Mellavin Mar

PRD templates don't work. In all my jobs but this one I foolishly tried to push a PRD template with my team. But PMs will naturally adapt their approach to effectively communicate the opportunity and requirements. There was always an annoying rule-breaker who proceeded to deviate away from the template, and that rule-breaker was me. Instead of rigid templates, I now focus on requirements for the requirements. Is the problem statement specific? What input metric are we moving, and what are we controlling for? Have we made explicit the tradeoffs of potential solutions? Are we clear about our assumptions? What's the minimum we can build to validate our hypotheses? What risks and dependencies might we face? What are your termination criteria? #productmanagement

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One of the sneakiest but an effective way to test product hypothesis and guage user demand is Fake door tests PS: done these in Uber and a startup , both times it helped give us rich data and informed product strategy A good tool in the arsenal of #Startups and #ProductManagers Do not overdo it though . https://lnkd.in/geZ9QNQZ

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You are a PM and you love building new products/features. But most of your past launches looked promising on paper, had early beta users lined up but the product never really took off beyond early beta users. You iterate and you spend months agonising over why your product failed. Still you don’t see a clear answer. 😥 If you want to debug your scenario, sharing top 4 dysfunctions of early stage product teams(as experienced first hand across startups/Meta), which often lead to product failure: 1. Ship early/Fail fast: Your team focussed on the mantra ship-early and iterate, fail fast and other intelligent sounding jargons, rather than doing rigorous product thinking required in finding key underserved customer needs, which your team is uniquely positioned to build. 2. Let’s build for who we can reach: Your team focused on building for every customer you can reach easily, not for customers who really need something differentiated from you. 3. Lack of user segmentation:Your team had no in-depth understanding of who precisely you should build for and which needs you can address for them. 4. Falling in love with the solution, not the problem: If your team doesn’t obsess over solving real user pain points, the product will flop—no matter how cool the tech is. So next time, spend more time thinking about who you should really build for and why. And then think some more, as PMF is always attained for specific segments of customers having unmet needs not for everyone. #productmanagement #producteams

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Sharing an open Product Manager role, Typeform offers a unique opportunity to lead growth strategies that enhance the B2B user experience. Here’s my take on a potential strategy. Permit me to share "Growth", this new tool for working with forms from the Typeform. It offers you more variants of forms and logical links, which will allow marketers to work more flexibly in creating their own Customer Funnel. Typeform has an open Product Manager position, which would be a good opportunity to showcase your strategic thinking skills. I am sharing my ideas about the "Typeform - Growth" possible strategy. In product-led growth, adapting strategies to the unique needs of different customer segments is critical. At Typeform, we could maximize Growth feature adoption by tailoring strategies for two main groups: existing paid clients and new B2B users. 1️⃣ For existing clients who haven’t yet explored Growth, we should focus on: Personalized onboarding: Automated emails and push notifications that highlight Growth features and showcase how data-driven insights, report automation, and enhanced segmentation can benefit their workflows. Interactive examples: In-product interactive cases with real results and metrics demonstrating the added value of Growth functionality. Demonstration videos and easy sharing of analytics, API documentation, and client case studies: This content could attract new users from within the client’s team. 2️⃣ For new B2B users, quick integration and showcasing ROI are key: Guide to Success: Creating a specialized onboarding guide for building data-collecting surveys, forms, and quizzes tailored for different industries. Industry-focused templates and cases: Making Typeform instantly relatable by featuring use cases for each sector Integration with popular tools to make quick onboarding with essential tools like Slack, HubSpot, and Zapier to instantly show Typeform’s place in their ecosystem. 3️⃣ In B2B, case studies and templates are powerful motivators. Encouraging early adopters to share templates and success stories can drive adoption by creating a trusted community of shared knowledge and inspiration. When companies see similar businesses succeeding with Growth features, it's a powerful incentive to dive in. Finally, it’s not just about conversion but about retention through targeted actions. Integrations with clients’ existing CRMs are essential for long-term success. A targeted onboarding process emphasizing quick wins, tangible steps, and clear ROI can build momentum and help Typeform customers see the product's true potential. #ProductGrowth #ProductStrategy #PLG #Onboarding #GrowthMarketing #CustomerSuccess

