000 Why the PlayBook?

The Product Manager’s Playbook is a resource guide to help product managers win with the digital products they are driving. Companies attempt to solve problems differently. This we know. Bing vs Google, Spotify vs Apple Music, Asana vs Basecamp anyone? Yet, a similar pattern of the same questions keep emerging when working in product. 

This playbook features questions every product manager should be asking and…answering. Whilst this playbook contains answers from my own personal experience and research, I’m sure you may have a different view or better yet have more questions you would like to add to the list. My goal here is to help you find the answers when driving future development, and customer adoption of your product – be it Mobile, Tablet or Desktop, VR, AR…the principles and questions are the same.

And do you know the best part? You will win, but you will fail and learn. And win and fail, and learn again and…Get it? There is no correct way to go about understanding the role until you are in it. This is the reason for a Playbook. It’s a series of questions and answers, to get the product brain stimulated to help you find answers, and develop solutions yourself.

“It’s basically 17ish fundamental questions every Product Manager should be asking today”

Why the 17‘ish?

The Product Manager role is so diverse, and can be looked at differently in all industries but the 17 fundamental questions listed here are questions you will find yourself asking (at least I have ? ) when working in the digital ecosystem. I’m pretty certain that you have more questions that you keep coming across and pondering when analysing different problem spaces hence the “ish” :). I list these 17 questions as fundamental but are not finite, as they come up time and time again regardless of the industry or the product you are working on but I would love to hear your thoughts or better yet hear what questions that you keep asking yourself or keep getting asked.

And…What’s with the stories?

I bought this domain back in 2015, and wrote content in Notes, Google Docs, Notion and was always apprehensive to publish if what I was writing was correct and true. Then I read this , more specifically this -> “Fear stands at the border of perpetual inaction and life-changing courage. Liberation happens only after you cross that border.” and this playbook is crossing that border. Framing the chapters in the form of stories makes it easier to transfer my point of view and experience to the reader.

This is the introductory post in a series of posts that I will work on in the coming months.

In the early parts of the series, we’ll get familiar with who you are (The Story of You), and Who you are solving the problem for (The Story of Them). I will then move into a new lens of looking at the problem itself and solving it (the Story of the problem and the solution – duhh :))…and as the series moves on, we’ll start using the lens to look at some practical step of how to best achieve the objectives you are working towards (The Story of Getting there)

If I can do this well, by the end of the book; such questions will help you overcome mental blockages to apply better reasoning when driving your product’s direction. Let’s go.