Product Management: 22 Tools and Methods

Over the last 15 years, I’ve gathered many “ways of working” as I was looking for the best methodologies to make my products work.
They say a product manager is a never ending education and knowledge seeking. Yet, I gathered the main tools used by leading product managers over the years.

As I see it, practicing those tools as much as possible can make our products the best

1.Research — is our way of examining what problem we want to solve, how many people have such a difficulty, how many would like to use or purchase a certain product that will give them a solution or relief for this need.

2.Initiate an idea — is the initial thinking, creation and characterization of the product that we want to initiate. This is the stage where we will define what our product actually does.

3. The Art of Asking “Why?” — is our tool to ask and answer why you need such a product, what you will use, what will happen if there is no such product. Like “Devil’s Advocate”, this is also our way of understanding the difficulties and objections that will arise from customers and how our product will solve them.

4.Competitive research — Designed to better understand competing products, strategies, features, messages, visibility, and marketing. So that we can differentiate our product from the other products in a certain category.

5.Product market fit — is a process in which we examine what is missing in our product in order to adapt to an existing business need or to a specific market. Or alternatively — to which market can our product fit in its current form. These are two opposite approaches and it is necessary to test the suitability for our type of organization and product.

6.Product scoping — is the stage where we organize all the created ideas or improve our existing product, and then sort them into categories and treat the problem, sooner rather than later. What will bring immediate and real value and what can’t wait for the sequel, because it is not accurate to the product goals we have set at the moment.

7.Pricing and evaluation estimates — is the stage in which the cost of the product, project, development, infrastructure, implementation, training and other resources will be estimated.

8.Setting goals — is the stage where we decide where the product should go, what results it should achieve, how many customers it should attract or in what quantitative and measurable way they will use a particular feature.

9.I prefer not to try to translate the phrase ROAD MAP — it is a process where we decide what stages we will promote the product, how many features will come in the first version, what capabilities we must have by the end of the current year, whether all features will be ready in time for customer X , What is the plan for the coming quarter or next year.

10. Product design — is the stage where product managers turn a short idea or initial requirement into a requirement document; it is the process by which we understand the system blocks, the business components and the connection between them. This is the stage where we detail as much as possible what developers need to develop. This is a whole world that I will try to describe later in the variety of tools and methods for characterization.

11. User Experience / UX Characterization — is the stage where we turn a business requirement from a concept into a “screens tree”, to the definition of the functional use, to a screen drawing, and clicks that will make the product easier to use and more loved by our users.

12. Micro Copy — is the stage in which the language that the system “speaks”; it is characterized and written: The buttons, the messages, the errors and the gestures.

13. Graphic design / UI — is the stage where we pass on our requirements and screens to designers who will illuminate our product in colors, shapes, looks and sensations, Look & Feel.

14. Development and Accompaniment Development — This is the stage where we pass on the requirements to the developers, monitor the progress of the development, we are attentive to the development needs and ask questions that fax the progress. We are available for questions, refinements and make changes and corrections as needed.

15. Quality / QA testing — is the stage where the organization (usually software testers) makes sure that the product we have developed is developed as required by the characterization. Product managers are required to assist in prioritizing bugs (malfunctions), marking those without which we will not be able to go live and those with whom we can live at this stage. Some bugs generate immediate or future new requirements.

16. User testing — is the stage where we test the product via the control group of our real users — we make sure that the product we have developed achieves the results we expected, we test the user experience, speed of use, ease of use and their desire to use our product again.

17. Greenlight / GO NO GO — is one of the last stages in the product cycle, it is a crucial stage where we gather to make a decision, whether our product is ready to be exposed to the world or not. This meeting is usually conducted by the product managers, together with marketing people, developers. testers present the current state of the product, what works and what is not enough, explain the business value that the version will bring in its current form, and at the end make a decision.

18. Pilot — is the period when our product is in the air, it runs alone but at an experimental stage or for a certain part of the customers. We will usually limit this period in time and clear goals; at the end of this period we will decide if and how we proceed from here. This is a step that all the factors in the system have a great attention to updates from customers to respond quickly.

19. TTT / Train the trainers — This is the stage where product managers pass on all the knowledge they have to the operators, instructors, technical reporters or any body that passes the information on to customers or users.

20. Launch / Go live — is the final stage of our cycle, in which we celebrate the full birth of the product / feature. But even after that, attention to the product is required.

21. Implementation / Implementation — is the stage where the organization widely supports the escalation of the product to the air, in complex products some require unique settings for each customer, in different countries or for different needs, other complex products require training at the customer, webinars, instructional videos, presentations and lectures.

22. Analysis and Reporting — is the stage where we seek to see the user data and usability to determine whether the product has achieved the goals we set for it. If the product met its goals maybe we could have set a higher threshold; now we can examine requirements for further. And if the product did not meet the goals we set, we will examine the reasons and make the necessary adjustments until it meets them.

Looks like we’ve done?, hell no! 😊
A good product manager will not be able to rest.
As dedicated parents, we are always with the finger on the pulse. The process starts from the beginning with every feature, every change, and every product.

The process can be long, the tools are various and the tasks are complex. However, it is better for us to plan the way, examine the investment that lies ahead, and develop only after planning. If we run fast, sometimes we find that our product may not be used as is, or partially used or different from what we planned.

This is a list of the “professional” methodologies and working methods, remember that product management also has quite a few unique soft skills (i’ll leave it for a future post)

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