The Lean Product Manifesto
Lean Product Management offers an improved approach for managing the whole life cycle of a product and ensuring the right market fit. The methodology provides us with a means of making sure that we’re building the right product for our target audience or market. It entails the application of Lean principles to product strategy and development.
Melissa Perri’s Lean Product Management Manifesto is a useful guide on how we can build great products by applying Lean thinking. It outlines those things that we should give more attention to when looking to create solutions that customers would love.
Why Lean Product Management Manifesto?
The idea of another manifesto for product management is one that many of us might not feel excited about. As it is, we could say we have enough of those already. Perri actually noted that most of the feedback she got in preparation was to not write a manifesto. The renowned product manager and coach, however, says we may substitute the term “manifesto” for “guidelines” if that sounds more acceptable.
The Lean Product Management Manifesto isn’t some strict requirements on how to do product management. It is simply a set of guidelines that can help with how we manage products. Put differently, it highlights those things that may require more attention than we currently give them. We are not expected to view these guidelines as being set in stone and so apply them without thinking. The aim is for us to take them and adapt them to suit our particular needs.
According to Perri, it is called Lean Product Management Manifesto because it was modeled off the Agile Manifesto. And it is “Lean” because it relates to Lean thinking, which moves our focus from shipping products to delivering value. The manifesto provides a guide on how we can deliver value, reduce waste, and retain customers. Let’s shift our attention to the principles that capture the essence of product management, according to the lean product manifesto.
Customer Needs over Internal Requirements
There is often a gap between customer needs and requirements. Stakeholders and customers are always ready to suggest requirements even if you don’t ask for them. However, we should be careful about how we treat them.
Yes, we can find out internal stakeholder requirements. But it is more important to get out of the building to speak with customers to understand their needs. We should spend less time gathering requirements from internal sources. It may also be worth noting that the purpose of talking to customers isn’t just to ask for requirements but to dig deeper.
The most successful products are those that meet real customer needs. We don’t get to know those needs by simply relating with internal stakeholders. It is when we interact directly with customers that we can properly understand the problems to solve. Of course, we have to keep in mind our strategic business goals when deciding what value to provide.
Data-driven Experiments over Preconceived Solutions
This, in a way, relates to the need to depend more on customers when looking to create a valuable product. It has to do with getting user feedback on what we’re building before going too far. Arguably, most products fail due to little or no validation of ideas before creating solutions. Lean product management offers us a means of guarding against such undesirable outcomes.
The Lean development way is to build, measure, and learn. We don’t start working based on just what we think the ideal should look like. The Lean Product Management Manifesto, therefore, recommends carrying out small experiments over running with preconceived solution ideas.
We should be using minimum viable products (MVPs) to gather quality data from customers. This helps up to learn whether the course in focus is the right one or otherwise. It lets us know whether to iterate or pivot. Our experiments will help to ensure that we’re making product decisions rooted in data rather than mere conjectures.
Customer Value Roadmaps over Feature Roadmaps
As previously stated, the most successful products are those that meet real needs or problems of the customer. So it means we deliver value only by solving genuine problems, not by shipping features. It is surprising, therefore, to find that most teams seem to center more on features. This leaning often reflects in working with feature-based roadmaps. And Product sometimes just includes features in these strategic documents based on unverified assumptions.
The Lean Product Management Manifesto, however, recommends working with customer value or problem roadmaps. This type of document draws our attention to the most critical needs of our customers. It helps us to ensure that we’re focusing on the problems when building any features.
More people are now aware of how feature roadmaps can be traps. They can make us become feature factories – focused on just shipping, instead of earning the trust and respect of customers. Value roadmaps offer us a means of evading the trap.
Idea Generation and Collaboration over Solution Mandates
There is sometimes the misconception that ideas on what to build should come from product managers. It is thought that PMs should find or brainstorm them and then tell designers and developers what they need to do. No, the job of a Lean product manager isn’t to generate the ideas but to effectively manage them. Our role is to identify (collaboratively) and plump for the best ideas from those available.
Ideas can and should come from different sources, both internal and external. We can get them from team members, stakeholders, and customers. Competitors, suppliers, and social media could even be sources of product or feature ideas as well. The cross-functional team works together to decide the right product strategy to adopt. Product managers, designers, developers, and other relevant team members collaboratively determine the solutions to build.
