Nitin G.

The are just a few spots left for me 2h masterclass Essential Coaching Skills for Product Leaders, which I'll be offering to both US and UK/EU time zones. Pick the option that suits you and we'll go from there. My masterclass will aim to answer these three core questions: - What do we mean by “coaching”? - How can a coaching approach change your leadership style? - What is it about asking open-ended questions that make all the difference? The course is a mix of theory and practice, giving everyone an opportunity to put your learnings into practice. If you have any other questions, just drop me a DM and I'll be happy to have a chat.

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There are a lot of newsletters out there, but the Product Leadership Essentials newsletter is your monthly guide to building up your product leadership skills. Subscribe and join and get the latest news and top tips sent straight to your inbox. 📩

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Keeping PRDs Relevant Throughout Development – Tips Wanted As companies scale and Product teams become bigger, there is a much larger need to standardize artifacts and processes. Here are some of my observations in the attempt to standardize artifacts, particularly with Product Requirement Documents (PRDs): - Inconsistent PRDs Across PMs: Despite having templates, each product manager tends to approach research and PRD creation differently - Insufficient Research: Some PRDs seem to be written with minimal customer or market research, which can impact the quality of the product. - PRDs Losing Relevance (This is a big one): Often, after the initial review, PRDs fade into the background and aren't used as the central reference point they should be. I'm curious: - Have you encountered similar issues in your organizations? - What strategies have you implemented to standardize processes and ensure PRDs remain useful throughout the product lifecycle? - How do you keep cross-functional teams aligned and engaged with these artifacts? Why this matters: I believe that having standardized processes and artifacts is crucial for: - Ensuring Alignment: Keeping everyone on the same page, from engineering to marketing to leadership. - Improving Efficiency: Reducing redundancy and streamlining communication. - Enhancing Product Quality: Facilitating better decision-making and product outcomes through thorough research and clear documentation. I'd love to hear your experiences and any best practices you've found effective. Your insights could be incredibly helpful for others facing the same challenges. Looking forward to your thoughts! #ProductManagement #BestPractices #Growth

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The Myth of the Product Launch Day Despite the popular mantra "ship fast, learn fast" being around for years, many teams still hesitate to embrace it. The primary concern is that the product isn’t at the desired level of quality. Based on my 15 years of experience in product launches, here are some key insights: 1) Launch issues will happen, but they’re manageable: - Nobody will remember a failed launch if you react quickly. Launches with problems are inevitable, but if you quickly address and fix these issues, they become insignificant in the long run. - Teams might feel embarrassed about a rushed product, but customers will appreciate a company that listens and responds swiftly to their needs. - Studies show it’s more cost-effective to launch quickly and make improvements post-launch than to delay until perfection. 2) No Single ‘D-Day’ for product launches: - The anticipation of a product launch as a major event is often overstated. Unless you have a dedicated fan base, most product launches go unnoticed by the general public. - People are preoccupied with their own lives and interests, so immediate widespread attention is rare. - Holding back value to make a bigger, better release because you think customers prefer a grand launch doesn’t make more impact. Customers are often too busy with their own lives to notice. 3) Separate product launch from marketing: - Launching a product means making it available to users, which doesn’t necessarily require a major marketing campaign. - You can announce the product before the launch to build anticipation or wait until after the launch to gather customer feedback and tailor your marketing message accordingly. - What matters is to not lie to customers, and target them accordingly with the state of the product. Ultimately, adopting a “launch fast and iterate” approach proves to make more impact over time than waiting for the perfect product. Ensure your team and stakeholders understand that marketing and product launches can be decoupled, and adjust your strategies and messaging to users to reflect this.

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After a while away, I revisited BQ Studio (https://lnkd.in/g3Tvs2Rw) today and was blown away by the new features and enhancements! Be a fan of BQ, I couldn’t wait to share, here's what stood out: ✨ **Gemini in BQ**: Now providing data insights, and SQL/Python code assistance. ✨ **Continuous Queries**: Automate event-driven data pipelines directly on BQ Studio. https://lnkd.in/gmS8qsqk ✨ **Workflow**: You can now execute code assets in sequence at scheduled times directly on BQ studio ✨ **Data Canvas**: Use natural language to discover, transform, query, and visualize data in a seamless interface. ✨ **Colab Enterprise Integration**: Embed Python notebooks directly with built-in BQ dataframe support. A great addition for data scientists. And … - **BQML Enhancements**: Process documents, transcribe audio files, and perform advanced model monitoring with new functions. - **Vector Search**: Search embeddings using powerful vector search functionality. BQ Studio just keeps getting better! #BigQuery #DataScience #GCP #GoogleCloud #BQ #BQML

