Responsibilities 1.

Understanding customer needs and consumer behavior through research, customer feedback analysis, click stream analysis, and direct interactions with customers. 2. Analyzing product metrics regularly and use the learning for product innovations and improvements. 3. Innovating and delivering products that differentiate us from competition. This will include new products as well as enhancements to existing products. 4. Conducting regular competition analysis and recommending plan of action should master the details of competitive landscape. 5. Working closely with Engineering, Research, Quality Assurance, Design and Marketing teams to create synergies leading to a high quality product. 6. Creating product specifications documents and conducting product specification reviews with key stakeholders such as Engineering, Quality Assurance, Design & others. 7. Ensuring timely delivery of projects through proper planning, scheduling and execution. 8. Other responsibilities include: 1. Providing product related inputs to marketing, sales and CRM teams. 2. Training and mentoring teams as and when required. Requirements Product Manager must understand consumer needs, convert broad ideas into rationalized product definitions and specifications, and collaboratively deliver products in a timely manner. He/she must be able to drive consensus among various stakeholders and articulate tradeoffs used in making product related choices & decisions. Product Management function Problem Statement: Irrespective of who you are (i.e. a big business, struggling startup to an ideation stage venture), you will face some (or all) of these challenges

Feature prioritization Is there a data-driven approach? Lack of any structured methodology in understanding users. As a founder/CEO, you are deeply sucked into your day-to-day activities (and that leaves no time for strategic thinking). No significant market research goes into your product a lot of what you build is validated via your friends and family. Reaction to sales pressure Because they want this, we will build it (customer is king) . Reaction to customer feedback Because they said they need this, we will build this.

Too sucked into understanding competition (and sometimes, end up following them). Finding it difficult to Cross the chasm

As a founder/CEO of your business, you have enough reasons to justify some (or all) of the above challenges (heck! we are a startup, we better listen to our customers and build custom solutions for them!, Feature priortization I started this company and do know where our products are headed!), but big businesses are built on principles and have a soul to their product strategy. Your product strategy is essentially a function of your business strategy (and vice versa) and you better get it right before its too late. And this is where Product Management discipline kicks in (note the word, discipline we arent saying role which actually substantiates to hiring, while discipline is something that needs to be inculcated). So who is a product manager? In a typical corporate world, Product Manager is an entity without any authority but has the most important responsibility, i.e. of getting things done. An essential attribute of a PM is leadership. In most cases, PMs deal with teams which do not directly report to them. He has to

Convince the team of the product idea Get a buy-in and commitment from the team for its implementation Work with the team to set deadlines and adhere to the overall timelines Do the overall monitoring and check on quality

Most of the above steps require lots of interaction, brainstorming & feedback from development and testing. They however report into their own structures and interact with PM only as a part of the project. Hence the PM needs to convince the team and not delegate / order. He does this by

example logic customer need, and knowledge of competition to name only a few. [read a detailed note]

The same is true for Product management discipline in startups/small businesses i.e. follow the keywords: leadership, customer need, logic, buy-in & convince. Need for Product Management Culture What Product Management is not?

Product Management is not Product Marketing Product Management is not Project/Program Management. Product Management cannot be classified as Inbound/Outbound role (uness you work for an offshore/outsourced development center).

Is product management a support function? Well, it actually is a CEO function a PM is actually the CEO of the product. Like a CEO, Product Management wears multiple hats and takes decisions in an unemotional manner and if you are a startup, its really the top management function to define the role and inculcate the discipline. In essence, what startups need to understand (and execute) is a better understanding of who they are, what they do, who are their customers/competition and a few tricks/tips to get the ball rolling. Whats your opinion? If you are a startup, do you follow your gut or have some methodology built around the gut? Product management approach: Heres a very different approach to new product creation, one that costs dramatically less and is much more likely to yield the results you want. The founder hires a product manager, a product designer, and a prototyper. Sometimes the designer can also serve as prototyper, and sometimes the founder can serve as the product manager, but one way or another, you have these three functions lined up product management, product design, and prototyping and the team starts a process of very rapid product design and iteration. I describe this process in detail elsewhere but there are two keys: 1. the idea is to create a high-fidelity prototype that mimics the eventual user experience it is just fine if the back-end processing and data is all fake; and 2. You need to validate this product design with real target [Link] this model, it is normal to create literally dozens of versions of the prototype it will evolve daily, sometimes with minor refinements and sometimes with very significant changes. But the point is that with each iteration you are getting closer to identifying a winning [Link] process typically takes between 3 weeks and 2 months, but at the end of the process, you have:

identified a product that you have validated with the target market; a very rich prototype that serves as a living spec for the engineering team to build from; and you now understand at a much greater degree what youre getting into and what youll need to do to succeed.

Now when you bring on an engineering team, theyll start off with a tremendous advantage a clear understanding of the product they need to build and a stable spec - and you will find that the team can produce a quality implementation much faster than they would otherwise. I continue to be amazed at how many startups just jump right into implementation, but I think were such an engineering-driven culture that we just naturally start there. But any startup has to realize that everything starts with the right product so the first order of business is to figure out what that is before burning through $500K or more in seed

funding. I believe this model applies beyond startups to much larger companies as well. The difference is that bigger companies are generally able to underwrite the several iterations it takes to get to a useful product, but startups often cant. But theres no good reason for the inefficiencies that larger companies regularly endure either Typical Profile : Product Management Job Description Apply theoretical and practical knowledge to develop, establish and maintain marketing strategies to meet organizational objectives. Develop industry specific Solutions and proactively manage the marketing activities for the same. Main Job Tasks and Responsibilities * Identify markets and industry segments for company offerings and derive market size for the same * Conduct market research to determine customer needs and design logistics and supply chain solutions, enhancements etc * * * * Develop and implement marketing plans and projects for new and exiting solutions Monitor and report all marketing activity and results Deliver marketing activity within agreed budget Develop pricing strategy

* Work in tandem with the Branding and Communications team for internal as well as External branding activities * Research, Analyze and publish white papers in the focussed functions of the Logistics and Supply Chain Industry Typical Profile : Product Analyst Product Analyst Should be an engineering or MBA graduate having 2 to 5 years of experience in the product management domain

* Should have involved in activities like writing MRD, Release Notes and reports on Product usability * should have managed communication relating to product requirements with various groups within the company as well as customers * should be inquisitive and analytical and capable of becoming a product primary knowledge expert * Excellent communication skills experience in technical writing is an added advantage His/her role and responsibilities include * Product strategy: where are we going, why, market dynamics, competitive intelligence, etc. * Product requirements: features, customer enhancement request, MRDs (interface to Engineering/QA), etc. * Product marketing: sales support, collateral, presentations, demo, etc.