Member-only story
The three most important questions in product management
Product pods (engineering, design, product) are the central engine at any eCommerce or SaaS company. They are responsible for defining and measuring success, prioritizing the most necessary work to be done, and building what your users need. There is so much work that could be done, and about a dozen teams competing for engineering attention at any given time.
This is why Product Management is so critical to a successful product pod — we hedge against chaos. We sit at the front lines and handle intake for each idea, shift in strategy, bug, and nice-to-have enhancement. At times, it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to give every idea the attention and vetting it needs.
The fastest way to burn out as a PM is to treat all incoming work with the same high priority and throw yourself at it indiscriminately. I have fallen victim to this myself, and when I’m overwhelmed by intake, I’m not able to do my job well. To ground myself, I always ask three core questions when considering new work.
1. Is this a problem?
One of the most important tenets of Product Management is that users do not seek products, they seek solutions. Some of the biggest failures in the business world occur because the company did not solve an actual user problem. Ask yourself, “Will this feature solve a real user’s problem?” or “Is there something that is broken?”
If you answered yes, then you have successfully identified a problem. If you answered no, but you still feel like you have a problem, then you’re probably also hearing one of two things:
Our competitor has this feature, which means we must build it too!
[Stakeholder/leadership] is really pushing for this feature, so we have to do it!
These are not good reasons alone to build something. A competitor’s feature is only worth replicating if you share the same user base with the same problems. Even in this case, it probably makes more sense for your product to implement a different solution that leverages your product’s core competencies rather than copying what a competitor built.
The second scenario is the more difficult situation to work through. The most difficult…