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Struggling to break into product management or transition into different PM roles? After last week’s post, I received a lot of questions. This month’s FAQ answers some of the most common ones to help you navigate today’s competitive market. In this month’s FAQ, I cover: ✅ How to transition from enterprise to consumer PM roles ✅ How to compete with more experienced PMs ✅ The importance of learning AI (and why just taking courses isn’t enough) ✅ What work-life balance in tech really looks like ✅ Whether learning design is necessary for PMs Key takeaways: 1️⃣ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐌 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠. It’s unlikely to happen in a single step. You need to work toward gaining relevant experience to bridge the gap. 2️⃣ 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. Competing with someone who has more years of experience? The key is applying for roles where your experience is highly relevant, even if they have more years under their belt. 3️⃣ 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭-𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥. But companies are looking for actual experience, not just an understanding from online courses. 4️⃣ 𝐖𝐋𝐁 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭. Work-life balance in tech varies greatly, but efficiency and time management can make a huge difference in improving it. 5️⃣ 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬. As a PM, knowing enough about design to work well with your design team can improve your product sense and collaboration. 📨 Link to the full post and newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gxcg6mxt If this resonates with you, 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 to help others who are navigating these same challenges. #productmanagement #productmanager #jobsearch #techcareers

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After many years in product I finally decided to take my first, and probably last, "PM course": Shreyas Doshi's Product Sense course: https://lnkd.in/g6Gm9YzU Why my last? I don't think I'll ever need to take another course after this. He asked our honest take, so here's mine: The premise of a PM course always felt ironic to me because doing product in theory is never *remotely close* to doing product in practice. Well, this is finally the course that is built for, and built by, product in practice. Name a product concept that you've banged your head against the wall trying to put into practice (I'll name a few: Product Sense, Product Strategy, Product Vision). You've already read 5 books, 10 medium articles, and listened to 12 podcasts, and still feel like doing it yourself is like grabbing water. Every one of those concepts (and more) has finally been decomposed, distilled, and packaged into something that can compare to working directly with a world-class product leader yourself. Do yourself a favor and take this course, there is nothing remotely close to it that I'm aware of in existence. Also: you will laugh - guarantee you'll experience at least 1 moment of catharsis as Shreyas Doshi skewers some aspect of the tech industry and our experience as product people within it.

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When you say your product has Product Market Fit, it means your product has achieved PMF for specific segments of users, not everyone which you consider as your potential user. PMF is always segment specific, it is never generic. So next time you want to grow your product, understand which set of customers loved your product initially and find similar customers who have similar needs.

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I recently took Shreyas Doshi's product sense course where we learned the secret to building winning products: There are no secrets Most of us are doing it wrong :D But you can get much, much better at it than you realized If you learn to think correctly The course was dense, intense, and I learned more in 30 hours than in many years of doing product. Fundamentally it taught me what it means to treat making correct product decisions as an actual skill. But you have to jump in the pool and swim - there's no framework that can do it for you. Perfect for product people, founders (there were several great ones in my cohort) and senior Engineers https://lnkd.in/e8KDhv5c

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Kabhi Prompt, Kabhi Spec: The Endless Story of Spec Iteration Product management is changing. In more ways than one. Recently I have been playing around with prompts and in an attempt to get the model to produce exactly what you want isn’t just a matter of crafting one “perfect” prompt—it’s an ongoing experiment. With each tweak, the model often reveals new and surprising behaviors, forcing us to refine both their prompts and their underlying goals. This creates a coevolution of specs, where expectations and requirements shift right alongside prompt adjustments. The learning curve may be steep, but each iteration builds a deeper understanding of the model’s capabilities, making it as much a process of discovery as it is of design. Not sure of the exit condition of this loop (prompt - spec - prompt - spec - ..). Thoughts? #ai #genai #product #productmanagement

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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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Product Management is Dead? Far from it. Product Management in Digital Products was the valley's answer to address the disruptive nature and ambiguity around tech products. Disruption and Ambiguity. You needed folks with the "CEO" mindset (aka the founder's mode) to address these challenges- who could go cross functional, dive deep into singular problem ares as well as look at strategy and execution at the same time. "Chad PMs". Of course, with the skills, came the money and with the money; the role became more attractive. Circa 2015, in order to understand the job better, there was an overload of frameworks flooding the job seeker's market to help them crack PM roles. It worked; only as a tool to secure the job. But, in the process, we tried to standardise a job role that was meant to deal with ambiguity. Hence, failures led to alignment led to the PM function of today being totally out of sync with what the PMs were meant to do. To top it, narratives like "PM is not the CEO of the product" are being popularized to dissipate the very nature of the role- someone who can stand up, make decisions for the product (of course, informed) and then follow through with those decisions even if it means your stakeholders aren't happy (so long as they are ready to partner with you, they can see a therapist for their happiness). So, Product Management of today is not Dead. It never was Product Management in the first place. Chad PMs will stay. Framework monkeys- well they will also likely stay but with lower influence and diminishing returns. #productmanagement #PM #designthinking

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Pick the right metric for your product. The longer cap off time metric is so on point for a dry erase marker. Resonates with the user. #productmanagement #metrics

