Understanding the Product Lifecycle 1

## Agenda 1. Product life cycle. 1. Finer nuances of each of the stage 1. Importance of developers to be involved and have equal say in each of the stage in the product management life cycle 1. Product life cycle analysis of few of the current running technologies. 1. Detailed case study of Slack - Unbottling the different stages of product life cycle ## Recap for Last Lecture In the previous lecture we covered about the introduction to product management. We went through how product management has risen from randon concept to the product management that we see in today's world across startups, etc. We also went over what is the difference between project management and product management. - We went through a very very interesting **case study of Airbnb** : It told us that why is it very important to believe in your idea. Before going all big guns why it is important that we start with an MVP. After an MVP we realized that even if it doesn't work, it might not be the idea's fault. But it might be that the users are not able to derive some value which might be hidden in your product. * For example for Airbnb, they were not growing and when they spoke to users they realized that the photos of the places were not pretty. So the founders went and clicked the right photos of the places and immediately they started to see the revenue double up. We also looked at that why sometimes an aha moment can come from the users of your product and service. But it is very important to keep speaking to the users and keep aligning and understanding that how they are using your product. * Because basis this aha moment, Airbnb then started to look both in the supply and demand side. On the supply side, on people who had let's say one more home that they could rent out and all let's say people were traveling and they had their entire home to be rented out. And same on the demand side people who were not looking for just a small echo or a room but an entire apartment or a house and that really gave wings to Airbnb. Now we know that it is one of the most valuable startups globally. So a lot of interesting insights about how Airbnb went from, let's say founders struggling to pay their rent to now they're being approximately a 50 to 100 billion dollar firm - Then we saw that how product management earlier was basically UX that is consumer experience technology and business. So a product manager or product management involves knowing about all of these three things: 1. UX/ Consumer Experience 1. Tech 1. Business - But eventually the product management has started to change from these three concepts to basically a much wider ones. Where you have product development you now basically have to understand 1. Support 1. How sales happens 1. How marketing is done So that your product across the board speaks the same language starting from how your product is. Let's say being sold in the market and then that translating into an actual product so that is something that we covered. - We went through the roles and responsibilities of a product manager: 1. Responsibilities and roles basically start from setting up the vision. 1. How will we achieve that vision. 1. Aligning every stakeholder to sort of come together to work on the smaller steps needed to achieve that vision. 1. Whenever we have shipped in the market then something that is very important is that customer feedback and validation ## Vision of Whatsapp We will be defining the vision of the product that means that today for example whatsapp stands for primarily chat messages. - But we have **four key use cases** that exist as of today : 1. *Message*, one of the core use cases. 1. *Calling*, that can be video call or voice call 1. *Groups*, these groups basically exist where we can communicate with a lot of folks that are existing around. 1. *Whatsapp business functionality*, that has come up so businesses can reach out to consumers who are interacting with their services. Their is one more use case *Payments*, but in India the amount of payments that are happening, is less than one million out of 400 million active users. - **Question** - *What do you is the vision of whatsapp ? let's say you were the product manager of whatsapp, what would you say that the product should become in five years from now.* - The vision for whatsapp should be to become a one stop shop for personal and business communication. There are two aspects to it : 1. One is that you are saying it has to cater to personal users that is B2C, business to consumers 1. Then it has to cater to your business users, that is B2B. Data being shared on whatsapp, can be very personal to users and hence it is important for the app to maintain privacy. You might need *expanded multimedia communication capabilities* because if two people are having personal communication then they might want to share images and videos. - What is one interesting thing which all of us should think about is that if the vision statement for whatsapp is one-stop shop for personal and business communication then why would they want to integrate payments. - We would have to look at as whether it makes alignment with our vision statement or not. - So that is something that we will have to think about. ## Defining the Vision of the Product Let's look at what how generally product teams define the vision of the product and then we will come back to what ideally is the vision statement of whatsapp. <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/376/original/defining_vision.png?1704966037" width="900"/> ### 1. Understand the target audience and the user needs. - Once you are defining the vision of a product, it is very very interesting and important that we understand the target audience and the needs of the audience so that comes with two parts: - One that we have to **conduct market research.