Sheila Hara

If your company doesn't currently have a formal product strategy, developing one is a crucial step towards ensuring that your product development efforts are aligned with your business goals. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a product strategy: 1. DEFINE YOUR VISION AND GOALS * Vision: Start by defining a clear, inspiring vision for what you want your product to achieve in the long term. This should align with your company’s overall mission. * Goals: Set specific, measurable goals that support this vision. These should be achievable and clearly communicate what success looks like for your product. 2. UNDERSTAND YOUR MARKET AND CUSTOMERS * Market Research: Conduct thorough market research to understand industry trends, competitor strengths and weaknesses, and potential opportunities or threats. * Customer Insights: Gather deep insights into your customers' needs, behaviors, and preferences. Techniques like surveys, interviews, and user testing can be invaluable here. 3. IDENTIFY THE JOBS TO BE DONE (JTBD) * Determine the core tasks that your customers need to accomplish. Understanding these will guide what features and improvements your product should focus on. 4. DEVELOP PRODUCT ROADMAPS * Roadmapping: Create a product roadmap that outlines the key features and milestones planned for your product. This should detail what will be developed, why it’s important, and approximate timelines. 5. ALIGN WITH STAKEHOLDERS * Engage with key stakeholders across your organization to align expectations and gather diverse insights. This includes leadership, marketing, sales, customer support, and the development teams. 6. SET UP METRICS FOR SUCCESS * Define how you will measure the success of your product strategy. Common metrics include user engagement, customer satisfaction, market share, and revenue growth. 7. ITERATE BASED ON FEEDBACK * Implement a process for continuous feedback and learning. This should involve regular reviews of your strategy based on performance data and direct feedback from users. 8. COMMUNICATE THE STRATEGY * Ensure that everyone involved understands the product strategy. Regular communication and updates will help keep all team members aligned and motivated. 9. REVIEW AND ADAPT * Regularly review your product strategy to ensure it remains relevant and effective. Adapt it based on changing market conditions, customer needs, and business priorities. Developing a product strategy is not a one-time activity but a continuous process that evolves with your business and the market.

In the field of product management, there isn't really a "typical" career path. Product management is highly flexible. Some product managers may transition into related fields like marketing, sales, or even corporate strategy. Others might find their niche in a particular stage of product management and choose to specialize rather than move up the ladder. The path can also be nonlinear, with professionals moving between companies, roles, and industries based on opportunities and personal interests. Moreover, the startup ecosystem offers a different trajectory, where roles and responsibilities can be more fluid, and one might rapidly move into higher management roles based on the success and growth of the company. In essence, while there are common steps in the career progression of a product manager, the journey is often unique and tailored to each individual's skills, experiences, and career aspirations. A typical path may look like: 1. Entry-Level Role (Associate Product Manager, Product Analyst, etc.): Many product managers start in entry-level roles, which might be titled Associate Product Manager, Product Analyst, or a similar designation. These roles often involve supporting more senior product managers, conducting market research, gathering customer feedback, and learning the basics of product lifecycle management. 2. Product Manager: After gaining experience and demonstrating skills in product development, strategy, and execution, individuals often move into a Product Manager role. Here, they take on more responsibility, managing entire products or significant features, making strategic decisions, and working closely with cross-functional teams. 3. Senior Product Manager: With continued success and experience, a Product Manager can advance to a Senior Product Manager role. This position typically involves managing more complex products or product lines, mentoring junior team members, and having a greater influence on the strategic direction of the product portfolio. 4. Lead Product Manager or Group Product Manager: Some companies have a role for Lead or Group Product Managers, where professionals manage multiple related products or a team of product managers, ensuring alignment and synergy across products. 5. Director of Product Management: Moving up, the next step might be a Director of Product Management, overseeing a larger portfolio of products and leading a bigger team of product managers. This role involves more strategic planning and less day-to-day product management. 6. VP of Product or Chief Product Officer: At the top of the career ladder, one might become a VP of Product or Chief Product Officer (CPO), responsible for the overall product strategy of an organization, aligning product development with business goals, and often being part of executive leadership.

