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HOW TO GIVE PRODUCT FEEDBACK

Yvan Castilloux Product Management

Jana Mobile (www.jana.com)

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WHAT IS THE PROBLEM - 2 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

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PRODUCT: Dev resources are scarce and product must focus to build the next BIG features. SALES: Has aggressive sales targets to meet every quarter. Has a field view of how the market is evolving.

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SALES PERSPECTIVE OF PRODUCT

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I have $1m of business at stake. This is huge. Let’s do something quick.

Product people are not supporting us - they don’t understand our customers.

I know what the market wants. I talk to customers every day.

Why does it take so long to build stuff? This feature is super simple.

I have worked so hard to build up this account. Can they just help me?

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PRODUCT PERSPECTIVE OF SALES

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My engineering team is getting distracted by short-term features with no clear benefits.

Can they just sell what I just built?

We have so much stuff to do.

We need to create disruptive features to win the market in the long run.

Sales doesn’t understand engineering. They keep giving us too many ideas without context.

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BUILDING SOFTWARE CAN BE ANALOGOUS TO BUILDING AND MAINTAINING A HOUSE

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… AND SALES IS ALREADY SELLING THIS AMAZING EXPERIENCE!

• BUILDING THE FOUNDATION • BUILDING THE RIGHT STRUCTURES • INSULATING / PROTECTING • MAINTAINING / FIXING • + BUILDING A GREAT INTERIOR EXPERIENCE!

SOFTWARE IS HARD TO “SEE” BUT THESE NEED TO GET DONE!

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NOBODY WANTS THIS (I.E. AN UNLIVABLE MESS)

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WHERE DOES PRODUCT TAKE ITS INPUTS?

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• MARKET TRENDS (READINGS, CONVERSATIONS WITH EXPERTS)

• EXAMPLES OF PRODUCTS THAT HAVE HIGH VALUATION / CUSTOMER TRACTION

• COMPETITION

• ANALYTICS ON MANY EXPERIMENTS DONE IN THE PAST

• COMPANY VISION / MISSION

• DATA ON “ALL” CUSTOMERS

• SALES TEAM

• ENGINEERING

• BUGS THAT NEED TO BE FIXED SO THE HOUSE DOES NOT CRUMBLE

… AND WE GET IDEAS FROM SO MANY PEOPLE… IN SLACK, IN DISCUSSIONS, EVERYONE HAS AN INPUT (MGT TEAM, ENGINEERS, OTHER TEAMS, URGENCIES)

THE TASK / STORY BACKLOG OF MOST ENGINEERING TEAMS WILL BE HUGE WITH BUGS, FOUNDATIONAL WORK, AND OTHER GREAT IDEAS!

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GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE WRONG WAY

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Our volumes are low today. I’m sure this will work. What is the ETA?

What is the ETA of the feature we brainstormed over a beer?

One customer had a great idea. Could we do this? If so when?

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GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE WRONG WAY

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WHY CAN’T THE PM PRIORITIZE THIS?

• There are many great ideas in the backlog. Many are “proven” with analyses and experimentations.

• It is crucial to have some analysis in relation to our revenue and retention metric • Engineers can’t change epics all the time -> product quality could suffer tremendously • The PM does not know the ETA until the feature is scheduled, and only a few tickets per

week are. • Simple conceptual ideas can take tremendous amount of time.

LET’S TAKE AN EXAMPLE, AND LET’S QUANTIFY AN EXAMPLE OF A TRADE-OFF:

1.Current strategic epic (e.g. targeting): $1m per month of potential revenue 2.Team reprioritizes it for a new unproven idea, which turns out to only bring 0.5% of

revenue ($500 per month) or the customer pulls out last minute (then $0 per month). 3.Then this is 2 extra weeks that we’re not capturing the million $ per month (+

competitors coming at us).

The risk of a thrashing and not being diligent is high!

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GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE RIGHT WAY

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Our volumes are low lately. How can we figure out why this is happening?

Our biggest customer — 10% of our revenue — has seen lots of strange behavior recently. I think this may be true for everyone. What is the best way to analyze this? I can help out since I just learned SQL.

With the help of all AMs, I have gathered a list of 5 product ideas that could be big. I want to see what you think and how it can be prioritized vs. all of the great things you’re doing.

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GIVING PRODUCT INPUTS THE RIGHT WAY

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THINK LIKE A PM!

• It’s never obvious what to do. Engineering resources are scarce, things take a lot more time.

• Product can’t afford the risk of not being diligent, even when something is conceptually interesting.

• Most new things are not obvious to prioritize right way. • I personally have a backlog of 20 great things I want to prioritize (coming

from Mgt, other PMs’ ideas. data science, slack, other Ams / Sales, iHop, engineering teams)

• If you think your idea is great, then help us out by doing some the leg work -> think like a PM.