** - Second, we have to **analyze customer feedback.** So once you conduct market research and then you analyze customer feedback you get enough understanding about the target audience and their user needs. - For example, today I might want to build something that I have a problem with and I want to use technology or a product to solve that problem but my problem might not be similar with millions of other people's problem. - So even before we start jumping on building a solution or let's say how our product should operate we should understand: - Whom we are building for ? - What are their needs ? - For example I will go back to the whatsapp point and say that if let's say our target audience is tier two users from India. - Then we might have to let go of the video calling feature because two years before today they had very very poor quality of internet. - And if we were only building b2c that is for personal use cases messaging platform where people can communicate real time as quickly as possible. Then we might have to build features which are like voice call or chat or something else. - Let's say target audience is different and once you have your target audience defined let's say if in my vision statement I do not include businesses then whatsapp will keep innovating for personal use cases itself So before we set the vision statement it is important to understand that who are the target audience for your product and then what is their needs. ### 2. Identify the problem or pain point that the product addresses. - For example, the need might be that users from tier two parts of India want to communicate with their friends. - Communication is a need and then the problem or pain point might be that there is no network. Let's say internet is not available for them hence they have to do voice call that is over the like 3g or 4g network. - Because of lack of towers or anything they are not able to connect in some way that might be a problem, that they want to let's say share more personal moments with their family members. - Let's say if we think about whatsapp, if it is targeting only a certain section of users that is b2c or personal use cases of let's say tier two audience in India then it will have to build a messaging platform to cater to the need of communication of users. - And it will have to ensure that the pain point is that they have low network available for them they are still able to share all of those things speak to the friends and families without bothering about internet. - So just to summarize before you start defining the vision of the product, the three things that are very important you understand: - What is the target audience - What is their needs - Identify the problem or pain point ### 3. Define the goals and objectives for the product vision. So what should be the goal and objective or the vision means that **what success look like for the product.** Before you decide the vision, it is important that you understand that if everything that you plan goes well in few years then what would happen. - For example, if I was the product manager at whatsapp and we are building for tier two Indians and for them to communicate with their friends and families. Then what would success look like in five years, success would mean that everyone in the tier twoIindian ecosystem, if the population is let's say as of today the population is 700 million that lives in tier two cities in India, 90% of these people use whatsapp as the preferred communication tool. That would mean that the problem that I wanted to solve, have already solved and I have able to garner the market so that is one way in which success can look like for the product. - Then it is important that you set **key performance indicators** ,it is nothing but what I mentioned thet success would be that everyone in tier two sort of audience in india is using whatsapp - And the measurable key performance indicator is that 90 percent of the population is using that. - So it means that we have become the market leader there is no other product that is being used by the people to communicate ### 4. Future trends and technology advancements that may impact the product vision. - For example as I think that AI is coming up, so whenever we think about the vision of the product so vision is basically some time in the future that what you want to achieve - And that sometime is also something that the product team has to define but if there are technologies that can completely change how we operate. Then my product might not be relevant if I do not include those technologies. ### 5. Vision should align with the company values and the mission statement. - For example for meta or facebook, the vision statement of any product at meta aligns with the company values and mission statement. So meta wants to build a connected world online, hence a lot of social media platforms,let's say metaverse and a lot of other projects that meta does everything is aligned with connecting the world. - So whenever you are thinking about a sub product within meta, whatsapp is also a product owned by meta or facebook so they will always keep the vision that will align with the company values. ### 6. Collaborate with stakeholders, executives such as CEO, designers, developers and marketers. - Product managers or developers and designers whenever they are working together to build the vision of the product they cannot let's say build it on their own, they will have to **consult all the stakeholders, executives such as CEO, designers, developers and marketers.