Data-Driven Product ManagementPractical Ideas and Tools PMs CanAnd Should Use to Make Decisions

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About Me

Who here lives in Arlington? (Vote Dunn!) MIT mechanical engineer (but I never used it) 7 startups in 15 years Career path from support to implementation to

QA to PM

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Most PMs Aren’t Visionaries

Ideas come from customers, colleagues, and prospects

Steve Jobs isn’t walking into this product meeting

PMs probe, interpret, and synthesize

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Ideas Are Not the Scarce Resource

Ideas come in sizes: markets, features, bug fixes, and optimizations

They have different motivations Increased salesHigher retentionLower cost of goods

Unlimited resources, you could do it all – but we don’t have that

Someone has to decide what is nextThis is why PMs get paid the big bucks

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Optimize for Enterprise Value

The PM’s job is to prioritize What’s the North Star for your company?

Stars are directional – you can’t make a map to get to starHow do you know if you are pointed in the right direct?How do you know if you are making progress?

How do you compare apples to oranges? And compare that to bacon?

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“That is a knowable fact.”

What the advocate says“No one uses that feature”“Everyone wants this!”“That breaks all the time”“You're not fixing enough bugs”“This problem happens to everyone!”“I’ve heard this request a million times”

What the data says15% of users click that every weekWe’ve had 3 customers ask for this feature5% of support calls are associated with a bug

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Know Which Facts Are Knowable

Carefully separate opinion from fact, known from unknown

Huge, immediate reduction in complexity of the decision

Develop a third and fourth category1. We really don’t know2. Knowable fact3. We can know if we do . . .4. Before we decide, we really should know

A good PM uses all 4 categories to make a decision

This talk is more about 3 and 4

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Know Your Data. Wallow In It.

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Your Application Database Knows Your customers using your app are telling you

how they use it. You need to get the data reproducibly

You need data, not reportsKnow what you need to changeKnow if your changes actually worked or not

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Measure It From The Start Your application database can’t tell you

everything Make an early change that adds data and

measurementPipeline speedFunnel shapeDaily activity

Measure the Good and the Bad You have to know what the problems are You have to know when they get worse

Make a Dashboard of It

When Do You Have to Decide?

Most of the time, the answer is “later” Don’t decide until you have to

This is where the art meets the scienceKnow your downsides and worst-case scenarios, and mitigate them

Watch, and monitor Agile (“agile”) really shines here

You will have the development bandwidth when you need itUnfortunately frustrating for many customers and colleagues

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Time to Invest!

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Keep Investing!

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How Do You Decide?

Most decisions aren’t reduced to a time seriesComparing apples, oranges, and baconYour company needs all three

Collect all the data you canRead what the customer said (or potential customer). Talk to them

directly.Talk to the people who interacted with them (support, consultant, sales

rep, account manager)Look at the usageLook at the market and the competition

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Find a way to order the data

Whiteboards and stickies What themes can you find What time ordering can you find What pre-requisites can you find Which ideas are both cheap and enable discovery

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Build a framework

Whiteboards and stickies – and Excel Just make one up

10 points for data loss1 point for annoying1 point per customer affected3 points per big customer

You are the most qualified person to do it See what maps to your intuition, what doesn’t Know the limitations of what you built Iterate

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Customer Pain (in thousands)

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My Tools

SQLYou need access to the data, not reportsNoSQL has query tools, too

Text editorUltraEdit. Python, Perl work tooTurn dross into data

ExcelYou do know how to make a pivot table, right? Find the lumpy parts.Can you do vlookups in your sleep? Integrate your data sources

Tableau Whiteboards and stickies

TheBrain mind-mapping software

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