5: Product Improvement through Experimentation

Today, in the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, Jeff and Red welcome our panel of experts on product management to talk about experimentation and how to test ideas before and after launch. They discuss how talking to the customers is a form of experimentation, the statistical significance of what the customers are telling you and how it reflects the different milestones and development of the product.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:10 This week’s topic: Experimentation
• 06:00 Why is experimentation an important process for PMs?
• 08:50 Talking to customers is another form of experimentation
• 13:00 Statistical significance is a big challenge for B2B product managers
• 16:50 Understand the audience and segment the data finely
• 19:42 Some customers do not understand the product and product offers
• 22:07 Learn from the outcomes when the product is launched 
• 24:40 Every decision is different from the previous depending on the options available
• 29:23 How to go about web product management with less manpower and resources?
• 31:34 Product market fit is where most startups struggle with 
• 35:28 PMs must have a vision and a really good understanding of where you’re going
• 36:49 Balance between understanding your customers and manage your stakeholders
• 40:04 Ask customers: now how they found you, what they like you and what they don’t like about you
• 43:46 PMs must know how things work but allow specialist to patch in their piece 
• 45:36 Awareness who you’re talking to and what they need to know to be successful
• 49:00 Choose causation over correlation
• 50:21 You need both quantitative and qualitative data