{"id":8323,"date":"2017-04-10T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=8323"},"modified":"2017-04-10T11:56:30","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T10:56:30","slug":"product-manager-problem-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marvelapp.com\/blog\/product-manager-problem-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"A Product Manager is a Problem Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

In each entry in this \u201cconversation\u201d series I talk to a designer\/product manager\/engineer on a topic. I want to make basic practical skills education transparent and free.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today I am speaking to Ravi Akella<\/a> who currently runs the product team at the Digital Manufacturing Group at Autodesk<\/a> and is on the PM Leadership Team at Autodesk. His team of product managers focus on engineering simulation technology - modeling, analyzing and visualizing real world phenomenon like response of machines and structures to loads, fluid flow, 3D printing of metals etc. He previously led the product management team for AutoCAD as well. For context, Autodesk is a 9000+ person B2B software company with millions of paying users.<\/p>\n

Your product is in a mature stage, how do you develop a product roadmap to enter a new industry?<\/h2>\n

This depends on the product and where it lies in its product lifecycle because the primary goal of product management is to align development efforts with business goals. Let\u2019s take the example of a roadmap for a product that is widely used like AutoCAD to better serve a new industry while maintaining and iterating on the many industries it already serves.<\/p>\n

We look across the industries(or segments) where the product is currently used and we look through the inputs from stakeholders like customers, sales, support, etc. to understand which industries to prioritize to meet our business goals. We then focus on the target industry and do research to understand the problems and pain points in that industry and come up with personas\u200a\u2014\u200awhich are essentially groupings of real people having the problem we will solve for\u200a\u2014\u200aand the \u2018jobs to be done\u2019 which the goals that these people seek.<\/p>\n

\"Once we have have a set of problems we try to group them into themes that are meaningful to the target personas. In some companies, these themes are called initiatives. Essentially you look across all the themes and then prioritize which ones to focus on to deliver the most value to the customers and business.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Themes are then broken down into Epics which in turn are broken into user stories and ultimately tasks for the engineering team.<\/p>\n

Example themes we have had in the past are \u201cCollaboration\u201d which meant improving how people share drawings while aligning with the processes and protocols within the target industry or \u201cContinuous Adoption\u201d which was about how to make it easier and less disruptive for customers to adopt the latest versions of the software.<\/p>\n

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\"Look across all the themes and then prioritize which ones to focus on to deliver the most value.\"<\/p><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

So the steps to arrive at the roadmap for a new industry is:<\/p>\n

Research \u2192 Industry -> Personas -> Problems \u2192 Themes \u2192
\nEpics \u2192 User stories \u2192 Tasks<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have been on teams that have used tools like ProductPlan<\/a> and Aha<\/a> to manage the inputs to a roadmap. Some of these tools are designed for smaller companies with less specialized roles but there is subset of capabilities that work well for PMs to do upfront product planning in larger organizations. Eventually, of course, most teams manage the Epics and User Stories in Jira that is used across functions by PMs, Design, Development and QA.<\/p>\n

What are the key inputs for your roadmap?<\/h2>\n

Most products that I have managed at Autodesk are mature and have hundreds of thousands or millions of users. This means the inputs to the Product Managers come from number of sources like:<\/p>\n