Ri: Senior Product Manager & Product Manager Responsibilities

SPM and PM in nutshell Product Manager: Strategic and Broad Product Manager: Tactical and Focused SPM and PM Shared Responsibilities

This list of responsibilities for SPM and PM (PO) has been specifically tailored for WCC’s needs and Product team structure. Therefore, some areas of the end-to-end Product Management lifecycle such as Product Marketing and Monetisation have not been covered in here.

SPM and PM in nutshell

Product Manager: Strategic and Broad

Brief: In an SPM and PM setup, the Senior Product Manager plays a strategic role and oversees and manages multiple work streams for the same product or multiple products across a product portfolio. The role works closely with one or more PMs (POs ) each owning one work stream or initiative to give them direction based on the vision, strategy and the roadmap.

Topics

SPM’s Key Responsibilities

Ideation

Work with the business to identify and build an Ideas/Initiatives backlog

Own and oversee one or multiple initiatives

Create Opportunity Canvas

Identify key opportunities and problems

Mapping Ideas/Initiatives to Business Objectives (OKRs), Mission and Vision

Prioritise Ideas/Initiatives

Create and prioritise

Assumptions

Discovery

Work with User Research and Service Design through data insight and user research studies to

Find, collate and extract key customer insights

Articulate the problem space into discrete problem statements

Identify target users and their pain points

Prioritise users, their problems and pain points

Define Experiments

Work with Service Design, UX and Tech leads on potential solutions addressing the user problems and pain points

Create and prioritise

Assumptions

Create and prioritise

Hypotheses

Identify and define the metrics to capture and support the hypotheses and test cards

Create and prioritise

Test Cards

Compile to fund agreed delivery scope and confirm financial sustainability

Business Case

Validation through Experimentation

Build backlog of Epics (including the hypotheses) to conduct initial experiments

Define the minimum viable solution/product to enable the hypotheses to be tested

Capture learnings and review hypothesis

Assess if problem solution fit has been achieved

Work with Architects to assess technical feasibility on solutions/products proved by the hypotheses in order to build in scale

Value Proposition Design (Product Definition)

Define the product (The What), users (The Who), and the benefits (The Why) linked to the business mission and vision

Define the Product definition through Value Proposition Design by working on

The WHO = User targets

The WHY

Their jobs to be done (JTBD)

Their Needs

Their Problem

Their Benefits (gains)

The WHAT = Potential solutions that fits the problems

Scope

KPIs (north star metrics to capture and track)

Define and drive the Product Vision and Strategy linking to the

WHO

WHAT

WHY

Business OKRs, Mission and Vision

Build, own and maintain outcome based Product Roadmap linked to relevant OKRs

Build and prioritise and liaise with PM who will create user stories

backlog of Epics and Features

Work with Architecture or Tech leads to conduct feasibility assessment of the features

Horizon and Release Plan

Define MVP and major releases including the scope

Plan the upcoming horizons (90/180 days) and communicate to PMs so they can align their sprint planning with the Horizon and Release plans

Stakeholder Management

This is the core part of the Product Management job and require great deal of good soft skills particularly building empathy with stakeholder, challenge them with evidence, and get their buy-in.

Build empathy and a strong and strategic relationship with Senior stakeholders such as Business Owners, Product Council, and the customer(s) to align on the value proposition

Challenge stakeholders with evidence to protect the scope of the Product (Say No by not say No - soft skills come here )

Build strong relation and empathy with the Product team (PMs mainly) and maintain the line of communication with them

Landscape Analysis (Market, Competitors, Trends, Technology)

Identify and analyse

Market landscape

Competitors

Trends

Technologies and Solutions

Potential Partners

Build vs Buy

Scrum Ceremonies

Daily Scrum:

Generally optional for SPM to attend unless he/she is involved in some tasks in a sprint

Sprint Review:

Attend and see the work done by the team and provide input/feedback

Invite and encourage Senior Stakeholders to attend the review session (inform the PM if SLT or the customer will be attending)

Sprint Planning

Generally optional to attend when there is a SPM and PM set up but that can adapt when SPM is also involved in conducting planned work for the next sprint being planned. But the session is led by the PM

Sprint Retrospective: attend and participate as scrum team member

Product Manager: Tactical and Focused

In a SPM and PM setup, Product Manager plays a more focused role on one workstream or initiative and is responsible for delivering the increments based on the roadmap and the horizon plan. Product Manager has to work closely with the PM to receive direction and execute the sprint backlogs.

Topics

PM’s Key Responsibilities

Validation and Experimentation

Maintain and refine the backlog with user stories based on the Epics and hypotheses created by SPM

Prioritise stories based on the release and horizon plan created by SPM

Stakeholder Management

This is the core part of the Product Management job and require great deal of good soft skills particularly building empathy with stakeholder, challenge them with evidence, and get their buy-in.

Build empathy and a strong relationship with the following roles/ disciplines and maintain the line of communication with them

Product Manager

Engineering

Service Design

UX Design

The end user (customer)

Business (e.g. service lines)

Challenge your stakeholders with evidence to protect the scope of the Backlog (Say No by not say No - soft skills come here )

Backlog Management

Create user stories

Develop acceptance criteria

Prioritise user stories

Define metrics to support KPIs

split and slice the stories so they can be delivered in one sprint - following the INVEST model (stories shall be Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable)

Maintain backlog hygiene

Work with the scrum team to

refine stories (take their inputs, analyse and incorporate to the stories considering the sprint goals and size of the stories - Say no when their inputs are not aligned with the sprint goals or increases the size of the story)

provide a rough estimate on stories prior to Sprint Planning

ensure user stories meet the Definition of Ready

Sprint Management

Build sprints backlog

Set Sprint goals in line with the Release and Horizon plans that SPM provides and agree the Sprint goals with SPM

Communicate the Sprint goals to the scrum team

Review the work at the end of the sprint and check against the acceptance criteria

On completion of stories, PM assesses the stories against acceptance criteria and DoD and close the stories once DoD is met

Support the Delivery Manager / Scrum Master to Remove Impediments

Work with the Delivery Manager / Scrum Master to Create, Apply and improve Definition of Done

Scrum Ceremonies

Daily Scrum:

Support the team if there is a blocker that concerns the Product

Track the progress

Remind the sprint goals to the scrum team

Sprint Review:

Review the Sprint Goals with the team

Review the work from the team and check against a/c (acceptance criteria)

Accept a work as done or incomplete

Sprint Planning

Lead the sprint planning

Communicate the Sprint Goals

Review the agreed stories and a/c with the team

Lead the estimation with the team

Decide which stories can be moved to the backlog when the velocity is reached.

Sprint Retrospective: attend and participate as scrum team member

SPM and PM Shared Responsibilities

Topics

Shared responsibilities

Risk Management

Delivery Manager … Capture, prioritise and track risks, constraints, challenges and issues and communicate with the SPM/PM

Analytics

Review and measure KPIs and Metrics

Data analysis

Capture and analyse user feedback

Release Plan

Planning the releases

Production Release Roll out

Customer / User readiness support comms

Stakeholder Management

As stated in the above sections for both SPM and PM