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Creating metrics that matter

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How much are product managers getting paid in 2024?

Leading product ops at Delivery Hero with Koen Dubelaar

Connecting fans to creators at Spotify (Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead, Spotify)

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Everything wrong with the product management job market. And how to fix it

Senior digital product manager at Manchester City Football Club with extensive experience of web, mobile, broadcast and OTT application development. Special interest in developing platforms and delivery of complimentary content across a variety of screens. In 2011, I brought ProductTank to Manchester and have been organising events for Product Managers in the city ever since.

Graeme Goulden

Lucie McLean, Head of Children&#8217;s Product at the BBC, kicked off her #mtpengage Manchester talk with a nostalgic trip involving TV character Mr Benn &#8211; who keeps going back to the same costume shop to equip himself for a party which he may or may not attend. He always comes back with some evidence of the adventure he goes on that relates to the costume he chose. There&#8217;s no direct suggestion that product managers wear lots of costumes, but there’s plenty of evidence that we go on lots of adventures.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-15916" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lucie-McLean-300x200.jpg" alt="Lucie McLean at MTP Engage Manchester" width="981" height="654" srcset="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lucie-McLean-300x200.jpg 300w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lucie-McLean-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lucie-McLean-1024x683.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 981px) 100vw, 981px" />
Lucie also compares product managers with hedge fund managers. Using a standard job description, she highlights some surprising similarities between hedge-fund and product management, from identifying opportunities to risk analysis. She also suggests there are concepts from fund management that could we could use to take ownership of decisions, so we can have more informed conversations within our organisations.
Lucie asks how you judge and prioritise something that might appear next week that completely changes the direction of the organisation. Bringing in risk/value conversations and asking what &#8220;good&#8221; the product can do for your organisation is important.
Lucie looks at how we can get more out of our products by using simple A/B tests and analysing value throughout.  When a product gets to a certain scale however, you can get stuck in a world of marginal gains &#8211; but when you have such scale, there can be value in those gains.
With an established product used by millions of people daily, you have to be careful about making big changes. Lucie says that her experience of working with the BBC Sport website began at the back-end of the product. Her team made small incremental changes which helped take the risk out of the product &#8211; and subsequently there were no user dramas when the front-end of the site changed.
For high-risk items, there are always learnings. Making assumptions, or just getting carried away with the ‘shiny’ can get us into trouble when building high-risk products, says Lucie. We should aim for the sweet spot between where customers undervalue your product because they don’t know about it versus our own over-valuation. So to move that particular user, ask is your product really 10 times better than what they already have?
Basic testing can help dismiss some assumptions that you and your team may have made. Spreading the risk by building products for the entire organisation works well. So it’s important to understand the risk appetite within your organisation and where your products sit on this risk scale.
Lucie reminds us that risk is important, in order to ask questions, have better conversations about where your investments are going, and &#8211; critically &#8211; the expectations of the particular venture (or adventure) that you&#8217;re going on.

core/freeform

A year with ChatGPT and product innovation: Navigating the AI landscape

Mastering perspective – zoom in, zoom out as a product leader by Navya Rehani Gupta

Modern-day leadership by Janice Fraser

Master the art of leading through influence by Shyvee Shi

Is your innovation project on track? by Tendayi Viki

Finding your frosting as a product leader by Jeff Birkeland

Learnings from London: The secret sauce to hiring great product people by Kate Leto

Product Management, a Risky Business by Lucie McLean

Graeme Goulden