Who is the product manager on the project and can it come from the lead developer?

My name is Lyudmila, I have been a product manager for 7 years. I'll tell you what it looks like.

The most sublime and gentle being on the project is the architect. He always has a thought piercing the strata of the ages. But an architect is a technical specialty, and an architect cannot manage a project in the sense that he does not decide directly what users will need. This makes the product manager.
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The product manager overlaps strongly in functionality with many other roles. May perform the tasks of a project manager. And do something before and after. Here is its functionality in brief:

1. Analyzes what users may need and explores the market. That is, comes up with the ideas of new projects and puts them priorities.
2. Together with the technical team chooses a technical solution.
3. It calculates the economics of the product and determines whether it is worth it to do this at all.
4. Gathers a working group, sets tasks for architects and other key persons of the project.
5. It monitors all-all-all of the organization, in particular, is responsible for interaction with partners and vendors.
6. After implementation it accompanies the product, is engaged in its development and improvement for at least a year.
7. From time to time, wakes up at night with burning eyes and the idea of ​​a new product.

A product manager can come from a project manager. There is more responsibility on this role, but also the buzz, because you yourself invented something and created it - the sea. The coolest thing in our work is to make large-scale projects that “fly up” together with a cool team. This feeling inspires. But there are a lot of problems at work.

Important: hereinafter we are talking about the work of the product manager in the service, and not in software development. These are very different responsibilities and tasks.

How do they become product managers?

Sometimes it happens as a spontaneous quantum phenomenon. There was a certain person who first worked as an engineer, then became a team leader, then a project manager, picked up the skills of protecting the financial model and communicating with suppliers ... And then an idea came to him. He carries it to the head, the head gives him the task to reconnoiter the region more feasibly, then the calculation is done, and after a month or two our hero is engaged in the implementation of the project, which he himself invented. Still not really understanding what I got into.

In fact, of course, in 98% of cases, the product must be learned. A product manager can be a product manager, a team leader, an engineer, rarely marketers (and almost never a salesman).

On the first project there will be a sea of ​​rakes, sweat and tears, there will be children's jambs and a lack of understanding of basic things, but in the end everything will most likely work out. Because enthusiasm. And at this moment, when it became clear that the person had brought the project to the end, in the eyes of the company's founders and the general director, he acquired a special value.

The fact is that they do not need to lead. This is the team leader who can find work for himself, justify its benefits for the company and do it himself. That is the one who moves the business forward. Naturally, he is given the resources for all this.

Search for an idea

There is a company strategy, there is a market, there are all the resources of the company (both material and in the form of knowledge and connections) - you can move mountains. With a certain mental strain. Therefore, the first thing a productologist does is analyze possible directions of “where to dig”. Sometimes he has an introduction like “we want to capture this market in two years,” sometimes sellers say that customers often ask for something new for a task.

The first part of the work is the elaboration of the idea. This is a search for possible hypotheses, an attempt to confirm them, a market analysis - and the creation of a product idea. Idea generation is a creative process. The procedure for turning an idea into a product for the market is a process or project where there are many participants from different departments of the company and each has its own role. The product manager himself is responsible for the product concept. Architects, lawyers, financiers, and other people are invited to prove the idea, but the product specialist conducts all of this. And for all this is responsible. And provides interaction between all.

“Product” thinks who needs a product, what kind of business they will be able to attract, what market share they can count on. The main idea in the idea is UTP, that is, a unique selling proposition. Sometimes it happens that the idea is taken already existing, but on a new technical solution, and this allows us to provide much more interesting functionality and features.

Sources of product appearance are usually:

1. Global trends - we in Russia are about 5 years behind the US and European cloud markets, so we need to look there. For example, in 2010, when IaaS sales in Europe were in full swing, our customers were suspicious of this phenomenon.
2. Needs of customers. A productologist travels with sellers to large customers, orders in-depth interviews for needs, communicates with specialists in the company. Some of the most experienced productologists are those who worked in the target industry. This is a good help to meet customer expectations. Such a product knows for sure that it hurts anyone, and the products created by it cause tears of happiness to the techies from the industry.
3. Engineering ideas. It so happens that a company appears in the company who says, here the vendor has a new technology, and let's blind it with this - and it will turn out to be something cool. Or the engineer on the dispute collects some hell of a thing in the form of a prototype, and then she has an unexpected commercial use. And so on. By the way, the successfully found engineering idea is still a rare opportunity for an engineer to try himself on a project if the soul lies.
4. Own long-term development, changing the market, that is, the search for innovation. So often do research institutes, software startups or large vendors in their internal "incubators".

Protection of the idea

The idea is not enough to find, it is necessary to protect it. That is to land and monetize. We must clearly understand how to sell it and to whom. The market assessment, technical marketing, business case compilation begins. It is necessary to take into account the cost of technology, design. Consider the involvement of third parties - partners. Check prices on everything. Get grades on different parts of the project. Arrange a preliminary, collect prices, count the hardware and all the resources.

For example, to launch TekhnoDisk (our cloud file sharing service), we deployed IT infrastructure and software, adapted a user portal based on a ready-made solution, integrated it with information security systems and other systems, worked through license agreements, agreements with suppliers, etc. count in advance.