** - So everyone of us will have to work together and then consult the leadership and then only we can define the vision of a product. ### 7. Create a compelling vision statement that communicates the purpose and value of the product. - So if we look at all of the pointers, this is very like defining a vision might seem easier. But if I go through all of these steps it seems like a humongous task. It is very very important because once we define the vision the company or the product will start shaping towards that vision. - But if the vision statement is not powerful or it is in the wrong direction then you might end up building the product or iterating it in the wrong direction. ## Updated Vision of Whatsapp - If I were defining the vision statement for whatsapp we will write that whatsapp should become the default communication platform for tier two audience in India for their personal needs - It should enable people to talk to each other or work together or have interesting live conversations. - So basically once you have the vision set which is a core responsibility for the product managers then you have to work on the roadmap and prioritization of the vision. ## Roadmap and Prioritization <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/437/original/Roadmap_and_prioritization.png?1705000969" width="900"/> Let's say if our vision for zoom as a product or let's say the platform that we are using for taking classes, it's called as Drona internally at scaler. If we have the vision that Drona should be able to or let's say zoom for education should be able to enhance the learning outcome or learnability of people attending a class on the platform in five years from now or by 50 percent. Or let's say we have to build the vision statement such that anyone attending a class is able to understand each and everything that is taught in the class. And they can go ahead take the test, quizzes, etc and we are able to measure that when people came into the class. And when they went away, what was their learning. Let's say that is the vision statement then we will have to start building product features that are aligned with these educational use cases. Then I will have to start thinking about different features that I will build and what is the priority in which we will start building. - It is very important that developers understand that what is the roadmap and then what is the priority. So that you can give your inputs on whether a product like, let's say the technology is available to build a feature or not. - How easy or difficult it would be ? - Should we pick it up quicker in the roadmap or priority list or we should pick it up later. Hence it is very important that we understand that how product managers are responsible though for the roadmap and prioritization ,how can all of us contribute to it. ## What is Roadmap ? Roadmap is the list of items or list of features that you will release in a product to enable the product, to move towards the direction that you have. - For example in Drona, I want that people should interact more here, then my roadmap would look like three or four key things: 1. One is that I should have breakout rooms. 2. I should have one is to one or one is to many kind of chat functionality in the screen. 3. Then we should be able to react to messages that each of us are posting. 4. Then we should be able to create threads on messages. Once you have all of these items listed down in the priority order, that something that is very important can be a breakout room or anything else. So basically **roadmap** *is the list of items which I have to execute as a feature to move towards the vision that I have for the product.* - **Prioritization**, *it is the order in which I will execute all of these tasks.* ## Why is the Roadmap important for Product Managers ? ### 1. It aligns with the team with the shared vision - For example if you are all working on a product or you are part of a feature or let's say on whatsapp. But if you don't know that what is the vision and then what are the features that you are gonna ship in the next one year then you could not understand that which is the direction in which the product is going, which is the direction in which the firm is growing. - So if you have a very consolidated list that this is the vision and then this is the list of features we will be working on in the next three months, then it gives clarity to everyone into the: 1. Sales 2. Marketing team 3. Leadership team That what is the vision and then what are the items that are being worked upon. So it creates alignment across the firm and hence the it is very important to build a roadmap for product managers. ### 2. It communicates the direction to stakeholders. - A roadmap effectively communicates the product's direction to stakeholders, crucial for setting expectations and building trust by highlighting the value proposition and strategic goals. ### 3. It also helps in resource allocation and planning - For example if my vision is that I have to integrate generative AI in the learning platform. Like: 1. We can build a new section which can enable, all of you so as soon as I speak a word, it can write the formal dictionary description of that word in the chat. Which can enable all of you to quickly understand if you do not understand that word. 3. If it is understanding that a particular learner is not attentive in the class, it can call out that name or it can interact with that learner. 