Your Minimum Viable MVP
A Go-to-Market guide for new Product Managers
This decade is seeing an explosion in the number of products being created and as a result, the demand for Product Managers is on the rise. Product Management was also ranked #3 on Glassdoor’s list of 50 best jobs in America in 2021, so if you have decided to pursue a career as a PM, you are in good hands.
While there is still a healthy demand for Product Managers, the supply is fast catching up. It can be a little difficult to make yourself stand out, especially if you are looking to get an entry-level role in this field. To make your path to landing your first PM role easier (and mine), I am going to share a quick and easy strategy for developing your product sense and boosting your visibility in the great big world of Product Management.
If you have read any of my previous articles on Product Management, you know that I made this career pivot about half a year ago and the process has been nothing but rewarding. There is so much to learn
The first thing you should know as a beginner product manager is that you are your first product. From the moment you decided to follow this path, you became responsible for defining your vision and your strategy for attaining that vision.
The second thing you should know is that to increase your chances of getting a role in Product Management, you need some Product Management experience. You need to have some experience to get a job, and to get some experience, you need a job. It may sound self-defeating, but with the help of a few tools, you can accomplish most of a Product Managers deliverables by yourself in just a few minutes.
Generate ideas/ decide
How you come up with ideas is specific to you. One method is to keep a journal for logging your daily observations. This journal can then be reviewed for ideas.
Scope your product
After deciding what you want to build, you need to determine the scope or size of your build. To do this, you need to decide your;
- Product Vision — This is a one-sentence statement that explains what you want to achieve with this product.
- Product Goals — These are more focused statements that detail what you intend to achieve with this product.
- Product Non-Goals — These are goals that you have explicitly decided not to focus on at this time due to limitations such as time or funding.
Prioritize your features
Once you determine what your product is going to do, you need to determine what tools you need to do it. These tools are your features. If your users need an account, then you need a login feature. If they can shop for different items, you need a cart.
Make a list of the functionalities your users will need to accomplish tasks that will lead to their goal fulfilment. Then number them in order of their importance. You should separate functionalities you need right now from ones that do not directly serve your product scope. This helps to reduce your development time and avoid scope creep.
Draw your user journeys
This is a diagrammatic representation of how your users will accomplish a task using your features. Your user journey can be represented using a task flow. Whimsical is my best tool to use for this.
Create Mockups
At this stage, you can start making designs or rough sketches of what your product should look like. If you have some design skills, you can create high-fidelity mockups using Figma and if you do not, paper and pen work perfectly fine as well.
At this point, you should have a document showcasing your grasp of most of the aspects of a Product Manager’s skills and duties. Repeat this a few times and you have the makings of a great entry-level Product Manager portfolio.
If you want to take it a step further, however, there are two things you can do to really stand out.
Develop
Take the next step and build your idea into a product that users can interact with. Even without sufficient technical expertise, being able to use low or no-code tools like Flutterflow can help nudge a recruiter or founder in your favour for your ability to handle every stage of software development.
Collaborate
Collaboration is the secret sauce to success in any endeavour. There is the popular African saying; if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It helps you leverage the skills and network of other individuals which can go a long way in increasing the reach of your work and optimising your problem-solution.
Collaboration also helps show potential employers your ability to work with a team and maybe even lead it. An essential part of a PM’s responsibilities is communicating with both internal and external stakeholders. A good way to showcase your abilities in this regard is to work with other people on developing projects.
You can build a cross-functional team of developers and designers and maybe even sales or marketing to give you some insight into how you are going to fit into the development process in your first PM role.
I created a little project in Notion using this outline which I have linked below. If you would like a template for this system leave me a message and I’ll make one to get across to you.
if this is something you would like to discuss, shoot me a Mail
Pair this reading with;
My last article explains crucial product management terms you need to know to survive as an entry-level Product Manager
Part 2 of Anesii’s series on creating a product management portfolio
Alicia Berton on becoming a product manager without technical experience
