Frameworks for structured product thinking

Anyone coming new into this field of product management, have to have a structured way of thinking towards things and the best way to do that is using different frameworks. Product Management is all about removing and reducing ambiguity and for that the person’s thinking/ideas need to well structured and communicated well across teams and stakeholders.

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Any product is a subset of the company/organization you’re that is part of. In the case of the startup, it will be backward where the product leads to forming the company. For the company and product to do well, it needs customers, and to have customers we need to market it (on a high level). The company is also located in some geographical location (Landscape) with its own governance, politics, competitors, market, and other complexities. So, to break this down on a high level we have — Landscape → Company → Product → Customer

Now let‘s go deep and describe the different frameworks that can be used to detail out/structure all these.

Landscape

1. Porters 5s:

• Threat of New Entry — Is there a barrier to entry?
• Threat of Substitute — Are there competitors?
• Power of Suppliers — Is the company heavily dependent on its suppliers?
• Power of Buyers — Is the company heavily dependent on its buyer?
• Market Rivalry — Is there rivalry among the competitors?

2. 5 Cs:

• Company — Your’s company’s SWOT Analysis, Strategy, Vision, and Infrastructure
• Competitors — Who are your competitors and what are they doing better?
• Customers — Who are your customers and their needs and wants?
• Collaborators/Channels — Your suppliers, distributors, partners, or any other enabler of your company
• Climate and Cost — Regulation, Tech Changes, Economic conditions, Cost of your product

Company:

1. SWOT:

• Internal Landscape — Strengths and Weakness
• External Landscape — Opportunity and Threat

2. Goals: Understanding the company’s vision or goals

3. 4 Ps (Marketing):

• Product — Your actual product
• Price — Create the perfect pricing, check the pricing models
• Promotion — Promote your product using different channels
• Place — Where the product is located → Physical store, online website, App, etc

Customer

1. 5 Es :

• Entice — Entice the user to use your
• Enter — Make them enter and explore your product
• Engage — Engage and hook the user
• Exit — User performs the action
• Extend — Foster strong relationship with the user so that the user keeps on coming

2. AIDA :

• Attention — Same as Entice
• Interest — Get the customer interested in your product
• Desire — Convince the user that they want your product
• Action — Making the user do the specific action → Sign Up, Purchase or Play

3. REAN :

• Reach — Activities required to reach the users
• Engage — Engage the user with your product
• Activate — Same as action
• Nurture — Same as extend

Pricing Models

1. Free or Ads-Supported — Its ad-driven business model similar to Facebook or Google
2. Freemium — These are product and services you get it for free but you need to pay for the premium version/services
3. Tiered — Different type of prices segmented by volume, customer or features (SaaS Model)
4. Ala-Carte — Pricing each feature/service separately (upgrades)
5. Subscription — You pay out a subscription fee for the product/service
6. Free Trial — Short Term trial at the beginning, once the users get hooked you ask for money
7. Razor Blade Model — Similar to razors, where razors are cheaper but blades are expensive so that the users have to keep on purchasing the blades

As a product manager, our main role is to build and launch products and features; that is design, build and track products/features. And product design, launch, and tracking have own frameworks.

Product Designing and Improvements

1. Problem — Company Goals — Compare the existing solution — Customer and Market — Use Cases / Pain Points — Vision and Brainstorm — Prioritize and Trade-off — Summary
2. CIRCLES

• Comprehend — What, Who, Why, How??? → Goals and Metrics
• Identify Customers —Who are your target Customers?
• Report customer needs — List the Pain Points (Create a vision from the pain points)
• Cut through prioritization — Prioritize your features/problem statements
• List Solutions — List down your solution, show your creativity
• Evaluate Trade-offs — Discuss the Trade-offs
• Summarise — Give an overall summary of the above

3. As-Is and To-Be Process — You understand and map the existing process and try to create a new better to be process

Product Metrics

1. AARM:

• Acquisition — Tracking customer signups for a service.
• Activation — Getting users that have completed registration
• Retention — Getting users to use the service often and behave in a way that helps the user or business
• Monetization — Collecting revenue from users

2. AARRR:

• Acquisition — Same as above
• Activation — Same as above
• Retention — Same as above
• Referral — Do they like it enough to tell their friends?
• Revenue — Same as monetization

3. HEART:

• Happiness — By Surveys, Net Promoter Score, ‘Love’ Feedback ratio
• Engagement — Check DAU/MAU, Sessions and frequency
• Adaption — New Users and Usage
• Retention — Cohort → # users in the cohort [2nd time period]/# users…[1st time period]
• Task Success — Time completed, task or errors

4. GAME: https://hackernoon.com/metrics-game-framework-5e3dce1be8ac

5. Engagement/Retention — Three Loops:

• First Loop — Data Loop → Adding information in the platform
• Second Loop — Compulsion Loop → Using the product/service again and again
• Third Loop — Viral Loop → Inviting more friends in the platform

Product Launches

1. Market — Users — Features — Distribution — Rollout — Buzz — Partnerships — Risks
2. Pre-launch Activities — Launch Activities — Post Launch Activities

Feature Prioritization Frameworks

1. RICE: Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort — https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/
2. More: https://medium.com/@freshtilledsoil/how-to-prioritize-product-features-and-improvements-8aea72c8bf27 and https://openclassrooms.com/en/courses/4544601-build-a-product-roadmap/4964556-discover-5-prioritization-frameworks

While creating a new product/feature we can take a bottoms-up approach i.e. start will the problems of the end consumers or top-down approach i.e. start will the goals of the company and use the above frameworks to structure our thought process. Please note, these frameworks are only aids, not rules; once you have the grip of having structured thinking you can create your own framework!

Some other frameworks are:

Behavior Problems —

1. STAR :

• Situation: Describe the context
• Task: Describe the responsibility in that situation
• Action: Describe how you completed the task or endeavored to meet the challenge
• Result: Finally, explain the outcomes or results generated by the action taken

2. DIGS :

• Dramatize the situation
• Indicate the alternative
• Go through what you did
• Summarize your project

Estimation Problems —

1. Issue or Logical Tree to break the Problem
2. Top Down or Bottom’s Up Approach

Critiquing Design —

• Is the feature/product innovative?
• Is it useful?
• Is it trustworthy?

5 Why’s —

Ask why 5 times, you would be surprised about the outcomes

5W’s & H —

• What is it?
• Who is it for?
• Why do they need it?
• When is it available?
• Where is it available?
• How does it work?

Customer Segmentation —

• Recency
• Frequency
• Monetization

I will keep adding more framework as I can recall and learn about them.

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