Product work falls into four areas: understanding customers, setting strategy, executing, and leading people. Here is what each one means, and where I have done it.
I have owned products from the first customer conversation to years of maintenance, as a founder and as a product manager.
Knowing who the customer is, what they need, and what the numbers say.
Talking to customers and clients directly and turning what they say into decisions.
Setting the right numbers and using them to decide.
Designing products that are easy to use.
Deciding what to build, why, and how it moves the business.
Setting direction and the order of work.
Tying product work to revenue, retention and growth.
Choosing where to play next.
Turning decisions into shipped, working products.
Clear specs that teams can build from.
Getting it built and shipped.
Shipping updates on a predictable rhythm.
Making sure it works, and keeps working.
Getting the product in front of customers.
Getting results through teams, partners and leadership.
Building and running teams.
Bringing many groups to one plan.
Winning support from leadership.
Real decisions I made, the data behind each, and what happened.
| Decision | Data I used | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Which courses to build next | Demand research, competitor and pricing sizing, RICE scoring | About 45 courses launched, each with KPIs set at launch |
| Build in-house or with an outside expert | Team capacity, subject expertise and cost | A mixed model with about 8 experts on revenue share |
| How much to pay for a referral | Acquisition cost against lifetime commission | About 600 rupees against 4,800 (8:1); 50% month-over-month growth |
| Which version of a feature or campaign to keep | A/B tests and Mixpanel funnels | Kept the version that performed better |
| Whether email journeys were working | Churn tracked 1 month before and 5 months after launch | Churn down 22% |
| Where learners were getting stuck | Learner interviews and the premium question queue | Learner dashboard; completion up 24% |
| Whether live bootcamps were worth running | Live attendance and purchases within 24 hours | 450+ attended; about 17% bought within 24 hours |
| Where the team was losing time | Hours spent per task, per month | Two tools that took reporting from 1 hour to 15 minutes and updates from 80-90 days to 30-45 |
Talk to customers, the team and leadership. Learn the numbers that matter and where they come from. Map every product, owner and date.
Agree the one or two metrics to move. Set up the weekly rhythm, the roadmap and clear owners. Ship the first quick wins.
Ship the first bigger change and measure it. Write the procedures, automate the repeat work, and report results to leadership.
Sandeep Tomar