What is Product Management?

Question 1

What is Product Management?

Answer 1

Product Management is strategy, prioritization, and execution. A PM’s job is to make sure their users are successful and are winning.

Question 2

What is a Designer’s job?

Answer 2

A designer’s job is to make sure that the product is usable and looks good.

Question 3

What do Sales and Marketing do?

Answer 3

Sales make sure people buy the product
Marketing makes sure people know about the product

Question 4

What is Engineer’s job?

Answer 4

They build the product

Question 5

What is Data Scientist job?

Answer 5

They track the product usage

Question 6

What is the Product Manager’s job?

Answer 6

The Product Manager’s job is to figure out what to build, facilitate the actual build of it with engineers and maintain the product

They also make sure that the company is building the right product

Question 7

What do features need to fulfill and align with?

Answer 7

Features in the product need to fulfill what users want as well as align with the business goals

Question 8

What are the two main areas of product according to the CEO of Wealthfront (Adam Nash)?

Answer 8

1. What game are we playing at? (product vision, target customers, value to the customer, an advantage over competitors)
2. How do we keep score? (What metrics do we need to determine if we’re winning: it’s not always “are we making money.”)

Question 9

Which moving pieces will you need to coordinate to ensure the customer has an amazing experience in the end? (6)

Answer 9

Business leader expectations
Constraints of the business
Legal and Compliance
Design for UX and UI
Marketing and Sales
Engineering Restrictions

Question 10

There are 3 PMs. What are they?

Answer 10

Product Managers, Program Managers, Project Managers

Question 11

What do Project Managers do?

Answer 11

Project Managers are time keepers that put a plan/schedule together to get something done and keep track of your progress towards that goal.

Question 12

What do Program Managers do?

Answer 12

Program managers work closely with engineers to get the product built on schedule. They are not focused on the product vision or customers’ needs, merely the need to ensure engineers have everything they need to start and continue building on time.

Question 13

What is a good rule of thumb to distinguish the roles and responsibilities of PMs?

Answer 13

Whoever holds the responsibility of writing the User Stories is usually the Product Manager.

Question 14

What is a User Story?

Answer 14

A User Story is a description of a task that Engineers read to determine how to build the product

Question 15

What is a Product?

Answer 15

A product can be anything people use

Question 16

What are the responsibilities of a PM?

Answer 16

PMs do whatever is necessary to make sure the product gets shipped

This may vary from day to day

Writing a product requirements document and user stories
Interviewing customers
Project management
UX prototyping and wireframing
Writing relevant documentation about the product you are building
Presentations to senior leadership and stakeholders

Question 17

At a high level, what are the 3 types of Product Managers?

What is the difference between them?

Answer 17

Internal PMs
Business to Business (B2B) PMs
Business to Consumer (B2C) PMs
B2B2C PMs

Difference
- The different stakeholders they work with

Question 18

Who are the Stakeholders?

Answer 18

The people who have input into what you are building
Ex. lawyers, accountants, marketers, etc.

Question 19

Who are Internal Product Managers

Answer 19

Someone who builds internal company products and tools for employees to operate more efficiently

Question 20

Who are Business to Business (B2B) Product Managers?

Answer 20

Someone who builds ENTERPRISE LEVEL products that are SOLD TO COMPANIES instead of individual consumers.

The PM usually interacts with the salespeople of that company with their employees being the users

The buyer of the product is a BUSINESS, and function similar to a wholesaler

Question 21

Who are Business to Consumer (B2C) Product Managers?

Answer 21

Someone that builds a product for the average consumer where the end user is also the buyer of the product

Question 22

Who are B2B2C Product Managers?

Answer 22

Where the product is sold to a company but the end users determine the feature and product set