Apr 7th, 2010 |
“My fundamental philosophy on product management… you need to start with a user-centric point of view,” Dan Olsen, product manager and Web 2.0 Expo Speaker, said during his recent interview with us. We asked Dan to talk about his upcoming session, Lean Product Management for Web 2.0 Products, and to give some perspective on what life for many product managers is like in the Web 2.0 world today.
Dan started off designing submarines (a 12-year process per sub), moved on to Intuit to lead product management for Quicken, did the same at Friendster, and now holds the position of CEO at his company YourVersion, Inc. (YourVersion is “Pandora for your real-time web content”: a real-time discovery engine that finds the latest, relevant content tailored to your interests across news, blogs, and Twitter.) He’s also consulted along the way to such startups as Box.net, YouSendIt, MoodLogic, Xing (formerly OpenBC), Epocrates, Angie’s List, and Attensa. Through all this, he’s identified a few patterns of what good product management requires as well as where the role is headed.
Blending of Roles
A veteran product manager – 18 years in the high-tech sector – Dan has seen quite a few changes with the role, particularly with how many hats a PM has to wear. “In the old days the engineering team would build a product and the marketing team would sell it,” he said. “But the distinctions separating marketing from product management are going away.”
He believes product managers nowadays are part marketers, part engineers, and part designers. “Think of Facebook: Do they “market” themselves in the old-school sense? No, the product markets itself. Think of how closely tied together Amazon’s revenue is with their user experience. Good product managers embrace that expanded breadth because it helps them deliver more customer value.”
“You need an openness and willingness to open your horizons,” Dan said when talking about what skills a good PM needs in the Web 2.0 world. He said the best way to learn this was to take positions where you are required to learn a variety of skills.
Of course, most startups don’t have the luxury of doing it any other way – such as in his own startup, YourVersion.com. “In startups you don’t have all functional roles. You may not have UI designers.”
The jobs usually filled by entire departments fall to a few employees in many startups. Your community manager could double as HR, or your SEO expert is also your QA tester. This lean approach can be made easier by what Dan said is one of the few things he’ll spend significant money on: Time savers.
“Time is your scarcest resource,” Dan said of startup environments. He recommended such things as second monitors to increase productivity, faster computers, and even white boards in the office to rapidly iterate what you’re thinking to the team.
Functionality vs. Cool Factor
“A lot of startups spend time looking at other startups to see what they’re doing instead of looking at customers,” Dan said. It’s tempting to get lost in a potential feature’s cool factor or the latest design trends, but Dan said product managers need to focus on what customer need or want their product is filling. Their product needs to be functional.
As an example of getting lost in the cool factor, he cited the early days of PayPal: The original company developed a technology for people to beam payments to each other via their Palm Pilots. As a Pilot owner at the time, Dan thought it was a great idea… unfortunately for PayPal at the time, he was one of the few.
He compared this to sites like MySpace: “No one thought it was designed elegantly… but the functionality was so compelling – it was the only site where you could express yourself… It’s better to have a nice design, but you can get by if you have functionality people like.”
Metrics are Your Friends
Finding out what people want in their web-based apps and products can be very easy if you know how to run the numbers. “Never before have product managers had access to so much real-time information about their product and how customers are interacting with it. Companies that can iterate and improve quickly have a big advantage over those that can’t.”
What metrics you use depend on what questions you need to answer. This is a major theme in Dan’s Web 2.0 Expo session. He’ll also discuss how to learn quickly from your mistakes using these metrics.
Fundamental Philosophy on Product Management
The basic skills a good PM needs to have include the ability to understand users, analyze unmet or underserved needs, understand what’s possible with technology and how a better or different product can be created, and finally, the ability to prioritize.
“The transition to the web [from pre-web product management] has radically changed what’s possible with metrics and optimization,” he said. “The pace of product development is also much faster. It’s never been easier or quicker to launch products.”
To find out how to learn these skills and improve your own lean product management style, check out Dan’s session at Web 2.0 Expo this May.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
[...] Dan Olsen has prepared another interesting presentation which was delivered at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF. While I see directionally where the presentation is going and can easily understand the fundamentals put forth, I’m left a little bit wanting, since it implies that build technology quickly that users like and do it efficiently and you will be successful. More specifically, here is what Dan said @ in an interview for his pitch at the Web 2.0 expo: My fundamental philosophy on product management… you need to start with a user-centric point of vi… [...]