4. If I am explaining a concept and you have a doubt and you put it on the chat Gen AI can answer that doubt by itself which I as an instructor can then elaborate on it further. So these are possible features we can have but for all of these features for me to develop what would I need ? 1. We would need a team of developers who are proficient in building AI driven technologies. 1. Who have that prior experience. 1. We will need prompt engineers as well. 1. We will need engineers who are proficient in AI or ML, who have built such kind of tools. 1. We will need the prompt engineers as well, so that we have the right prompts to interact with the large language models. 1. We should have testers. 1. We would definitely need designers. ## How to create an effective Roadmap ? ### 1. Define clear goals and objectives - Defining clear goals and objectives involves setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound targets that guide the product's development and success. ### 2. Conduct the market research and gather user feedback. - User feedback is when we ask them questions and they share their suggestion. - Then it will help them that what is the problem with the current product or what is the problem they want us as a product manager to solve ### 3. Prioritize the feature based on customer needs and business value. - In a later class we will also discuss a prioritization framework. It will tell us that if you have 10 different ideas which is the idea that you should first build because it creates the highest business or user value. - A roadmap should always have the prioritized features in the basis the customer needs and business value. ### 4. The feature should be broken down into initiatives with actionable tasks. - For example I can say that in scalar learning platform I want to build generative AI capabilities. But that is very very vague in nature. - Instead I can say in that scalar I want to bring generative AI based chat responses to learner queries in the chat box during the classes. Which of these do you think is more clear and actionable, the second one definately. ### Why we should conduct market research ? We should have clear goals and objectives, we should conduct market research. For example I think a lot of product managers who are building for tier two and tier three cities, they might be sitting in Delhi and banglore and without speaking to users they sometimes build out the entire application. They do not conduct market research and what happens then is that we build features that is a pain point for us but it might not be a pain point for the users in the tier two and tier three cities. The entire team might spend three to six months building those features out but then what would be the outcome. The product would fail, because people are not able to relate. So the problem that you might be facing might be very different to the problem that a lot of tier two people might be facing. - *Now we are clear on how to create an effective roadmap.* ## Why is prioritization important for product managers ? ### 1. Maximizes limited resources efficiently - For example if we were developing the Gen AI capability it might take months to develop that. But if I have 10 different features in Gen AI which we can develop in around 12 months but then if I have only one engineer which is the feature all of you think I should build. - We should try with an mvp and what feature we should use for the mvp, that which will have the most impact for learners.When you have only one resource or let's say we have only one developer then it is important that we pick the item that we have most confidence. ### 2. Focuses on high value feature that solve key customer problems. - Prioritize developing features that directly address critical needs of users to deliver the highest value. ## How do you prioritize effectively as a product manager ? **1. Analyze user needs pain points, and market trends:** It involves understanding the audience's challenges and preferences, as well as staying informed on industry developments, to ensure product decisions are user-focused and market-relevant. **2. Access the impact versus effort of each feature or task:** There are different prior prioritization frameworks which we will discuss. **3. Consider dependencies risk and technical feasibility:** Five years before the first paper or the research paper that has led to creation of Open AI that was written in 2017 and with the title of "Attention is all that you need". - It defined how we can build the NLP driven large language models, this paper was created by Google and then Open AI picked up on this paper. Basis the research done by Google, Open AI and Microsoft built GPT much faster than bard. - In 2017 when this paper had come up, there were a lot of people who wanted to build AI features right but then building AI features was very very difficult. But if the product manager would have added an AI feature and the developer was not consulted then would it have been possible to ship it even that year ? I think no. - So measuring the technical feasibility of the roadmap is very very important so that the developers and PMs are able to analyze whether something is technically feasible or not and then take decisions. **4. Involve stakeholders in the prioritazation process:** Such as let's say the support team because as we had discussed support team is very close to users. We should discuss with the founders. ## Stakeholder Management In terms of stakeholder management, it is very very important that you interact with your stakeholders as a product manager or as a developer very very frequently. <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/439/original/staleholder_management.png?1705003605" width="900"/> **1. Identify who is your right stakeholder.