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PMing for a mature product with half a million+ MAU & 200+ enterprise customers, is a lot of responsibility. Any miss can impact the 6 Lakh daily rosters. I need to get it right and there is a very little room for error. Fortunately, MoveInSync enables this by keeping PMs grounded with product support while also ensuring PMs drive product adoption & innovation together with customers. This "back to basics" approach ensures only the right problems get solved. Akash Maheshwari Nitin Awasthi #B2BProductManagement #SaaS

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Writing a "perfect" PRD is a myth... There are at least 100s of PRD templates out there and every product expert on LinkedIn is selling their own version, making the amateur PMs feel that is the recipe of success as a PM. Let me break the truth to you-- There are no perfect PRD templates, and I think all experienced PMs can agree to it. PRD is just one another way for you to communicate your thought process to others, that's it, that's all the job it has to do. To those who have spent more than 5 years as a PM, how much of your success has been because you had a perfect PRD template ? #productmanagement #prd

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#ProductMusing: 🚀 Balancing Speed and Quality in Product Launches 🚀 Navigating the delicate balance between speed and quality is essential in product development. Here are a few strategies and frameworks I've found especially effective: 🌟 Set Clear Goals: Define your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). For instance, Airbnb initially launched with just an MVP focusing on basic home-sharing features before expanding. 🌟 Agile Methodologies: Use Agile frameworks like Scrum or Kanban for iterative development. Companies like Spotify have scaled using Agile to deliver high-quality products quickly. 🌟 Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster a culture where Quality Assurance (QA) is integrated within all teams. Apple’s success, for instance, stems from embedding quality across all departments. 🌟 Automation Tools: Leverage automation for testing and deployment. Tools like Jenkins and Selenium can significantly reduce manual testing time and ensure consistent quality. For example, LinkedIn uses automation to streamline its QA processes. 🌟 Continuous Improvement: Implement a Kaizen approach for ongoing enhancements. Toyota’s Kaizen philosophy has been instrumental in maintaining high standards while improving speed. Balancing quality and agility is key to a successful product launch. Focus on delivering exceptional value without compromising on standards! 💡 #ProductManagement #QualityAssurance #Agile #Leadership

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If you are a senior product person, product leader, or founder, if there is only one class you take in your entire career or next 5 years, Shreyas Doshi's Improving Your Product Sense is the most singularly important and impactful course you will take. This course goes deep, expands your ability to reach your potential, and taps into key elements of creativity. If you are connected to me on LinkedIn, you already know, I take A LOT of classes every year. I've taken classes with some of the best people in their respective fields, including product management. Last week, I took Improving Your Product Sense, and it is hands down the best, highest impact, challenging, thought-changing class of my career. It has already helped me start thinking more clearly, make better decisions, and I've referenced my notes from the course nearly ever day since. And this is just the beginning of me practicing the things he taught in the course. The next cohort is in July, so you should apply today as applications started pouring in already. Link below and in the comments. https://lnkd.in/gMn_fFsp

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B2B Product Management... Last week at the The Product Folks event, I had some sigh of relief. Relief that as a B2B PM, I was not alone. Relief that other B2B PMs broadly have the same set of problems. I was sitting at a round table discussion on "Mastering B2B product strategies" - alongside other senior B2B product leaders from Nutanix, Innovacer, Incref, MediBuddy. Surprisingly the PM side problems had a large overlap 1. How & when to custom build for large enterprise deals 2. Career growth & setting up the PM org structure for scale 3. Collaboration with customer success & implementation teams Looking forward to views from other B2B PMs. #B2Bproductmanagement

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🔍 Navigating different Customer mindsets in Product conversations 🤔 During the product awareness phase, I recently encountered two distinct customer personas. Portfolio Manager : "If it involves product ABC, I'm not interested. I'll step out at any point during the meeting." Company Founder : "I've already evaluated product ABC, but I'm all ears to hear your proposal." Persona 1: A cautious, results-driven approach, lacking openness to new perspectives. Persona 2 : A willingness to engage and consider new ideas, even after previous evaluations. This experience highlights how different mindsets can shape interactions and underscores the importance of empathy and adaptability in product conversations.

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As Product Managers, “we must create more value for our customers than we capture back… our customers must feel like they’re getting more value from our solution than they’re paying for it. “ To drive sustainable business growth by continuously delivering monetizable customer value, you must: 1. Understand your product's business reason for existing 2. Understand your product’s go-to-market 3. Understand the company's business goals 4. Understand your product's current strategy and goals 5. Evaluate every product opportunity in terms of monetizable value 6. Tie your activities to business results that matter These points also help us speak the language that matters to business leadership (CEO, CFO, etc.)

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