4 Hacks for Product Managers to Get Out of Failure

Product manager’s job includes a level of accountability and scrutiny that is unique. They are asked to look after all facets of a product’s development, from conception to launch, from design to UX, from consumer needs to integration points.

We’ve found the interesting article on Mindtheproduct blog that describes some powerful PM hacks to get the most out of failure. Here’re the most interesting ideas:

Industries moving at an unprecedented pace because it’s so easy to get up again after a failure.

Failing has become the norm and costs are getting lower every day. And the product manager’s job seems to have become more complicated.

How to make the right decision in options and competing products?

Here are some of the hacks and tools that can make decision making easier, and which can help to make failures a positive learning experience.

Milk the system

Find the tool that will work best for you. Take advantage of the free trials and free demos.

Don’t hesitate to ask for free options. If there’s a vendor whose API you’re looking for, be empowered to ask for a test API.

Join forces

Think about whether building it yourself is the answer. In the world of open source, the chances are that someone’s already built it.

The part of your expertise comes from understanding how long and how much it would take to build it yourself and comparing that against the cost of purchasing. Do research as it might even be free.

Build it yourself

It may sound contrary to the previous point.

There can be products that do what you need them to do, but not always in the way your team needs them to be done.

Make an accurate assessment of whether your team can build this. Time constraints and resourcing constraints will dictate whether you can afford to go with number two or number three.

Deploy frequently

If you can control how often your team ships, do this. Each release will teach you a variety of lessons, specifically about your dependencies and data points. You will not be able to anticipate each edge case and linkage until you’re actually experiencing it.

The more you release, the more things will break. Fix them and move on.

Failures in themselves are elastic. The important lesson to be learned from each failure is what each one taught us about our customers’ needs and preferences, our teams’ ways of working, the data we have, and the journeys that will deliver the most value.

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