** - So in terms of stakeholders sometimes let's say for PMs the right stakeholders would be engineering manager, developers, designers which we have been discussing. But which we miss most of the times is the support team, the marketing team, legal team all of these teams are also very very important. - Sometimes these stakeholders doesn't mean only internal team members, they are sometimes external team stakeholders as well.For example it can be partners or suppliers. If you use AWS or Google cloud to build any of your things then your support agent from there or let's say your poc from there might be an important stakeholder for you. **2. Understand the needs and expectations or problems of those stakeholders** - If your users are your stakeholders then you have to interact with them and you have to *conduct surveys* and understand what are their points. Then you can use the *empathy maps to gain insights* about them. - Empathy map is nothing but for a user persona what are the pain points, aspiration, expectation and what do the user feel while using your product. All of these things when they are added in a particular document this is called an empathy map. **3. Prioritize stakeholders based on their impact.** - For example if you have three stakeholders and one of them only contributes with negative ideas or with ideas that don't add any value then you should not spend a lot of time speaking with them. - But for users or let's say any stakeholder that is important for you, if you miss them out then that would be a problem for the success of your product. **4. Develop a communication plan for each of these stakeholders group:** Creating tailored communication strategies ensures that all stakeholders are informed and engaged according to their roles and needs. **5. Build strong relationship with stakeholders:** Establishing trust and rapport with stakeholders is crucial for fostering collaboration and support throughout the product development process. **6. Manage conflicts between them:** Proactively addressing and resolving disagreements among stakeholders prevents disruptions and maintains project harmony. **7. Monitor stakeholder satisfaction levels:** Regularly assessing stakeholders' happiness helps in identifying issues early and adjusting strategies to maintain support. **8. Adapt the strategy:** Being flexible and responsive to stakeholder feedback and changing market conditions ensures that the product strategy remains relevant and effective. *All of these things are very very important things for product managers to do as part of the stakeholder management.* ## Customer Feedback and Validation - Whatever we build product manager's core role is being the eyes and ears of the firm towards the user. It is important that product managers speak to users at least daily on how many aspects: 1. It can be call 2. It can be video recordings of how your users are going through the product. 3. It can be surveys that you can run. But all of these are few aspects of how product managers should keep interacting with the users and feedback. <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/444/original/Customer_Feedback_and_Validation.png?1705005711" width="900"/> **1. Conducting customer surveys:** Gathering direct feedback from users through structured questionnaires to understand their needs, preferences, and experiences with the product. **2. Analyzing online reviews and ratings,** a lot of us go through the reviews and ratings before using a product but what happens is that a lot of product managers forget to read these online reviews and ratings. - And why it is very important because these are honest feedback about the users on how they found the product. Reviews gives a detailed explanation of what users loved about the product and what they didn't love about the product. - Hence, a product manager or developer if I actually want to understand that whether my app is helping the user or it is working or not then what will I do, I can simply go through the one star ratings that are there. And I can learn a lot about the what are the problems that exist in my product itself. **3. Use social media listening tools to gather feedback from customers,** on what they are saying about your product or feature. There are a lot of tools which can give you sentiment analysis. - Sentiment analysis is for example, if people are posting on twitter with the hashtag of let's say google, then what sentiment analysis we can do ? If there are let's say 10 lakh tweets then it is very very difficult for me to go through all of these tweets as a product manager. - But sentiment analysis on these tweets, there are already available platforms on which I can upload all of those tweets and they can tell me that these are let's say top four things that your users are speaking about. - Three of them are positive so they have a positive sentiment or they speak positively about your product and one of them is negative. And this is something that we should fix immediately about, so using social media to keep abreast about your product and feedback is very important. **4. Feedback form on your website or app:** Implementing an accessible way for users to leave immediate feedback, facilitating direct communication and insights into user satisfaction. **5. Organize focus group,** means having a group interaction where you conduct an interview with users. **6. One-on-one interviews:** Engaging directly with individual users to gain deep insights into their experiences, preferences, and feedback on the product. **7. Read support