Common Mistakes A Product Manager Should Avoid
Product management is the process of creating the right product for the right person to solve the right problem. The right person with the business and technology, the customer who is at the heart of the product management process. It is the process of transforming a vision or idea into an effective product.
The product manager is responsible for evaluating the markets and competitors, as well as drawing the original product view based on his findings. The responsibilities of the project manager are strategic and tactical, and he must be a strong leader. He can connect points between different groups working on a product, from design to engineering to sales and marketing.
However, as four out of every five new products fail to make an impact in an already saturated market, it is more important than ever for product managers to avoid product management mistakes that often result in significant disappointments for themselves and their teams.
Product managers seem to be at risk of making more mistakes than right, using archetypal spreadsheets instead of the appropriate road-mapping tools for the purpose (PMs sometimes waste several hours a week) taking everything — but — into the kitchen. Immersion approach to action.
Also, we have put together a list of 6 common mistakes that a product manager should avoid.
1. Focusing on the solution rather than the problem
Product managers may be engineers and designers at heart, but jumping too fast into product development is the recipe for failure. Before you start building wireframes or developing a product strategy, you need to step back and focus on the superficial problem you are trying to solve.
We recommend dividing the process into two sections: problem location and solution location. When in trouble, stop making suggestions or any urge to offer a particular approach or idea. Your role is to listen and understand the client’s key pain points, goals and needs. Whichever model you operate, whether it is complex or the solution, you can produce as much as possible.
Related reading : Developing an MVP? Here are 3 Tools That Your Project Manager Should Use
2. Don’t let your vision limit your growth
One of the most important elements of a product manager’s job is the ability to ask the right questions, which motivates your team to fight for a feature or to approach customers for valuable feedback. However, you need to make sure that your vision does not blunt your understanding of creating space and environment for transformative development. Yes, everyone must work together to achieve a common goal. Still, if you start with too many specific boundaries, you run the risk of creating box-thinking patterns that are detrimental to the sense of creativity you are trying to inspire. Wear your detective hat, ask the right questions, evaluate your data, test your findings and share your findings.
It will focus on moving your team forward – towards a solution – rather than trying to find a better map of something you have already built in your head, which your end-user will never need.
3. Go beyond the needs of the customer
Of course, you want to know what your users think and deliver the products they trust. On the other hand, most clients are not engineers or designers, and it is not their duty to think creatively.
Before the iPhone, ordinary mobile phone users did not spend much time thinking about a device that would allow them to listen to music while doing their banking service following important messages. They were so eager in their daily routines to see what they were missing.
Product managers need to be aware of customer preferences, but revolutionary innovations only happen when you give them something that customers do not realize is what they want.
4. Changing the scope very often
One of the key characteristics of a startup product is agility. You can follow a weekly or bi-weekly sprint. However, once the purpose of a sprint is frozen try to stick with it.
If the purpose of the planned task changes frequently, your team is more likely to lose focus and ignore the importance of the purpose. Sometimes the reason for such changes is that your primary customer often changes his mind. However, it is better to say “no” to your customer or ask him to hold the replacement request for a while.
While “market demand” is always important, it is important to evaluate the implementation plan to ensure high productivity in the long run. If such changes occur frequently, you should review your product management planning process and try to find a solution to the problem.
5. Adding more and more features to a bad product
It is a trap of bells and whistles. If a product does not work as you planned or it is not well received, it prompts you to upgrade it – for example, by adding a new feature.
The more things you can do, the more users will join.
Maybe. Maybe not.
When a product is already having trouble connecting, adding extra features can make the user experience even worse. Your basic features and skills must be flawless to function effectively. Once you have mastered them – and so have your users – you can focus on building that solid foundation.
6. Don’t confuse the needs of the product buyer with the end-user
Your customer and user are not always the same person. While addressing the needs and concerns of your buyer is crucial, the ultimate success of an item depends on its ability to deliver value or reduce its consumer seizures.
Customers – in other words, the people who control the purse strings – are generally familiar to product managers and their teams. However, their needs may differ significantly from those who use the product in their daily lives, professionally or personally.
Sales and marketing are useful here. For example, their understanding of influencers and users in a client organization can be very useful for the product manager in determining where their team’s focus should be.
Conclusion
A successful software company is impossible without a strong team, a comprehensive business model, and the capital to support it, good marketing strategy, demand, and the flexibility of steering with market demands to meet customer needs.
The examples above make it very clear that you can fight even if you find investors and get all the funds you need. Although the failure of these startups does not diminish the chances of success of other startups. It’s about playing the game wisely.
Startups face a large number of challenges, and there is no magic recipe for success. However, by avoiding these obvious mistakes, you can increase your chances.
Whether you make one mistake along the way or many, what’s important is you keep moving forward.
