That thing you (forget to) do part 3: Product management

Recently, I was invited by startup incubator JFDI.Asia to deliver a talk entitled “That Thing You (Forget to) Do” (inspired loosely from Tom Hanks’ movie “That Thing You Do”) on best practices of product development, management and marketing. In the last part, we focus on product management and how start-up teams should generate, organize and analyze data that comes with the rollout of the beta product (see part two).

Update on Post (3 May 2012): Video of the talk in JFDI Asia – credits to JFDI for recording it

Product management is probably the toughest of the trio, and that’s why I leave it to the last. The essential aspect of product management is to sew the threads of development and marketing with data measurement, customer feedback and team execution.

One of the most frequently asked questions from start-up founders is, “If there is conflict within the team on the direction of the product, how should we decide?” It’s actually not a tough question if the founders are analytical, logical and able to stomach their own egos and say, “Yes, this did not work and let’s try something else.”

Product management: The lean start-up and permanent beta

In the first article of the series, we stressed on the importance of planning and execution. We built on the existing framework of Eric Rees’ “The Lean Start-up” model, where we create a product using the agile methodology, gathering user data and feedback, and iterating to the next version of the product.

If we find that the feature of the product does not deliver, then we pivot to something else. The concept is intrinsically simple because the product is permanently beta and constantly evolving to the point where it can address almost 99% of customer needs. What people often don’t figure out is the actual implementation in practice.

I want to point out some challenges that founders face with their employees in Asia as compared to Silicon Valley. The first problem is attitude. Everyone has heard of the ideal Silicon Valley employee: Passionate, always ready to give and execute on ideas and put in 150% because his future is tied to the company.

In reality, many employees are far from that ideal.

Some engineers are afraid to speak up and even upon being encouraged to do so, got scared when being challenged. The worst part is that they have an employee attitude in that they only work from 9am to 6pm. Most people are aware of these problems and have encountered them. You probably can’t change their attitudes overnight, but everyone can take a step to nudge them in the right direction.

This problem has everything to do with product management because the project is affected when founders can’t convey their vision and mission to the employees and excite them to do something that means everything.

Here’s a way to induce agile development slowly in a typical Asian setup. First, let the engineers plan a small feature that they are going to build. Be the critic and bring up different issues that might affect the feature. Remember that the product managers has to oversee every aspect of the product, and dealing with loose ends is pretty important.