ProductCafe Newsletter #42- How to explain product management to your parents
This week on Product Management, UX, Startups, and more — freshly curated by Zeda.io.
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How will you explain product management to your parents?
How many times have you found yourself in this whirlpool of questions around your role as a product manager by your friends and family? Your parents in particular?
What is Product Management?
But what do you do exactly as a product manager?
What do you manage?
We get it! It’s not an easy answer to give. After all, PMs do a lot. Not even exaggerating. Putting it into a few sentences, what PMs do might require some real thought and creativity. Also, many times one makes the mistake of answering with all these technical jargon that revolve around product management. The other person, your parents in this context, will get confused in every way possible.
We decided upon speaking to a couple of product managers to get an insight into their personal experiences. Based on the gatherings, we have listed below the points that might help you with answering the question after all.
Product Good reads 📚
Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling Applied to Product Managers & UX Designers
When I meet people at social gatherings, and I’m asked what I do for a living, my response is: “I’m a storyteller.” It makes for a way better conversation than leading with “product management in a B2B SaaS company.” Truly, product managers and user experience designers are storytellers. We constantly need to be telling stories when communicating with everyone.
The First Principles of Product Management
Some of the best PMs I know make their decisions based on first principles. A first principle is a “basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.”.
An example of one that we use for our developer platform team are that “all platform features should be like Lego blocks”, meaning that developers should be able to use any combination of features when building an app. Features should be interoperable, just like Legos.
Startup Story 🚀
Elodie Games obtains $32.5M round to make social co-op gaming better
During the darkest hours of the pandemic, millions upon millions of people turned to online gaming as a way to pass time in lockdown and connect with friends they couldn’t see in person. But a social, cooperative, fun and cross-platform gaming experience is remarkably hard to find — and Elodie Games is here to change that.
Elodie’s co-founders, Christina Norman and David Banks, are gaming industry vets who both worked on global hit League of Legends at Riot Games. The pair — also partners — left in 2019 to form their own company, announcing their intention in 2020 to build games focusing on co-op, cross-play and “endlessly engaging experiences,” which suggests more open-ended, sandbox play.
Tweet-worthy Tweets 🐦
Quote of the week ✨
Every Saturday we send you a collection of the best product management content on the internet curated by our team. We hope this week’s dose helped you get some insights into the world of product.
It’s the weekend, Mankind! Time to rescue some wine trapped in a bottle 🍷
Until next weekend,
ProductCafe.
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