points and
highlighting tools that make their product stickier and easier to use.
Using Product to Drive Customer Journey

The product is the primary vehicle behind the

customer journey. This means that the product is
involved in every stage of the customer journey,
from acquisition to expansion, and this journey starts
as soon as a customer engages within the product.
Often, this is represented by a customer flywheel.
Stages of the PLG Customer Journey
Setting Your PLG Strategy Up for Success

● Find the North Star Metric ● Leading Vs Lagging Metrics

North Star Metric

The North Star metric is, simply, an exercise in simplifying the overall company
strategy into terms all can remember, understand, and apply

A North Star metric is meant to be a guide. It’s a compass pointing you in the
right direction and keeping you focused on your primary goal of company growth
and success based on what makes your customers happiest and keeps them
coming back for more.
Benefits of NSM

1. Alignment: Although different teams will have their own sub-goals and -metrics to focus on, having
a North Star metric means the whole company will be aligned around the same goal and will be able to
map their team’s goal to the North Star metric.

2. Transparency: A North Star metric, since it measures company progress, can give everyone in
your company a bird’s eye view of how the company is doing overall. This, in turn, can assuage
employees who may be worried about the company’s future and thereby improve employee retention and
reduce turnover.

3. Customer Focus: Since your North Star Metric is the number that best reflects the value your
company brings to its customers, it helps you stay focused on improving the customer experience in all
ways, which has its own obvious benefits as far as bottom-line revenue and retention.
Examples of NSM

● E-Commerce - jumia, Konga; jiji

○
○
Number of weekly customers completing their first order
Value of daily purchases
● FinTech - Kuda, piggyvest; Flutterwave
○ Customer lifetime value (CLV) ○ Total assets under management
○ Number of daily active users
● Consumer Tech - WhatsApp, Binance
○ Number of Daily Active User (DAU)
○ Numbers of messages sent per day
○ Retention
● Media - Facebook, instagram
○ Signups and retention
● B2B SaaS - Flutterwave, interswitch, ○ Number of daily active visitors
○ Number trial accounts with over 3 users in their 1st ○ Total watch time
week
○ % year two retention
○ Monthly retention rate
How to find NSM for your Product

A North Star metric must reflect all three factors, tailored to each business. Some methods for feeling out a North Star
metric:

● Ask “What is essential to the business’s functioning?” Prioritize a list.

● Ask “What KPIs and metrics measure the top few, key factors?”
● Ask “What metric encapsulates all of the above?”
● Build a metric hierarchy with the North Star metric on top of the pyramid.

“An effective north star metric is a product manager’s best friend. It provides cross-functional alignment on goals and tasks, and an objective
barometer for success when a product ships. Even products that generate direct revenue require an alternative product metric that tells a more
holistic story of what’s going on. When your north star metric is clear, product ideation becomes a lot easier. Instead of asking yourself ‘What
should I build next?’ you should be asking ‘What feature or product is most likely to move this metric the most?'”

Mention 2 products and answer these questions

Measuring progress against your NSM

● Track individual users across platforms

● Generate reports and dashboards
● Use machine learning to detect anomalies in the data
● Offer a user-friendly interface so the whole team can
access insights

Strava is a product that get revenue based on monthly

users, what should be there NSM
How to Acquire & Convert a Customer in a Free Trial Model.

Basic Principles:
● A free trial is an effective way for users to get started and quickly realise
value. The time it takes to realise the value of a product is called Time-to-
value TTV
● Showcase your product’s benefit without requiring complex action on the
user’s part
● Allows users to onboard themselves even before they are paying, making
your product part of their normal workflows and sticky to there needs.
Must have of a Free trial
● Reduce friction to user sign-ups (e.g. no payment information required)
● Showcase a digital onboarding guide, starting on day one, demonstrating
the core, basic functionalities of the product to bring users to their first
moment of value quickly - (Playbook or walkthrough feature)
● Typically allow users to access all part of the product, making the product
as sticky as possible. (This may depends on industry of the product)
● Give users enough time to deploy the product before requiring them to
become a paying customer (Typically 30 days trial)
How free trial fits into customer acquisition