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In Enterprise B2B SaaS, product building and feature delivery are only a portion of a PM's role. Many PMs may feel restless or disengaged when not immersed in feature development or large-scale initiatives. On the other hand, product leadership often becomes overly focused on the velocity of feature delivery, overlooking broader opportunities. However, there are far more exciting ways for PMs to contribute. These opportunities go beyond feature work to involve deep, strategic efforts that shape the long-term vision of the problem space. Watch my latest video to learn how to transform your product environment into meaningful engagement opportunities. Elevate your perspective from feature-centric thinking to becoming a visionary, long-term product leader! https://lnkd.in/gAx3fs4t

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***How to actually be a data driven product manager? Well if you are are the kind of PM who only looks at data supplied by your analyst in excel and has never documented a deliberate instrumentation section in your PRDs and has never logged in into your web analytics tool but love to proclaim yourself as a data driven PM, well let me peel the layers a bit*** 1. Let's start simple - first step is understand some basic nuances of data that you are seeing - let's say you are looking at conversion data - some simple questions you could ask yourself - Is it visit level or visitor level data, does it make sense to look at this data at this level, what do the attribution windows look like? Default attribution is ok or should you look at longer term attribution. 2. If the data feels off, do you have the ability to look under the hood and know whether it is due to an incorrect instrumentation problem or due to incorrect segmentation strategy - eg some segments applied at visits level, some at page views level. Hint - segmentation should generally be applied at same granularity. 3. When you are asking for more granular data - know what is feasible and what is not. Eg. if as a PM while launching the product you never bothered to instrument price buckets for devices on key events - then expecting your analyst to supply you conversion data for high end vs low end devices is foolhardy. Sure, he could first pull out the data by different device models and then manually bucket them but he is just paying extra tax for your own sloppy work. If you were planning to do this analysis from get go you should have built it into your instrumentation strategy. 4. Which brings me to a very important point always be very very deliberate and clear about your instrumentation plan- events and dimensions and make it part of your PRD. 5. Finally, you need to know the right tracking strategy for the problem at hand. Eg. if you want to know conversion of users who click on filters in the funnel, what should your tracking implementation be? Do you think if you track the click info in a page level variable as normally click data is tracked, you will be able to find the conversion? I hope you will do this in the future before loudly and proudly proclaiming yourself as a world class data driven PM. Let’s stop BS-ing shall we? Follow me for high quality content, not product philosophy but practical insights - https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND also here https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq While you are at it you can also grab my product assignments playbook, 19 real product cases, all successful submissions, real job offers, ~258 pages of content. ***Grab it now**** - https://lnkd.in/gHzyN-Xc #product #datadriven #analytics

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Curious about how your team measures up when it comes to continuous discovery? So are we. We are collecting data to provide a clear benchmark. Help us out by telling us about your team’s discovery habits: https://buff.ly/4dJCqAB #CDHBenchmark #prodmgmt #ux #engineering

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10 questions product managers should ask before building a new feature [1] Why this feature? What problem are we solving with this feature, and is it truly a customer pain point? (or just your wishlist!) [2] What’s the problem? Clearly define the issue you’re tackling. [3] How will this solution make our users' lives easier or better? [4] How will you measure the success of this feature? What are the key success metrics to track the impact of the feature. [5] Does this feature align with our broader product vision and company goals? [6] Have we done enough research to establish the need of this feature? [7] Why not other features? Why to choose this feature over others? (Given there are always resource constraints) [8] Any way to test out the relevance/need of this feature before rolling it out full-fledged? [9] What resources and budget are needed to make this happen? [10] How will we grow this or increase the adoption of this feature? Do we have a plan around it? By asking these key questions, we can ensure we're building features that truly matter, avoiding costly detours. What other questions do you think PMs should ask before rolling out a new feature? #ProductManagement #UserResearch #CustomerSuccess

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 Some great thoughts here by Apoorva Mishra. Particularly the point on frameworks being “supplements, not substitutes"... Worth a quick look for anyone in product development!

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Learn the ins and outs of data latency with this expert guide from Oracle. https://lnkd.in/ez9YN2aE

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New post: 3 Product Principles to give a pragmatic foundation for product-centric organisations https://lnkd.in/eeFiMT9r ‘It’s policy for Digital Departments digital to be ‘product-centric’ but this term’s not explained. The only Government product thinking we can find is the product manager role description. The role description is a specialist, technical document intended for use by technical specialists. But it’s being shared with colleagues as the blueprint for being product-centric. We need something that talks about the principles of being product-centric in plain language, in a way that can support pragmatic and incremental change.’