interactions:** Analyzing conversations between users and support teams to identify common issues, suggestions, and user sentiments. **8. Observe customer behavior through user testing :** Whenever you are planning to release a feature you should test out in some of the users, you should see how they are interacting and what are the challenges. **9. Benchmark against competitive product or servicess:** Comparing your product's features, user experience, and performance with those of competitors to identify areas for improvement and innovation. *There are four key roles and responsibilities of a product manager:* 1. Vision and strategy 1. Roadmap and prioritization 1. Stakeholder management 1. Customer feedback and validation ## Difference in PM Role between MAANG Firms, Unicorns and Small Startups <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/446/original/Difference_in_PM_Role_across_charters_between_MAANG_Firms__Unicorns_and_Small_Startups.png?1705007045" width="900"/> ## Role Across Stages of Product Life-cycle <img src="https://d2beiqkhq929f0.cloudfront.net/public_assets/assets/000/061/447/original/Role_Across_Stages_of_Product_Life-cycl.png?1705012354" width="900"/> ### 1. Subject Expert Every product that starts with a introduction phase where it's just an idea. From an ideation perspective when we are building a product, when we are thinking about an idea what is very important is that we have a **subject matter expert** that understands that what is the domain in which we are operating. - For example if I have to build a product to test an idea and it's a product that doesn't exist today. I will need a product manager who understands the domain very well. - For example: 1. Scalar is an edtech 1. Sharechat is a social messaging app 1. Mesho is an e-commerce All of these are startups but when they would be building the first product to understand what they should build they would need a product manager who has been working in that domain for a long time. If I'm building a zoom like product which is where our classes are held and it is called Drona. I will need a product manager and a developer who have built it out in the past. So in a product life cycle, from a product manager's role perspective whenever you are introducing a product you need the product manager to play a role of subject expert. - **Product market fit,** means that if you build a product which without any marketing effort, make users to not only download the app. - If your product is not a pmf, then in that case a subject matter expert is very very important. Where you have to understand that what is the problem, what are the possible solutions and you quickly iterate. ### 2. Growth Hacker - But once you have achieved the pmf and you move to the **growth stage** then the product manager's role is to build the roadmap in the way that it boosts the number of users. So you expand the scale, you stay competitive in these cases. ### 3. Retention Strategist Once you have met the growth stage then you have the **retention strategist** kind of role for pms and developers. So what does retention mean that once you have let's say you started with the zero to one that there was no product you built out that product then you grew in the one to ten scale. And when you go into the ten to hundred scale of a product that means that now you have reached the maximum peak. So for example if all of you might know facebook has now reached three billion monthly active users that means every third person out of seven person across the globe uses one of the facebook products. - There are two aspects that meta can look at: 1. Meta can ensure that they chase the remaining four billion. 2. They should ensure that the three billion already out of the seven billion who are already on meta stay, they do not delete the app or they do not let's say stop using the app. - Comapanies use various ways like rewards and loyalty programs to retain their customers. So retention strategist also means that you have to maintain your market share and as the product let's say evolves the user behavior also involves. So you might need to bring new features just to retain your old users and not to get more users. So first you have no product then your product grows then you reach a peak of maturity and then your product starts to decline. ### 4. Solution Seeker So when your product is trying to decline then as a product manager developer you have to do play the role of a **solution seeker.** It means that you have to start thinking about what you can do to ensure that users who are dropping off quickly. You can either prevent them from dropping off or you are able to bring new kind of users into the platform. But if you are not able to do that then it would mean that the product would die away as happened with kodak and xerox. As a solution seeker you have to think strategically about uh resurrecting your user. Resurrecting means let's say tomorrow if I have the app downloaded of ola but I uninstall it. But ola then realizes that maybe I was looking for a bike taxi and they might take six months but once they come up with their bikes taxi what they can do they can drop me an sms. So either the graph should remain constant or the graph should improve. ## Do it Yourself! - From a homework perspective you need to pick up a particular product which you believe is in the declining phase. And you need to come up with a thesis of why it is there in the declining state ? - Then what could the PM, developer team could have done that could have prevented the product to go in a in the declining state? What different is a competitor did, which is still alive ?