LWOL Recap - Feb 17, 2021: Product Management Panel

This week’s LWOL featured Product Calgary and a discussion about Product Management. You can watch the full recording here and the comment log is available on our Slack channel. The session was hosted by Calgary Community Manager Brigitte and Co-Hosted by Edmonton's Steering Committee Chair and Entrepreneur James!

Speakers

Martin L’Heureux - Panel Host
Martin is a co-founder of Product Calgary and started his career as a developer with a taste for strategy who moved into business analysis and later product management. He has a passion for understanding customer needs  that powers his teams to deliver extraordinary experiences.
Christa Hill
Christa is VP of Product at Morgan Stanley where she works with FinTech’s and Non-Profits.
Ali York
Ali is the Product Management Lead at 7Shifts, a startup that helps restaurant owners manage their shift scheduling. 
Miche Priest
Miche started her product management career at Alta ML but recently joined Sylvester AI as their Venture Lead. They use machine learning to help identify pain in felines using facial recognition. 

Conversation Highlights

Note: We’ll us the abbreviation PM to refer to the career of Product Management, the action of Managing a Product, and the individual with the job title Product Manager. If this isn’t clear enough in context, we’ll write it out.

What is Product Management NOT?

• It’s not project management - PM is iterative, based on business needs, user needs, and technical capabilities of the team, whereas project management is about keeping a clearly defined timeline on track
• Product Owners and PM are not the same thing. Owners are a role within the dev team responsible to collaborate with the PM around the priority of work, business goals, and resources availability (backlog). 
• Product Owner -> PM is a career path, but not the only one

What does a PM do?

• Understand problems to be solved, vision of the company, prioritize them based on the business opportunity
• Business model <-> stakeholder group collaboration
• (Customer + Business) * Technology = Product
• PM brings together research, market opportunities, prototyping, etc. and determines if the solution solves the customer problem effectively

Is sales or marketing an important skill set for a PM?

• It is one way, but not the only way - it IS important to understand the customer however
• Knowing how to reach out to users is easier with sales experience

Customer Success vs. PM

• Customer Success means being an advocate for the customer and can include customer support roles. This role helps PM intake lots of information so the PM can analyze it and look for solutions.

What are the qualities of an ideal PM?

• Curiosity, constantly learning
• 5 why’s rather than taking face value 
• Prioritization
• Knowing when to say no vs. yes
• Setting expectations
• Communication skills
• Critical insight

What is the impact of PM on an organization?

• Allows focus on the product, especially when the founders go from being close to the product/problem and focus on fundraising or other business priorities
• Focus on the problem rather than the solution to de-risk product development 
• Hone in on the problem that is worth solving

What business can get the most benefit from a PM?

• All stages of tech companies
• Having a PM signifies the ability to scale
• PM is about discovery THEN delivery 
• So-called ‘Feature factories’ focus only on steps 5-7 above
• Mature PM focuses on steps 1-4

What’s the advice to a founder thinking of hiring a PM?

• What is the problem you need them to solve?
• Don’t expect miracles, especially if the job is poorly defined
• Understand the difference between a B2B and B2C PM/product

Why should you NOT hire a PM?

• When you aren’t clear on goals or expectations
• When you need a project manager or a salesperson
• If you aren’t ready to give autonomy and trust
• When you need a place/person to send all the problems you don’t know how to solve
• If you don’t have a clear vision of the company and the customer, and an understanding of why you are serving that customer