Product Management In 5 minutes (Part 5)

One of the most important if not the most important tool in Product management is Customer Development. — Evan Kimbrell.

Press enter or click to view image in full sizeCustomer Development Image By Yasir Gaji

This tool/skill is used to get a sense of whether or not you are building the right product as a product manager by radically pointing out what the market will accept or reject.

The reason why most products fail is as a result of following the vacuum lifecycle which is from concept to production to promotion, whereas there is more to what makes a successful product which is the inclusiveness of the customer's interest, by establishing a continuous and iterative communication line between the product core and the customers.
This way we as product managers would be able to come up with better hypotheses, ideas, and features every time to constantly test and validate the product as a result of the feedback we would get from the customers.

Now, there are four stages that make up the customer development mindset or procedure according to Prof. Steve Blank’s framework which is what I make use of, This permeates every single section of a product’s lifecycle.

Stage 1

The customer discovery phase is where you discover and determine information about the problem your product is going to solve, about the people who have that problem, and about the market in general.
By defining who the client is and will be. They are the real protagonists and the ones that would provide the necessary pieces of information about the phenomenon or the problem for the product

There are three steps to getting the best customer discovery, these are:

Step 1 — We would reach out to customers to confirm and understand the specific solution the product would provide to a known problem, to a degree that they will buy it.

Step 2 — We test the problem and our understanding of the customer's problems or needs then we propose an MVP prototype.

Step 3 — Here we build the proposed prototype either of high or low fidelity to re-test the customer purchase process business or marketing activities that must be done to mobilize consumers through the funnel and make them effectively buy your proposal.

Stage 2

The customer validation phase, to be able to know if the product has a chance to succeed and if it is viable.
By selling the proposed MVP prototype to acquire the first set of customer/users and simultaneously develop positioning based on the customer's feedback.

Then after you (the product team) decide to either verify or repeat the validation process again.

Stage 3

We scale the processes, the operative part of your company, the departments, and everything necessary to start the activities correctly and to be prepared before the planned scale.

At this stage, you can also fine-tune details on the go because what matters is what the customer wants or needs more than what you think the product should comply.

Stage 4

The company building phase, here you capture all the learning and information you got in the previous steps and execute it on a “more” larger scale.
You re-structure departments, recreate the product or add better features based on the three initial stages reports, execute the marketing and sales plan, and make your product/project scale as high as possible.

This stage is where most economic resources are consumed because you already have all the information about the customer, the need, the solution, and the market.

And that’s all there is to it. With the Customer Development stages, you can develop the best software products and any product from a knowledge and action plan based on the understanding of the customer, the market, and the need or problem to solve. This way is you would have the best product structure, before launching fully to the market.

Conclusion

Simply put, Customer development is an iterative process whereby you know and understand the target market customers.
First, observing the problem or phenomenon from the perspective of the customers/consumers.

Then formulate a causal hypothesis where you delimit the cause of the problem. Make a prediction or measure possible future results with the observation of the causal hypothesis.
After, realize experimental tests to measure the prediction performance through extensive customer interviews.

Once the problem is well identified and delimited for a group of customers, then create a product or feature that is designed to solve it.

I expect questions for clarification. In the next part, we would learn about Conceptualizing solutions as product managers.

Notes

The customer development framework was created by Steve Blank.

There are more framework/procedure approaches to customer development.

The customer validation stage help ensures the right time to start sales and marketing spending.

MVP means the most viable product OR minimum viable product.