Companies should hire Product Managers who can loudly say “NO”
Let’s talk about a typical moment in a day or a week in the life of a product manager at a startup.
Day 1: “Hey Product Manager(PM), I want to have X new features in the product and need Y feature upgraded with Z and let’s try to deliver it as quickly as possible”
Day 10: “By the way PM, why don’t we add feature A rather than X which is there on the competitor’s app and it attracts users. Remember, we are a user-centric company and we place users before us”
Day 30: “I think the Z feature is not working so why don’t we get it back to Y feature and hey I hope you are delivering feature A along with feature X in this month’s planned release”
Is this even for real?
The answer is YES. Most of the new startups or product companies want to have everything so fast that it becomes the case of expectations of over-delivering from the stakeholders. Here, in the above-discussed case, the stakeholders can involve feedbacks and feature requests from the CEO, CTO, CMO, Marketing, Category, and all other concerned departments.
Such companies are short-lived and their products meet failure sooner. You know why?
Because their product manager does not have the audacity to say NO.
As a product manager, if you only keep on saying Yes to whatsoever feature addition requests or changes you receive, then let me tell you that your days are short-lived even in the company(as it will shut down anytime soon) and also in your career.
Companies need to realize that they cannot eat the entire pizza at once. You need to take in one slice at a time. The essential element that they do not have is their long term vision or even if there is vision, it is not aligned properly.
The role of a product manager in such cases is to help the company define a product roadmap and take steps accordingly. Whatever falls out of the roadmap, the product manager can rightfully say NO to whatever requests come in. Of course, until there is veto power with the stakeholders 😁 you have to be mindful about it.
“A company’s true goals are written on its roadmap”
— Des Traynor, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Intercom
How to organize a Product Roadmap meeting?
Its pretty simple. Involve the major stakeholders who have key-decision making powers into the business, the visionaries and the user-facing department heads and call everyone for a meeting. It shall take 1 to 3 hours depending upon the stage you are at with your product.
Prepare the following list:
- Problems faced by your customer or user
- Iterations expected on your current product features
- New ideas
- Features to help scale the current system
- Measures to optimize and improve the quality of your overall product
Once the list is prepared, you have to agree upon a set timeline, generally a quarter i.e. 3 months for a major release or all the releases that are done in that timeframe. For this particular period, you need to define from the list you have made that what product changes and upgrades are required to help achieve that one business GOAL and will take you closer towards it. After this, being the product owner, you have to set priorities for each of the tasks or features added to your backlog and you are done.
Your product roadmap is right in front of you.
Now, when you get any adhoc feature requests or suggestions for new ideas, you know what you have to say as a Product Manager? 😉
Luckily, at Frendy, we follow a product roadmap strategy and I do not get many chances to say NO.
Check out valuable insights, tips, strategies and fundamentals on Product Management on my YouTube channel — Parth Amin’s YouTube Channel
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