It improves the conversion rates by

● Generating awareness of your product
● Showcase the value using the product itself
● Measure interest and improve the sales focus using product - qualified lead
(PQLs)
Questions:
Have you come across any method that makes the onboarding easier? - Creating
playbook or walkthrough feature.
Methods to improve retention rate

● Nurturing the user journey through

the in-app engagement
● Proactive communication with the
customers
● Providing the deeper self-service
knowledge
● Long-term retention - leveraging on
road map
Product Growth

Product Expansion
Product Expansion Strategies

Product expansion is the way of increasing the organization revenue and its
product value to end users by exploring and capturing new market opportunities.

The expansion is typically achieved by driving users to upgrade their subscription

packages, engage with paywall features, or otherwise driving additional revenue.
Expand Phase Folds

There are 2 folds of product expansion

● Expand revenue from existing users to maximize their value
● Expand the product the product capabilities to capture new markets
● Strategy 1: Expanding Revenue from Existing Customer

● Measuring, learning and iterating on all the processes already in place (product features themselves,
onboarding guides, customer sentiment surveys, and data analysis) to continually improve overall the overall
business.
○ Specifically, this is a chance to experiment with new features or UX tweaks. If those changes work, you can
double down and if not, you have an opportunity to iterate.

● Driving existing users to increase their spend by:

○ Upgrading to higher tiers
○ Adding new paid features to their packages
Note:

Retaining and growing customers in the SaaS industry is the most

important factor for driving customer lifetime value (CLV).

CLV indicates the total revenue an organization can expect to generate from
a single account. A company needs to make more money from a customer
over the lifetime of the relationship than the amount spent on winning the
user or account over.

Remember: one of the main barriers to customer growth and expansion is

that users may leave due to lack of product adoption. Before focusing on
maximizing user value, make sure adoption rates of your core features are
strong.

To put growth tactics into practice, as users hit the threshold of deeper use
and integration with a product, expose them to more features that are paid or
come with a higher cost (such as a higher tier). This is a key method of
growing a CLV.
Expanding CLV might mean:

● Continuously iterating and releasing product enhancements to address usability and growth challenges and
improve retention
● Adding new paywall features that upsell current customers
● Identifying when customer actions might lead to opportunities for larger accounts (for example: adding more
users could mean their company is growing and they need to upgrade their subscription package)
● Identifying referral opportunities as users change roles and companies

Remember: while some growth opportunities can be captured by guiding user actions, some require work to
be done by the engineering or development teams to implement new features or functions. These
opportunities mean having a solid, data-driven roadmap.
 Strategy 2 ー Capturing New Revenue Opportunities
This means growing a business by capturing new types of users or market
segments.

To do so, as well as better serve existing customers, create a dedicated process to

turn product insights into tangible action items and development tasks that expand
on your products capabilities. Expansion should be driven by user consumption.

New product capabilities allow overall business revenue to grow by engaging new
markets through:

● Expanding on features that would attract new customers. For example, if

users do not convert from trials to customers because of a missing feature,
adding this to a roadmap would improve revenue.
● Iterating on friction points to reduce churn.

By reaching new types of users, businesses can sustain continued growth instead
of relying only on current customers to maintain revenue.

Remember: No matter what product capabilities surface for a business,

implementation of major changes such as these leverages a solid roadmap
strategy.
Roadmap for Growth

There are 2 major ways of creating a winning roadmap for growth

1. Effective roadmap essentials
An effective roadmap should be based on
● Qualitative and quantitative data on user needs and feedback
● Analysis of usage of data to inform low and high customer focus
● Research into market opportunities and competitors

1. Balance is key
Roadmaps should balance larger, complex with iterative customer’s need
This balance allows team to address opportunities for CLV growth as well as new market

Market data-driven decisions aids product manager achieve this balance.