In a product management interview, my favorite question came up: "What is the best product you have ever used, and why?" I took a creative approach and presented myself as the product. I detailed my skills, experiences, and the unique value I could bring to the team, framing my abilities and potential contributions in the context of product features and benefits. This approach wasn't just about showcasing my qualifications; it was about demonstrating my ability to think innovatively and market effectively - crucial skills in product management. This self-referential presentation resonated with the interviewers and played a significant role in my successful hiring. Given this was umpteen years ago :)

Ideas for new features can come from a multitude of sources, and deciding which ones to build involves a thoughtful process of evaluation and prioritization. Here’s how we approach this at Barracuda: SOURCES OF FEATURE IDEAS 1. Customer Feedback: Direct input from users is invaluable. This can be gathered through support tickets, customer interviews, usability tests, surveys, and feedback forms. Customers often provide insights into what features they need, what issues they encounter, and how their user experience can be improved. 2. Market Research: Keeping an eye on industry trends, competitor analysis, and market demands helps us identify features that could be necessary to stay competitive and relevant in the market. 3. Internal Teams: Ideas can also come from within the company—from engineers, marketers, salespeople, and support staff. These team members often see different aspects of how the product performs in real-world scenarios and can offer unique perspectives on what features might enhance the product. 4. Regulatory Changes and Compliance Requirements: Sometimes, new features are driven by changes in legal or regulatory standards within an industry, requiring the product to adapt to new laws and guidelines. 5. Technological Advancements: Innovations in technology can open up possibilities for new features. Our development team stays abreast of new tools, frameworks, and platforms that can enhance our product offerings. DECIDING WHICH FEATURES TO BUILD 1. Alignment with Business Goals: The feature must align with the overall business objectives, such as increasing market share, improving customer satisfaction, or driving revenue growth. 2. Customer Impact: We prioritize features based on the value they deliver to our customers. This involves evaluating how much a feature will improve the user experience and meet customer needs. 3. Feasibility and Cost: The technical feasibility of developing the feature, as well as the cost in terms of time and resources, are crucial considerations. We need to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs. 4. Market Differentiation: Features that can differentiate our product in the marketplace often receive higher priority. We look for features that can give us a competitive edge. 5. ROI and Prioritization Frameworks: We often use prioritization frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) or the Cost-Adjusted Impact (CAI) model to assess and prioritize feature ideas based on their potential return on investment and impact. 6. Prototype and Validate: Before fully committing to building a feature, we often create a prototype and validate it with a segment of our user base. This testing phase is crucial to gather data on the feature's potential success or failure.

Barracuda has a structured approach that blends continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) with Agile methodologies, using specific release timelines. This setup can offer several advantages, especially in managing complex software development and deployment processes effectively. Here’s a breakdown of how this approach might typically work and how it can be optimized: 1. Agile Practices: We organize our development activities into sprints, each lasting about 2 weeks. These sprints include regular sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to ensure continuous improvement and alignment within the team. 2. Continuous Integration and Delivery: Our CI/CD practices are integral to our development process. Developers commit changes to a shared repository frequently, which triggers automated builds and tests. This helps us maintain a high standard of code quality and ensures that our software can be released at any time. 3. Release Management: While our CI/CD pipeline keeps our software in a releasable state after each integration, the 2 week release pockets allow us to bundle features into coherent releases. This period also provides time for additional testing, final adjustments, and preparation of release documentation and marketing materials. 4. Feedback Loops: We heavily rely on feedback from these iterative processes and user input post-release to refine and improve our products. This feedback is crucial for adapting our processes and product offerings to better meet user needs.

