Product management process

Do you want to launch a successful start-up?
Do you want to take your business to greater heights? Are you stuck in some launching crisis?

Through this blog, we will look into details about the entire product management process, which is very essential to take your product from the base level to a reputed brand. It’s mandatory that you know the product management process to handle your product and business smoothly.

Here I will be discussing my own experience working with different industries. As I have already written a blog on my journey with the pharmaceutical and food industries, you must be familiar with some general product management processes. But in this blog, we will discuss the entire process that must be applied in any industry for its growth.

Once I got the chance to work with the educational industry, The company used to make high-definition videos with great animations for NEET and JEE aspirants. It already utilized enough of its resources to make videos on each and every concept that it wanted to teach. The target audiences were the students of 11th and 12th standards who aimed for the JEE and NEET exams.

Icon conducted a meeting with them to understand their problem before making any concrete roadmap.

Me: What kind of videos are you making?

Answer: We are making HD-quality videos on different concepts of the JEE and NEET syllabus. Our videos do not focus on chapters in the book but on concepts in each chapter. Each video teaches a single concept with the best-quality animations.

Me: How are you marketing it among the students?

Answer: We are conducting simple exams in different schools and distributing study pads for free to the toppers.

Me: What is your pricing strategy for the course?

Answer: We have kept 12,000 rupees for all concepts in 11th grade and 15,000 rupees for 12th grade. And if the student wants to purchase both courses, then they have to pay 22,000 rupees.
Their main problem was that they were not able to make enough sales.

Market research and idea generation

This is the most crucial step to understanding the pain points of the customer and our business idea. Since in this case our product was already made, we still prefer our market research so that next modifications can be done based on that research only.

We knew about our target customers. Still, we wanted to segment the population based on their needs. We used the platform named SURVEYMONKEY to take the survey, and through our other internal survey processes, we concluded that students in the southern part of India were more interested in buying the course than those in the north. Demand in the western part of India was also good. Their major pain point was the language barrier. There were many companies like PhysicsWallah, etc. that provided the course, but they were not very popular in south India.

Then we went on to do the SWOT analysis of our competitors. This is a crucial step in the entire product management process. We reached the conclusion that if we allow students to buy the course of certain concepts that they want to learn instead of the entire course, then that will be more affordable for students. Example: If the student just wants to learn CENTRE OF MASS, then he can purchase only that concept course. This way, students can target their own play list, and this will be more affordable for students, and the company will also have a proper purchase rate.

Concept development:

Now we had to shape the initial ideas into a more concrete concept. So, we made the list of changes that we decided and checked for their feasibility with our existing resources and the potential of ideas through sequential monadic testing. In my market research for product development, I have clearly explained these tests. We created a good user story, defining how students will interact with our product and what problems it will solve.

We also forecast the potential ROI and revenue projections based on our market research and targeted sales. Then we planned to launch our MVPs so that we could solicit customer feedback and make iterative improvements to our product. Our MVP consisted of only a few concept tutorials with all our plans of action that we decided (as mentioned above) and went to a few listed schools to test them.

Prioritization:

After the testing phase, we learned about the concepts that students found difficult to understand and also those concepts that students chose the most. We prioritized those tutorials, made the best possible changes to the animation, and added better questions so that students could understand the entire concept in depth. We also focused on some tricky questions, which tested the higher-order thinking skills of the students. We can say that we allocated limited resources, such as budget, power, and mankind, to the prioritized features.

Road mapping:

Since our owner already made the product before contacting us, we didn’t have much flexibility in preparing the road map for product development. But we must follow a roadmap for developing our product. This is also one of the main steps in the product management process. It covers a timeframe spanning from several months to a year, depending on the life cycle of the product. While preparing the roadmap, proper collaboration across various departments is important. It includes product management, engineering, design, sales, customer support, and marketing. And this road map must also be shared with internal teams, investors, and other key stakeholders.

After preparing the road map,product development must begin. For any general product development, which I have discussed nicely in my blogs on pharmaceuticals and fintech, the following steps must be followed:

Each team plays an important role in building a product.

Clearly define the detailed requirements of the product and discuss with key stakeholders.

Try to follow agile methodology for product The quality assurance department must always go for bug testing at every Gather feedback and do iterative.

Testing and iterations:

After launching the prototype, we must gather feedback and do continuous iterations to evolve the product that best suits market trends and technological advancements. This is the stage that I consider most important in the entire process of product management. In a general conversation with product managers, we discussed different parameters of testing and iterations to be done.

Person 1: Which kind of testing must be done for any product prototype?

There are various parameters for testing. They can be:

Functional testing to verify product per for manga sperits Usability testing, which includes UI and UX assessments of the product, can be easy to Performance testing on the basis of speed, responsiveness, and scalability of the security testing to identify vulnerabilities and protection against potential Compatibility testing is needed to ensure that the product runs smoothly across different devices and operating systems.

Person 2: What should bed one be after all the testing?

Is the product perfect now?

Me: A product can only be perfect if customers accept it. Collect feedback from internal stakeholders, beta testers, early adopters, and end users. After getting feedback, make constructive improvements to make it a better product.

Person 1: If we add new features to the product after getting feedback, what should our approach be then? Should we re-test everything?

In this case, we must conduct regression testing so that existing functionality remains intact and unaffected by updates.

A very important duty in the entire process of product management is proper documentation of findings, action items, and decisions. Clear communication is mandatory.

Market launch:

When we were launching our courses in the market for JEE and NEET aspirants, we built a comprehensive launch plan that included all our strategies, timelines, and tactics for introducing the product to the customers. We set our market positioning for the product. Our positioning can be categorized under “motherly care.” Our whole campaign revolved around this.

We made proper marketing strategies to generate awareness and interest in our product, which was a warm help for the students who wanted to make themselves conceptually strong for every minute topic to play in the bigger game. We understood the pain students felt about not having a strong foundation. and like a mother, we help them build this foundation. We also strategized digital advertising, timelines, and traditional marketing.

We followed a very unique approach to on-ground marketing. We printed our company’s logo on white canvas basketballs. Then we kept competition schools. Those who could basket five times would get a 30% discount on every topic. This way, we could create awareness of our product in the minds of students in a very enthusiastic manner. We also collaborated with our sales team and trained them to sell our product.

Go-to-market execution is also a key step in the process of product management. We should always monitor the progress and obstacles that arise. Again, feedback collection and iterative optimization are very important. After proper product monitoring, product life cycle management is very important. You must take care of your portfolio of products and services and always focus on innovation and evolution as per changing trends. My blog on product management in fintech clearly talks about the life-cycle management of products in great detail.

Conclusion:

The process of product management involves various stages. And one thing is common at each stage:

“Feedback collection and iterative improvement”. Various stages include:

Product ideation through market research, concept development, prioritization, road mapping and product development, market launch, performance monitoring, and life cycle management.