Product Management means creating value

In our current digital landscape, Product management has earned a very significant position.

Primarily, the role of product management is to care after a certain product inside a company. It’s a critical function at the center of a business, balancing the need to offer value to your firm (often profit) with what customers want and what’s technically and operationally achievable. This entails developing a product strategy, deciding what to produce (Product Development), and selling it to the customer (user).

Now, user experience is something that actually entails value building because digital goods that consumers engage with necessitate a level of understanding that can only be acquired via user feedback and testing for the product offering.

What is creating value exactly?

Value is what you get as a result of a trade practice. The user is required to pay for something to fully utilize your product. They won’t use your product again if they don’t receive more value out of it than they put in.

This applies to free products as well. The time and the efforts put by your user to understand the product has to be taken into consideration here.

So, how does product management create value?

By keeping the value proposition as the bases of all your products. A value proposition is, at its essence, a suggestion you make to the client or user: pay this amount to receive this benefit. Either they will accept it or they reject it. If they accept it, you’ve supplied them with value; if they don’t, you’ve failed to do so.

The product’s value proposition succinctly communicates the benefits for your users and how you’re superior to your competitors. The product value proposition isn’t only a statement describing what your product does, but also how it plans to produce value uniquely from your rival.

Let’s take the example of Slack. Not only Slack is a communication tool, but also Slack is a communications tool that will help B2B users cut down on email clutter and integrate with third-party apps.

Let us discuss some excellent product value proposition models.

1. The Product Vision Board| Roman Pichler

This model will assist you in describing, visualizing, and validating your product vision and strategy.

It includes:

• information on the target audience
• user demands
• major product features
• corporate objectives

In addition to rivals, income streams, cost variables, and channels, the expanded Vision Board includes critical features of your business strategy.

1. Lean Canvas

It is an adaptation of Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder which Ash Maurya created in the Lean Startup spirit. It is a style of planning that assists you in getting to the essence of your concept. Furthermore, it brings everyone onto one page, allowing you to focus on the most important things while leaving out the rest.

https://leanstack.com/leancanvas

1. Crossing the chasm proposition model

This is as simple as :

For “target customer” who “need a statement”, the “product/brand name” is a “product category” that is a “key benefit statement/compelling reason to buy”. Unlike “primary competitor alternatives”, “product/brand name” “primary differentiation statement”.

It is nothing but making the transition from an early market dominated by Innovators, early adopters to Early Majority as explained by Geoffrey Moore in his book crossing the chasm.

1. Alexander Osterwalder’s value proposition canvas

This is used as a framework for making sure there is a fit between the product and the market. This is the most user-centric value proposition model.

The Value Proposition Canvas is formed around two building blocks — customer profile and a company’s value proposition.

Customer Profile

• Benefits — the advantages that the client expects and need.
• Pains — the bad experiences, emotions, and hazards that the client encounters through the work completion process.
• Customer jobs are the functional, social, and emotional duties that customers are attempting to do, as well as the difficulties and demands that they seek to meet.

Value Map

• Gain creators — how the product or service generates consumer benefits and provides extra value.
• Pain relievers — a detailed description of how the product or service relieves’ client discomfort.
• Items and services — products and services that generate profit and alleviate suffering, as well as those that support the production of value for the consumer.

A solid value proposition model will, in theory, help your product become closer to product/market fit. The purpose of using a framework is to show potential knowledge gaps regarding your consumer, resulting in sections of your product that will not stick.

Your product’s promise of how it will improve your consumers’ lives or job is known as its product proposition. And that’s exactly how product management is all about creating value!

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