Practical Product Management

Who is Thanasis

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  • 5x CTO over 6y
  • 4x Founder
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  • Avid OSS author
  • Founder
  • CTO
  • Software Engineer

Practical Product Management

  • Values & Principles
  • Product Workflow Showcase

Topics we will go through today

Practical Product Management

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Reason and Sanity

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Values

  • Bottom Up Culture
  • Pursue Consensus
  • Empathy

Alignment

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Values

  • Personal Goals
  • Organization in sync
    • All Levels
    • With Cadence
  • Alignment of values

Pursue of Excellency

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Values

  • Craftsmanship
  • Instate Culture of
  • Community at Large

"Fast Paced"

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

A few truths...

  • Product and Engineering are Creative Jobs
  • Creative jobs can't be rushed
  • Software Engineering is hard and complicated

I can tell you what you're going to get, or I can tell you when you're going to get it, but never both at the same time

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of project management - The unknown CTO

"Fast Paced"

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

When a creative job is rushed

  • Product Quality suffers
  • Bugs are introduced
  • Vulnerabilities are created
  • Technical Debt is accumulated
  • Customers are not happy

(deadlines in software engineering)

"Fast Paced"

Practical Product Management :: Principles

Doing it Fast vs Right™

The "Fast Pace"

"Fast Paced"

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

To Recap

  • Rushing is damaging the business
  • A "fast pace" is when things are done right™
  • We all know what right™ is, the tricky part is doing it

Documentation

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

Documentation Helps

  • The team stay on the same page
  • Reduce communication errors
  • Onboarding new members
  • Remembering functionality

Documentation

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

Documentation Requires

  • A System
  • Team Effort
  • Diligence & Discipline. Nothing sort of live docs.
  • Measure. Measure your words.
  • Tools & Templates

Areas of Responsibility

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

Respect the Boundaries

  • Everyone has a job to do
  • Understanding the areas of responsibility is key

Methodologies & Processes

Practical Product Management :: Principles

  1. Find the right one for the situation.
  2. Apply it, follow it religiously.
  3. Go to step 1, rince and repeat.

Practical Product Management

Values

  • Reason and Sanity
  • Alignment
  • Pursue of Excellency

Principles

  • "Fast Paced"
  • Documentation
  • Areas of Responsibility
  • Methodologies & Processes

Product Workflow Showcase

Scenario Parameters

  • Post-MVP stage
  • 3 to 10 engineers
  • PM and Design resources
  • Hightened Security Requirements

Product Workflow Showcase

Workflow Overview

  1. Bucket of Requests
  2. Roadmap Prioritization
  3. Product Design & Requirements
  4. UI/UX Design & Research
  5. Technical Specifications
  6. Sprint Prioritization
  7. Feature Implementation
  8. Acceptance Testing & QA
  9. Release

Product Workflow Showcase

Product Channels

Product Workflow Showcase

New Features

  • Goes through the entire workflow

Enhancements

  • Can skip steps

Bugs

  • Can skip steps
  • Can inject in current sprint

1. Bucket of Requests

Product Workflow Showcase

Open up any and all channels of communication to receive feedback or track user activity

  • Customer Feedback
  • Tracked user behavior
  • Product Vision
  • Stakeholders
  • Team

2. Roadmap Prioritization

Product Workflow Showcase

  1. Situational Awareness
    • Engineering Capacity & Capability
    • Product Roadmap
    • Stage the company is at
  2. Rough resource estimation of feature
  3. Effort to Gain estimation
    • This is where most features are deprioritized
  4. Comparative prioritization

3. Product Design

Product Workflow Showcase

  1. Requirements Gathering
    • User Research
    • Written / tracked feedback
  2. Draft Product Requirements is produced and circulated
  3. Product team & stakeholders feedback on the document
  4. Product Requirements are Set

4. UI/UX Design & Research

Product Workflow Showcase

  1. Product Requirements are passed on to design
  2. Draft designs produced
  3. Designs tested internaly (product & engineering)
  4. User testing
  5. Final designs are produced

5. Technical Specifications

Product Workflow Showcase

  • Set format / template
  • Require approval mechanism
    • i.e. github pull requests
  • Technical Specifications repository reflects the actual implementation 1:1
  • Instate culture of "tech-spec driven development"

The Last Mile...

Product Workflow Showcase

6. Sprint Prioritization

7. Feature Implementation

8. Acceptance Testing & QA

9. Release 🚀

  • Situational Awareness
  • Sensible expectations
  • ⛏⛏⛏
  • Product Requirements & Technical Specification describe what QA has to do

The Boundaries

Product Workflow Showcase

6. Sprint Prioritization

2. Roadmap Prioritization

CPO Chairs

CTO Chairs

Engineering Time Budget

Product Workflow Showcase

Workflow Overview

  1. Bucket of Requests
  2. Roadmap Prioritization
  3. Product Design & Requirements
  4. UI/UX Design & Research
  5. Technical Specifications
  6. Sprint Prioritization
  7. Feature Implementation
  8. Acceptance Testing & QA
  9. Release

Product Workflow Showcase

Questions?

Thanasis Polychronakis

@thanpolas