This document outlines 15 lessons learned as a product manager. Some key lessons include: focus on increasing revenues and reducing costs while delivering value for today's costs; understand customer and market needs through quantitative and qualitative data balanced with intuition; set realistic expectations and don't push unrealistic quarterly targets; test hypotheses early to fail fast; and serve as the owner and conduit of information between cross-functional teams to drive the product vision while remaining unbiased. The overall message is the importance of balancing strategic and tactical work with a focus on building products customers love.

1. 15 Lessons Learned as a Product Manager
05/03/2013
Suresh Krishna Madhuvarsu
> www.sureshkrishna.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/sureshmadhuvarsu

2.  Remind your self about this fundamental
building block everyday
 Strive towards increasing the revenues;
reducing the costs and increasing the profits.

3.  Today’s cost has to yield >2x revenues or
indirect positive effect. If not, something is
wrong with today’s cost.
 Sunk costs are important; don’t get stuck to
past mistakes.
 Know a dead horse; don’t feed it;

4.  Everyone has a perspective on what should
be done
 Customers may not always be right; Also,
they may not always be wrong.
 Understand the user and buyer relationship
 Understand the engineering, sales limitations

5.  Collect quantitative and qualitative data
about the market and customers
 Gather the expert intelligence from the
previous experiences
 Balance between the data and intuition

6.  …not tomorrow; not yesterday
 Set realistic expectations to customers
 Don’t push quarterly targets too hard on to
sales
 If you sell future, you always need to catch
up

7.  The cost of fixing a problem tomorrow is
much more expensive than today
 Don’t be lazy

8.  Everyone is watching you
 Your market, customer and industry
knowledge brings in energy to other teams
 Be positive

9.  Human relation is much better than Email
and Phone conversation
 Take time to know everyone who is
connected to the product
 Networking is part of the job; it is an
investment

10.  You are smart; but customer is ALSO smart
 Your story has more effect than your feature
 Keep the story consistent

11.  Test the hypothesis as early as possible; Fail
early
 If you plan for a feature make sure someone
out there is ready to use it
 If there is a feature that’s not profitable, don’t
be afraid to prune

12.  You are the owner of the product
 Every thing starts at you and ends at you
 Don’t pass the buck 

13.  …but should not drive your product
 Spend enough time to understand the moves
of the competition
 YOUR vision should drive your product with
an ultimate goal of building products that
customers love.

14.  … with "no biases“
 The glue to the cross functional teams
 Conduit of the information and data flow

15.  Everyday is different at work
 Don’t get deep into the tactical work
 Don’t stop with Strategic work
 Do enough to balance the important and
urgent tasks

16.  …and smart people
 There are lots of things going on and being
happy helps
 Being funny or humorous helps 