Introduction to
Product Management
Who creates these features?
Instagram Notes Whatsapp Community
What does a Product Manager do?
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 Technology Business
looks like for a product, and rallies a team to
turn that vision into a reality.
Product here could mean any physical entity
(like the xbox, iphone) or a digital product Design
(like an app, a website or a subscription
based platform). In almost all cases, these
products are technology based.
What skills does a
Product
Manager need?
Technology, Business and Design?
Skill 1: Problem Framing
Your Customer Support Team raises an issue that ride
acceptance rates of Ola drivers has gone down?
What would you do?
● Have you understood the problem in detail? When did this start occurring? Any external impact possible?
Validate by analysing quantitative data? Only new drivers
● Are you solving the right problem? facing this problem? Which drivers? Is the problem big
enough?
Are we to prioritise / find the root cause? Can we do
● Is now the right time to solve this problem? Qualitative research? Pros/Cons of different approaches
Skill 2: Structured Thinking and Collaboration
You are a PM at Instagram, and your Head of Product thinks adding a
gaming use case can boost engagement multifold on the app.
How would you approach this? Yes or No. And why?
● Understanding of market, and ability to do Validate and find the RoI of gaming vs other options
competitor research to find differentiators
● How do you share requirements with MVP approach and requirements dissemination / aligning
stakeholders
Engineers?
● Quick ramp-up capability to build domain Ability to spec out new ideas >> Research
expertise in a short amount of time
Skill 3: Analytical Ability
You are a Product manager at Netflix. And your CEO has asked you to build an
overview dashboard for every team at Netflix? What all metrics are part of this
dashboard?
● How do you define success for your product. Pick a user persona or team-wise goals. Example = Lead
How do you track / release features? conversion for Onboarding team
● Do you look at all aspects of user funnel from
an user entering a product loop to exit and Break down different steps in a user’s journey in the product -
retaining back? Sign-up, List creation, Title consumption etc
● Are you data driven at heart and can figure How would you slice the data - CAC split by channel, location
when to look at averages or percentiles and etc. Use cases - Looking at mean vs. median values
not have a global approach to analytical
thinking?
Skill 4: Communication
You are a Product manager at Microsoft teams. Your CEO informed you that Slack just
announced a new feature that they want you to replicate.
How do you respond?
Why are they bringing this request to you? What are their fears
● Understand stakeholder motivations
and their motivations?
Don’t blindly commit to a request. Don’t say “I will put it in the
● Prioritize before you commit backlog” if you don’t intend to do it. Set the right expectations.
Make sure your communication is reflected through public
documents such as roadmaps, PRDs, or others, so you don’t
● Communicate through systems
have to repeat yourself and your decision is formalized
To sum it up..
The job of a PM involves:
● Conducting Research
● Developing Product Strategies Product
Building the Building the
● Communicating Plans right product Management product right
● Coordinating Development
● Acting on feedback and Data Analysis
The different types of PM
Based on the
company
B2C PM B2B PM Platform PM
Based on the job
function
Technical PM Business PM Design PM
Companies with Product role on Campus
Many more companies..
OIL Tasks Product Design
Cases
What we’ll be P2Ps Root Cause
Analysis
helping you with Case Marathons
Interview Prep
CAP Tasks Product
Improvement
Cases
Content Sessions
Metrics based
cases
Mentorship Sessions
Defining Problem
statement
Basic Flow Customer research: pain points (Customer
journey)
Ranking the pain points
Defining Problem
Solutions to the pain points
Customer research: pain points (Customer journey)
Ranking the solution
Ranking the pain points Prototyping
Solutions to the pain points Collaborating with the
Developer
Ranking the solution
Prototyping
Collaborating with the Developer
Success Metrics to track whether your product is viable
Bad Examples
Bad Examples (cont..)
