WTF is an ICP 🧐, Staying sharp as a PM ⚡️, Craft a compelling elevator pitch 🛗, Ditch the PRD 🙅, and more
Weekly Roundup 12 🔁
👋 Hey, Sam here! Welcome back to the 🔁 Weekly Roundup edition 🔁 of The Product Trench. Each week, I curate deep dives, trends and resources related to product management startups and leadership.
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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎
It has been a busy week, so let's just get to it.
This Week's Roundup 🔁
Dangerous anti-patterns of product management
How to find your first ICP: A guide
Transitioning to a PM-guided culture
A guide to minimum viable product
Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist
Time management techniques that actually work
Derisking 101: How to identify and reduce risk in your daily work
Staying sharp in a fast-paced world
You don't have to be a manager
How to craft a compelling elevator pitch (6 min video)
Dangerous anti-patterns of product management (3 min read)
Product management often falls prey to dangerous anti-patterns that can derail success. Common pitfalls include:
Focusing on adding features rather than delivering real value.
Relying too much on intuition without leveraging data.
Confusing busyness with productivity.
Other risks involve misalignment between goals and user needs, ignoring user feedback, and poor communication among teams. Addressing these issues is critical to ensure products meet customer needs and achieve business objectives.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Align your product goals with user needs and data-driven insights to deliver true value rather than just adding features or keeping busy.
How to find your first ICP: A guide (7 min read)
Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a triangulation exercise that balances quantitative data, qualitative insights, and market analysis.
Quantitative methods, like data analysis, reveal patterns and trends in customer behaviour.
Qualitative approaches, such as interviews and surveys, dive deep into customer motivations and pain points.
Finally, market analysis provides context by examining competitors and broader market dynamics.
By combining these three perspectives, you can iteratively refine your ICP, ensuring it aligns closely with real-world needs and market opportunities.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use a triangulated approach that combines data analysis, direct customer feedback, and market context to accurately define and refine your ICP.
Transitioning to a PM-guided culture (4 min video)
To shift your team's culture from PM-dominated to PM-guided, you need to leverage influence, especially if you hold a senior position. Start by observing and listening to the team dynamics. Then, approach your peers by acknowledging their achievements and subtly pointing out that PMs may have too much power. Propose a more balanced approach where all team members, including engineers and designers, have a say in product decisions. Elevate non-PM voices by including them in key meetings and decisions, moving beyond the typical approach of merely exposing them to customer pain points.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on nurturing influence and inclusivity in decision-making by empowering non-PMs and fostering a culture where every voice is valued.
A guide to minimum viable product (6 min read)
The article demystifies the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), emphasizing that it's not just a smaller version of the final product but a tool to test assumptions quickly and cheaply. It outlines the key characteristics of an MVP—minimum features, fast iteration, and real user feedback—and discusses common pitfalls like over-engineering or misinterpreting the "minimum" as "barely functional." The piece also covers practical steps to define, build, and measure the success of an MVP, including setting clear goals, identifying core features, and using metrics to validate learning.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on creating an MVP that tests your core assumptions, not just a watered-down version of the final product.
Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist (6 min read)
The article argues that traditional PRD (Product Requirement Document) templates can be rigid and stifle creativity. It proposes switching to a PRD checklist that focuses on key elements while allowing flexibility. This approach promotes clearer communication, reduces unnecessary details, and aligns teams on the essentials without being bogged down by format. The checklist is categorized into must-have sections such as objectives, user stories, and constraints, making the process more dynamic and tailored to the project's needs.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Transition to a PRD checklist to streamline communication, foster creativity, and focus on what's truly essential for your product development.
Time management techniques that actually work (4 min read)
Ten practical time management strategies to boost productivity include using your calendar for to-dos, completing tasks that take less than two minutes immediately, setting up a "waiting for" list, protecting deep work time, and saying no more often. Other techniques involve avoiding meetings in the morning, keeping work asynchronous, and employing a virtual assistant to handle low-impact tasks.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Maximize productivity by scheduling dedicated deep work time and offloading low-impact tasks to others.
Derisking 101: How to identify and reduce risk in your daily work (9 min read)
To manage risks effectively, identify potential problems early, learn from past experiences, and take proactive measures to prevent unnecessary mistakes. Focus on the most significant risks, use first principles for decision-making, and take proactive steps to catch issues before they escalate. This approach minimizes preventable problems and helps in managing outcomes more effectively.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Cultivate a proactive mindset in risk management by anticipating issues and addressing them before they impact results.
Staying sharp in a fast-paced world (4 min read)
Staying sharp as a product manager involves continuous learning through two key approaches: focused learning and serendipity learning.
Focused learning is goal-oriented, structured, and time-boxed, allowing you to master specific topics deeply.
In contrast, serendipity learning is about broadening your awareness by curating diverse content and engaging with it regularly.
Together, these methods help you maintain a balance between deep expertise and staying updated with industry trends.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Incorporate both focused and serendipity learning into your routine to stay ahead and maintain a well-rounded skill set.
You don't have to be a manager (6 min read)
Not everyone needs to pursue management to advance in their career. Individual Contributor (IC) roles like Principal or Staff positions offer top-tier pay, autonomy, and prestige without the burden of managing people. These roles, now more common, allow professionals to excel without shifting into management—a path often unrelated to their core talents.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Consider IC roles or advising if you seek career growth without the challenges of management.
How to craft a compelling elevator pitch (6 min video)
Use the hero's journey framework to create an effective elevator pitch and tell a compelling story that hooks the listener.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Start your pitch by setting the context (the customer's ordinary world), introduce the problem (the villain), and end by teasing your product as the solution.
👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.
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See you next time.
— Sam ✌️
I enjoyed this week’s list - I had missed David’s LI post and the YT videos as well as Aakash’s PRD checklist! Thank you for compiling the good PM material!
Thank you for the shout out to my post on learning strategies too!