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New essay: Combating roadmap sprawl Synopsis: the growth of many product orgs and roadmaps can feel uncontrolled & inefficient. So much focus and energy can go towards priorities and problems that are poorly connected to the 'urban core' of your strategy & business. It doesn't have to be that way. Many orgs can benefit from learning how 'smart growth' works in the context of urban development. Hint: the focus is on quality (of life), sustainability and communal integration.

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Mistakes that I make as a #ProductManagement mentor/ leader Mistake 4: Focussing to mentor only on the hard skills- problem structuring, product discovery and prioritisation. And not mentoring on the soft skills like relationship building, proactive communication and messaging for different stakeholders to build trust and credibility in the system.

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PM Stereotype #3: The Strategist This is the missing half of the Product-Owner —a mid-level PM solely responsible for thinking of the “big picture”, looking at the users, business and market, talking to managers and stakeholders and devising the perfect roadmap. However no PM, senior has she may be, can do a good job without having tactical understanding of the software and the team. Handing off features to someone else to figure out the “small details” has never worked. Product development requires many iterations and changes. Splitting the decisions across two people makes everything slower and less effective.

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The north star metric isn't just a compass guiding us; it's a window into the soul of our product, reflecting the core value we deliver and the profound impact we aspire to have on our users. #NorthStarMetric #ProductManagement #ProductValue #Impact #UserFocus #StrategicDirection #ProductVision #ProductStrategy #MetricsThatMatter #CustomerCentric #ProductGrowth

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Struggling to add value as a DS/ML Product Manager? I get it...it isn't easy when you aren't the expert on DS/ML. You rely on some amazing Data science folks and data engineers to build some fantastic models for you. Plus it is super easy to fall in the trap of letting the data teams do the leg work for you. However there is a lot you can do as a PM to make sure that you add value to the team. Here is how - 1. Nail down the objective function. Sounds easy? Think again. Any real life business problem will have metrics and counter metrics. For eg. as a PM you may set the objective function as maximizing the conversion of the user on your e-commerce funnel and you want to build a DS based ranking model on your search results page, very likely that the model will start ranking lower ticket size products on the top because in general conversion is inversely proportional to price. Now, you are probably making less gross margin by selling lower ticket size items. The right thing to do is maximize ARPU and this may have downward impact on conversion. It is your job to explain why this is so to the stakeholders. 2. Nail down the user As a PM you are the expert on the user, again let's take the same example as above. To maximize ARPU you need to balance b/w ticket size and conversion. A key component of this is demand elasticity. How much bumping the higher priced products impacts conversion. Now at what granularity you are breaking down your users and user segments and building the elasticity curves will impact how much value you are getting from your ranking model. If you are serving an affluent customer with a cheaper item because you didn't break down the segments sufficiently you are leaving money on the table. You should make sure models cover this. 3. Help your DS team with domain context. As a PM you have hopefully good understanding on what is the mental model of the user and what impacts his decision making. And what signals work as proxy. You should recommend high quality signals to the DS team. Again taking the same example as above may be the price bucket of user's device is a great indicator of user cohort/segment and the ranking model can improve it's efficiency by including this quality signal. It is your job to make sure this attribute makes it to the feature list. 4. Help your team with signal coverage Any model is as good as the quality of inputs. Let's say gender is a good predictor of what kind of content a user consumes on an app then it becomes super important to have good coverage of this signal. As a PM, it is your responsibility to build useful customer facing features on your app that gets users to reveal their gender and ensure good coverage on this signal. Eg. you could build a cool avatar concept on your app that indirectly increases coverage of this signal. Follow me for high quality content https://lnkd.in/gHweK_q7 AND also here https://lnkd.in/ggUKftFq #datascience #ml #productmanagement

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One of the most-sought coaches for continuous product discovery is dropping free training. If you’ve been reticent to embrace continuous discovery and delivery #cdd, here is a low risk way to better understand it and give it a try. #shewrotethebook

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The product lifecycle is like a Bollywood movie: Starts with a bang, full of drama in the middle (bugs!), and ends with everyone wondering if there will be a sequel (new version) or if it's just a one-hit wonder. #productmanagerlife #productmanagement #productmanager #agile #productowner #officehumor #worklifebalance #softwareengineeringhumor #uxhumor #customercentric #productlifecycle #productlaunch #bugs #productdevelopment #newversion #bollywood #softwareengineeringhumor #productmanagerlife

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