The Problem-Solution Space
Products exist to solve problems. So, what happens when you don’t have a clear understanding of the problems you’re attempting to solve? In short, you may develop a “solution” that fails to ease your customers’ major pain points.
Ken Feehan shares how he spent half of his career as a Product Manager in meetings with developers trying to convince them to take his direction on how to solve the customer’s problem. They didn’t want to. But then a mentor suggested a different approach: Focus on illuminating the actual customer instead. Genius!
Heeding this advice, Ken began to communicate in writing the customer problems and personas during team meetings with developers. In doing so, he was suddenly more influential and valued, and the team started producing superior products they all wanted. Now, it’s his mission to share this approach with other Product Managers, and help them bring superior products to market, as well.
Join the experts for the “problem side” of Product Management. They’ll show how to use personas to drive beyond flimsy feature requests, and how to uncover the actual “job” that customers would gladly pay you to do for them. When you get clear about those customers and the problems they need to solve, you are ready to “walk on the problem side,” leveraging a refreshed and creative relationship with your development team.
- How to break the cycle of being ignored in meetings with developers.
- The effectiveness of using personas and interviews to understand the customer problem.
- How you can inspire your team to build better products in less time by being the champion of the “customer problem.”