Understanding the customer's ideal outcome and the "Jobs to Be Done" (JTBD) framework is crucial for product managers because it directly influences the effectiveness and success of the products they develop. Amongst various other things, here are my top reasons on why we do this as PMs * Customer-Centric Design: It ensures that products are developed to meet specific, real-world needs of customers, enhancing relevance and user satisfaction. * Improved Product Fit: Products aligned with JTBD are more likely to achieve market fit, as they address both functional and emotional customer needs. Crucial for start ups. * Enhanced Innovation: Knowing the JTBD helps identify gaps in market offerings, driving innovation and the development of distinctive features or new products. Crucial for remaining leaders in the industry

I emphasize the importance of continuous validation in your product strategy, a key principle championed by Marty Cagan. He teaches us that the essence of product management lies in the discovery process. So, let's break down how you can ensure your product strategy is on the right track: 1. Engage in Continuous Discovery: Always be in the mode of testing your assumptions. Use rapid prototyping and conduct experiments to validate your ideas with real users. This approach helps confirm that your strategy addresses genuine user needs and delivers value. 2. Implement Dual-Track Development: This methodology separates the discovery of viable ideas from their delivery. Validate new features or strategic shifts in the discovery track through prototypes and user feedback before they enter the delivery track. This safeguards against investing in features that don't meet user expectations. 3. Test for Product-Market Fit: Use minimum viable products (MVPs) to test your offerings in the real market. This is crucial for understanding whether your product meets a legitimate market need and can stand out among competitors. 4. Focus on Outcomes, Not Outputs: Orient your teams around achieving specific outcomes rather than just delivering features. This shift ensures that every effort is geared towards enhancing customer satisfaction and driving business success. 5. Regularly Gather Customer Feedback: Maintain a close connection with your customers through surveys, interviews, and usability tests. This feedback is invaluable for validating whether your product direction aligns with their needs and expectations. 6. Monitor Key Metrics and KPIs: Define and track key performance indicators that align with your strategic goals. Metrics related to user engagement, retention, and satisfaction are vital for assessing the effectiveness of your strategy. 7. Embrace Iterative Learning: Adopt a mindset of continuous improvement. Iterate based on feedback and market changes to refine your strategy, ensuring it remains relevant and effective.

Here’s how we approach this balance at Barracuda, taking inspiration from Cagan’s principles: 1. Deep Customer Understanding: We prioritize deep customer insights through continuous interaction and feedback. Understanding customer needs and pain points helps us identify features that will not only retain customers but also attract new ones because they address real problems effectively. 2. Focus on Value Creation: We invest in features that provide significant value to our customers, which naturally aids in retention. Simultaneously, we also look for opportunities where innovation can create a competitive edge. This often involves leveraging technology in new ways or enhancing user experiences to distinguish our offerings from competitors. 3. Empowered Product Teams: Following Cagan’s advice, we empower our product teams to make decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term visions. Teams are encouraged to experiment and iterate, allowing us to quickly adapt to changes in customer preferences and market dynamics. 4. Strategic Resource Allocation: We strategically allocate resources to ensure that investments are made not just in scaling and optimizing existing successful features (which aids retention), but also in exploring new areas that could become significant differentiators. 5. Iterative Development and Release: By using Agile methodologies, we can iterate rapidly based on user feedback and changing market conditions. This allows us to refine our offerings continuously, which helps in maintaining a competitive stance and enhancing customer satisfaction. 6. Monitoring and Metrics: We rigorously track success metrics not only for user engagement and retention but also for how well new features are received. This dual focus helps ensure that our investments are appropriately balanced and effective in achieving both differentiation and retention.

The most surprising aspect of transitioning from a Product Manager to a Director role was the significant shift in the nature of customer feedback I encountered. While I appreciated gaining more context and visibility at the strategic level, I found that my interactions with customers became predominantly centered around escalations and resolving issues. This contrasted with my previous experiences, where I often heard a balance of positive feedback alongside the challenges. Adjusting to this change meant focusing more on problem-solving at a higher level, though it also underscored the importance of maintaining a connection to the broader customer experience, beyond just their pain points.

As a hiring manager, I've found that the best product management candidates share a common trait: intellectual curiosity. They possess a relentless desire to learn, explore new ideas, and understand the 'why' behind user needs and market trends. This curiosity drives them to continuously seek improvement, both for the product and in their personal skill set, making them invaluable assets in the dynamic field of product management.