This week, Product College hosted Masooma Zakir, Product Supervisor at Drift, for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Masooma tells us how she knew she was prepared to guide a staff, discovering Product-Market Match, and balancing strategic considering and execution.
Meet Masooma
Masooma Zakir is a Senior Product Supervisor at Drift. With greater than 10 years of expertise in management, she focuses on technique, end-to-end product growth, and mission administration life cycle simply to call a number of. Earlier than becoming a member of Drift, she operated at Financial institution of America the place she labored her method up from Portfolio Product Supervisor to Digital Product Supervisor. Previous to that, she was a Enterprise Techniques Marketing consultant at Wells Fargo.
Do you suggest a specific technique framework on launching a product in a purple ocean market?
Nice query. Figuring out which framework to make use of is all the time an attention-grabbing resolution to make. I discover that the match often depends upon the trade and surroundings you’re in. For instance, after I was at a bigger company we took a different strategy from the hyper-growth firm I’m at now. We’re far more scrappy the place I’m at now.
You’ve 10 years of management expertise. As a PM when did you come to the purpose the place you had been prepared to guide Product Groups? What components/occasions introduced you to that time?
Oh there’s a lot I can speak about right here! Thanks for the query. I all the time say it’s my curiosity that led me to Product Administration. I aspire to study as a lot as I can from prospects to find out the easiest way to resolve for his or her ache factors. I knew I used to be prepared to guide Product Groups due to this drive.
Extra particularly, nonetheless, I recall being in conferences watching our Product Leads and considering ‘oh that’s precisely what I used to be considering. I wish to do THAT’. I additionally grew to become a lead in an area the place I felt comfy with the merchandise and prospects. Having that information base and the prevailing relationships made the transition seamless.
Try: What Nice Product Groups Look Like in 2022
What’s the easiest way for one to hold out a product evaluation for a brand new characteristic or product?
If you say ‘evaluation’, I’m assuming you’re speaking a few Product Market Match? In that case, I discover that the easiest way is to interact with prospects instantly. When I’ve an idea in thoughts, I accomplice with design to mock up or prototype the characteristic. We then validate it with prospects instantly. This has been essentially the most helpful method in my expertise.
Aside from this, the opposite classes to contemplate are ‘what ache level does this resolve for?’, ‘does the information assist us fixing this drawback?’ ‘how impactful is it in direction of our enterprise objective?’, ‘what’s the ROI for us (ex: elevated income or decreased operational prices), and lastly ‘whats the hassle to implement this?’.
I’m at the moment planning on upcoming tasks and I discover myself on an inside back-and-forth of pursuing a single enormous mission or many smaller ones, do you’ve any particular suggestions on how you can higher stability these two for growth?
PM is a enjoyable balancing act, isn’t it? I might ask myself questions alongside the traces of ‘what’s going to carry the shopper essentially the most worth?’ and base my evaluation round that, other than some other prioritization circumstances to contemplate. Moreover, I come throughout this in my each day skilled life ceaselessly and one strategy that’s helped is discovering a solution to break up the only enormous mission into smaller worth increments. Even when it’s one thing that may solely be launched collectively, I discover that breaking it up into smaller items makes it extra ‘digestable’ and simpler to prioritize/scope for the Product Groups.
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What are the concerns that go into constructing a potent technique?
As I’ve talked about, the way you outline technique is closely influenced by the trade and surroundings you’re in. There are such a lot of nice frameworks like Porters 5 Forces which is often my go-to to begin interested by technique after which I often customise the framework primarily based on my wants.
How do you stability your time between strategic considering with knee-deep execution?
Actually, that is an on-going problem for me, nonetheless, I discover making use of prioritization to my calendar and the way I spend my time is essential to sustaining the precise degree of stability. In my day-to-day, I attempt to spent 50% of my time on strategic considering – this implies blocking out my calendar to do exactly that. I label the blocked time with what a part of the technique I wish to concentrate on so it’s a reminder for me to proceed focus in that space.
What are widespread misconceptions/myths about technique in follow that you simply’d wish to make clear? Do you ever should do a one-off characteristic or process that’s not aligned with the technique?
I believe I’ve seen this happen essentially the most as a result of sudden new buyer ache factors, developments out there together with a competitor launching a product or characteristic that impacts our aggressive moat. I’ve additionally seen this occur when a brand new buyer deal is within the pipeline that may herald important income. If they need a selected characteristic earlier than they determine to undertake, then that’s one thing that will even be thought-about outdoors of the technique.