Then the project is defended, then there are detailed specs, but within the budget, which was justified by a step earlier. Further approval is given for the purchase.

In preparing a business case, the most difficult thing is to predict revenues.
For this, the market is estimated: you can either set a realistic goal like “we want 10% of the Russian market”, or the current sales data are extrapolated, an assessment is made by peers in the west. Great analytical work from a series of questions at the interviews "How many heels in Yekaterinburg." Naturally, there are some assumptions, but they are minimized by different tools.

For example, on the basis of our cloud (IaaS) there are many PaaS and SaaS services. A mini-project might look like this: there is a need for object storage with full support for the Amazon S3 API - how many customers will it go? They made an assessment, invited them - they started using it.

With a completely new service the most difficult. Often you have to go through hundreds of clients with research agencies. It is important to check the forecast and get into the customer's expectations, maybe even do some kind of test with the customer. And the very appearance of the product on the market changes the forecast of its consumption, but this is another story.

Implementation

This is the job of a project manager (well, when a product manager has a separate project, it makes life a lot easier) and an architect . My colleagues at the links are very well painted. In essence, we draw a plan, assemble a working group and arbeiten. We act.

While architects, programmers and contractors perform their tasks, the product specialist forms tariffs, prepares a set of product documentation - the sales kit and marketing materials for the product (including the content for the site). Can together with the marketer make a plan to promote the product.

Next, run the test before acceptance.

After acceptance

After acceptance, the product specialist conducts training for salespeople and explains everything to everyone. What kind of idea, who needs it, why is it cool, how to sell.
Then the product manager supports and advises everyone: he can participate in sales, goes to conferences and customer events to talk about the product.

The product manager drives the sale. The first time understands what and how. Receives feedback: how to sell, what to fix, how the product meets with the real world. You can not just take and send the product to float freely.

When the product is delivered, the product manager continues to support it. Often, development and refinement, processing of packaging services is needed. This usually ends with the fact that the product is encapsulated in something large or simply ends its lifetime.

The project ends with the acceptance, further development of the service, maybe a new project or backing up. That is, as the product develops after acceptance, the product manager spends less and less time on it, and more and more on something new, new. A product manager can lead several products, for example, several in maintenance and development, one in launch - a new one.

Difficulties

First - you need to always be aware of everything that is happening in the market. That is, follow the new trends. Most often it is a sea of ​​garbage, and survive well if 10% of new
technologies. But you need to know everything, so as not to miss something important.

Sometimes the idea of ​​a great new product comes during the implementation of something fairly ordinary. Here it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice and give it to another product specialist after protection in front of the grocery committee. It's a pity, but if you don’t do it at all, it will be bad.

Very often, when discussing a product idea, the situation between the product specialist and the development engineer becomes tense. The fact is that the developer may have his own vision of the product, and he knows how to do better. Often this is expressed in perfectionism, but technical perfectionism is not always for sale. It is solved by a very detailed explanation of why and what product the market needs. And that it is necessary to start with a minimum package, and then as far as development is concerned with hanging features.

Sometimes there are epic battles of architects, each of which has its own plan for the implementation of something, and you need to defend a specific technology. It is difficult to understand, but not the most beautiful, but the most functional and rational decision wins.

It rarely happens that engineers, on the contrary, lack knowledge or experience in a particular area, and then they try to remove pieces from the product where they feel insecure. Or a special case - the fact that the engineer seems incredibly complex, can be quite earthly. The complexity of the money does not always translate, so sometimes you need to think a lot and get a beautiful realization. I had a project where engineers told me that it was impossible, and then after a few days they came and said that they had figured out how to implement it.

Sometimes you need the iron will of the head of the company. The most serious battles are in the field of information security. Moreover, both our own and customers - for example, in the history of cloud technologies, the information security services of customers refer to the outside with suspicion. It happens funny: “And who is the vendor? Ivanov? He beat our CSO at school, we will not work. ” There are things like "we do not use wireless networks", "we do not work with vendors on" M "and so on.

How is a product expert evaluated?

• In terms of launch service. If time does not withdraw, the company will suffer direct or indirect losses.
• For income. After product launch, the product manager monitors sales and resolves issues. If the planned income is not achieved, find out why this is happening, for whose fault (the sellers may have their own plan or the sellers themselves may not sell, or the product promotion itself is poorly supplied). If there is still a problem in the product, a plan of improvements is drawn up.
• For pricing: tariffs, product margins.
• For the formation of the SLA metrics (the maintenance service is already responsible for compliance).
• Well, for the quality of new product ideas. More precisely, the ideas themselves are not needed by anyone - for the quality of the first miscalculations and protection, and then the implementation.

A couple more things

When your product works - it is not a victory yet. Victory is when your product brings a predictable income. For example, for me, Technoserv cloud is a huge story, where, on the one hand, I calculated everything from beginning to end and was able to achieve real financial results, but on the other, I understand how much more you need to do!

Where can I go from the product manager? In the head of the department, director of product portfolio, director of business development, consultant, go to sales or open your business. But this requires very good management and communication skills that are beginning to be relevant, starting with the role of the project manager.

The text was prepared by Lyudmila Lepekhina, product manager of Technoserv Cloud .