What is Product Management and PMF
2019-07-25In my last post I shared a deck on "What Product Market Fit is not" in which I used the following definition of Product Management
Product Management is working towards getting the Right Product in the Right Package to the Right User
In this post I would like thorough some light on the the word "right" which hides a lot of details.
Right Product
- Is it doing a job(s) for the user
- Does it differentiate well enough w.r.t competition
- Will it evolve with the needs of the user and the market
Right User
- Don't sell ice to Eskimos, you are building the wrong product
- Bad users don't want to pay, they don't add value to your product
Right Package
- Is it priced correctly?
- It the experience right? It is easy to use?
- Are there any friction points
- How it it placed against competition (price, features, package)
- Is it targted to the right geography/market?
Product Market Fit
Based on this my definition of Product Market Fit became
Getting the Right Product in the Right Package to the Right User at the Right time.
The difference between product management and Product Market fit thus is just timing. Which also brings in luck into the picture. You can have all the right things, but fail because you were too early (the problem was not big enough) or too late (the problem was already being solved). Timing also seperates the entrepreneurs, who are taking a lof more risk, than a pure Product Manager, who already has a customer base to cater too.