There isn’t a single product management technique that will always bail you out. The most well-liked frameworks, like agile, focus more on the overall strategy your office employs. Team composition, workflow, timing, and tool use… They approach your entire operation with a holistic approach.
Ever questioned what your customers are contemplating? Naturally, I suppose! You should really have your own method of understanding your users’ thoughts because user knowledge—along with market and technical knowledge—is one of the pillars of product management. Getting rid of people is one surprising way that JTBD aids you in that process.
Job To Be Done and Product Management
You should put your first lesson into practice by letting go of “personas.” Building user personas is undoubtedly one of the most popular PM tasks. Your internal stakeholders, which range from engineers to marketers, expect you to have a much deeper understanding of your potential customers than they do.
You need to make clear the objectives users hope to achieve with your product, though. As a result, the story created using JTBD is very different. Instead of beginning with “I am,” put more emphasis on “I want to” and “So I can.” Why?So, is it really important to know who this user is? Later on, it might, but right now your goal is to match functionality with market potential. Therefore, the user’s immediate need (the task they want to complete) and the long-term objective they are moving toward our long-term objectives that they are moving toward are the most crucial factors (the job).
This is where the fun starts once you have established both TASK and GOAL. You can use a physical or digital whiteboard; what matters is that you visually represent the numerous intersections that these two factors bring about. This step shouldn’t be challenging if you have experience creating roadmaps or user journeys.
The many ways you can appease your potential market with your current or future product are what we’re attempting to elaborate on here. Product Management constantly monitors the competition and attends industry conferences.
12 Product Management Framework
The success of any product development process depends on efficient product management. It aids in ensuring that resources are used as effectively as possible and that all tasks are in alignment with the needs or pain points of customers. Because of this, product managers need to take a methodical approach.
This methodology can benefit from frameworks, which offer both a thorough and objective process for tasks like opportunity evaluation, prioritisation, and requirement definition. For anyone working in the field of product, the following 12 frameworks are a must-know:
1. Minimum Viable product
This framework, credited to Eric Reis, author of The Lean Startup, emphasises the significance of learning when creating new products. The approach, also known as lean software development, advises creating a basic (or bare-bones) product first for testing. The group creates a solution with just enough functionality to address a problem. This makes it possible to gather customer feedback and validate assumptions to determine what can be done more effectively.
2. Woking Backwards
This framework literally starts with what usually comes last in the product development process. It is sometimes referred to as the Amazon method because it was developed and made popular by Amazon. In order to determine whether the customer’s problem has been resolved, your product team starts by imagining that the product has been built.
You start by writing a press release announcing the availability of the product. The problem is discussed, along with the advantages the product has over competing products. This aids in ensuring that the product is worthwhile for creation.
3. Business Model Canvas
This model aims to shorten the product development cycle and make it more clear how the product team will create value. The business model canvas offers a thorough, high-level overview of the various strategic issues essential for launching the product.
This model is used by companies of all sizes to more effectively understand and describe their business models. It includes components that could differ from business to business and is frequently used in conjunction with the Value Proposition Canvas and other strategic management tools.
4. Job To Be Done
This framework, which is also referred to as JTBD, concentrates on identifying customers’ needs based on scenarios rather than personas. This strategy, promoted by Clayton Christiansen, calls for a deeper comprehension of the target market, including the goal or “job” that they would require your product to perform. Job To Be Done shifts the focus from the product to the customer. For product teams to know what to focus on, it helps to understand the customers’ purchasing thought processes.
5. Design Sprint
Design sprints strive to fit as much prototyping and product testing into a one- or two-week period of time. Teams gather to quickly test and develop solutions to the issue that the design sprint is attempting to solve. The sprint should conclude with a tested product that is prepared to enter development if everything goes according to plan.
Companies can use design sprints to test out a variety of solutions so they can confidently move into development rather than placing their entire bet on one unproven idea.
6. Innovation Adoption Curve
A model of how and why a new product or innovation is adopted is the innovation adoption curve. Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards are the five groups Everett Rogers used to categorise adopters. The framework emphasises the demand for distinct marketing strategies for every group.
7. Product Team Competencies
Among the frameworks Cabage has developed is this one. In particular when it comes to digital products, Product Team Competencies was created to make clear the essential skills required for project management. The spectrum of skills or capabilities is represented by a two-dimensional model. Product managers are assigned to one of two sides, depending on their role: tactical or strategic and internal or external. It is helpful to evaluate, communicate, and improve overall team capabilities using the Product Team Competencies framework.
8. DACI
DACI, which stands for Driver, Approved, Contributor, Informed, is an acronym. It is a framework for roles and responsibilities that promotes team alignment by making it clear who is in charge of what within a team or project. Although it shares similarities with the more well-known RACI framework, DACI is more pertinent to product management because it emphasises ownership models rather than delivery models, which are more in line with the Agile Product ethos. Use this framework to outline the responsibilities of the PM and the proper channels of communication with leadership, stakeholders, and other team members when beginning a new project or creating a new team. The framework shown below demonstrates how one might more likely express ownership within the product development team.
9. Minimum Viable Product
The minimum viable product framework is based on the idea that user feedback shapes great products. You build your product’s most fundamental, usable version and then release it to users rather than throwing darts at a board or spending ages creating “the perfect product.” Following their feedback, you update the product, giving their preferred features priority.
Because it uses the market’s voices to help you develop a product that fits their needs, the MVP framework is ideal for achieving product-market fit. This framework is particularly useful for startups because it expedites the release of your product and crowdsources feature priorities.
10. Kano Model: Balances efforts and rewards
Finding a product’s key attributes is the focus of the Kano model. Each potential feature is plotted on a graph with axes for functionality and satisfaction to accomplish this (the x and y lines; not the wood-cutting tool). For instance, Pong on the touchscreen would be high in satisfaction and low in functionality when used in a car, in contrast to seat belts. PMs can identify the best high-impact, low-lift priorities to complete first after plotting features on the Kano board.
Product teams are limited in their time. The Kano model makes it simple to develop visual representations of your priorities so that you can concentrate on your product’s most useful and exciting features.
11. Double Diamond
The Double Diamond framework is a four-phase or four-element design process model created by the British Design Council. Discovery, Definition, Development, and Delivery are these. According to its creators, all methods for creating something new follow the same four steps. Divergent and convergent thinking are both used in this iterative process.
12. SOAR: Plans for future
Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results are all abbreviated as SOAR. It is represented by four quadrants, with the top two highlighting the realities of your company (strengths and opportunities) and the bottom two concentrating on goals (aspirations and results). The four quadrants can then be filled in by PMs to create a summary of where your product is today and where it might be in the future.
The ability to tell a product’s story is made simple by SOAR. Despite being a high-level analysis, it aids PMs in explaining a product’s positioning and persuading stakeholders of its potential.
Conclusion
To guarantee the success of your product, you must have a product management framework. Your company, the product you want to develop, and the objectives you want it to accomplish will all influence the kind of product management framework you use.
It’s important to understand that using a framework will improve your overall product management and raise the likelihood that your product will be successful. If you believe it will be most effective for you, you can even combine different frameworks. Frameworks give you a road map so you can:
- Prefer to buy the best products.
- Adapt designs to customer needs and,
- Create a comprehensive portfolio that is in line with your markets and your risk tolerance.
Author Bio
Shweta Milan is a content writer, studying Journalism from Delhi University. She writes on marketing, health related and business related topics and good in other parameters of technology, Photography and editing. She has written for Thrv – Jobs to be done.
