3 Minute Product Manager: The First 90 Days

hi I'm Todd bursar and welcome to the three minute product manager and our discussion on the first 90 days so if you were stepping into a new product management role or you re energizing your current role that first 90 days are critical do these days well and they're going to set you up for long term success so the theme of your first 90 days is early wins let's take a look at the recipe all right we're gonna look at the work of product management spread across four different areas so market intelligence strategy new product development and lifecycle management and the first thing that you want to do after you find your desk and understand a little bit about your product the first thing that you want to do is get out and talk to your customers you want to try to talk to around 10 to 15 customers in your first 90 days you want to do deep in-depth interviews with these customers really try to understand their needs and motivations I understand this is not easy you're gonna be hit with a lot of things in your first 90 days but working getting out and really getting a solid understanding of your customers is going to set the foundation for everything else that you do all right the next thing that you want to do is you want to do a first pass competitive analysis now we don't have a lot of time in our first 90 days so so don't do this one in depth you know save the more in-depth analysis for maybe your second 90 days but the first past competitive analysis just try to understand your direct competitors their direction where they're headed and understand any disruptive technology now the third thing that we want to do there's three different things we want to do around new product development so the first thing that you want to do is around okrs objectives and key results so I want you to work with your engineering leads and identify some really big impact items that you can get done in the first 90 days so find things that are important for the organization that are under that are valued internally and important for your customers so find one or two things that you can get out the door in the next 90 days and go ahead and put okrs objectives and key results around those the next thing that you want to do is you want to set your development buckets now get a different video on development buckets so you might want to take a look at that one but really what we're doing with development buckets is setting aside a portion or a big portion of our development time so that we can focus on these big impact items and get them done alright then the next thing that you want to do is you want to discovery and delivery process together with your engineering leads and your user UX or user experience designers work on a discovery and delivery process where you are really working with customers in an iterative development process so that you are you know trying out prototypes you're you're bringing them ideas together and you know maybe in your ethnographic research you're talking about you know you're trying you're getting feedback from the customers so they're evolving your product so that when you and your product comes out it's got solid product market fit all right then the last thing that we're gonna do in the first 90 days is I want you to a first pass pricing analysis again we don't have a lot of time in the first 90 days so don't spend a lot of time on this but look at you see if there's any early wins that you could focus in on that you could make me make a small child small change on your pricing that would have big impact on profitability all right all of this is going to lead to your work that's going to happen in your second 90 days and you're gonna have two things happen in your second 90 days two big projects ones around strategy development and the next is about finding growth free and market products your job during the first 90 days is to learn it's to build credibility for yourself inside the organization and it's to generate early wins what you want to do is you want to strive for a virtuous cycle not a vicious cycle a virtuous cycle so here's how it's gonna work so your ethnographic research is going to give you greater customer understanding it's gonna help guide your choice of the big impact items that you're gonna go after the okay ours so the okay ours and the development buckets are gonna focus your development team efforts and the development team with their newfound focus is going to deliver on those key enhancements and those key enhancements are going to generate management confidence your management team is going to look at you know what you're doing with your development team and saying you know good things are happening here and they're going to give you more support for farther reaching product changes do these first 90 days well and you're gonna enjoy tailwind as you move into your second 90 days I gotta admit I mean let's be upfront with this it's the first 90 days you're gonna get hit with a lot of things it's not easy to do this I've got more discussion on this in the book I've got on Amazon so becoming a more strategic product manager I've also got a course out on udemy product management 101 and there's lots of good ideas in the in Michael D Watkins book the first ninety days and as you work through this if you've got questions if you need some help reach out to me I've got my contact information here that's our three minute product manager discussion on the first 90 days of all your product management work goes exceptionally [Music]

Channel: Kevolve Product Management

Views: 18,691

Rating: 4.9824562 out of 5

Keywords: Product Marketing, Product development, Todd Birzer

Id: sxGJha37iQA

Length: 4min 44sec (284 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018