#ProductDiaries 3/2/23: Tying Customer Problems to Business Impact

#ProductDiaries is a documented series of my experience as a product manager — what I’m doing, what I’m learning, and what I’m changing.

What I did:

I’m a product manager on the buyside of a real estate company.

I audited our user research to understand what users need from their homebuying process and distilled recurring themes into a shared doc for review by senior leadership in product and design.

Why I did it:

Our mission is to redefine real estate in the consumer’s favor but we cannot fulfill our mission without our starting point being what the consumer’s favor even means to begin with. Additionally, in general product managers are supposed to be consumer centered in their approach.

What I could do better:

I received a lot of feedback on what I missed doing in the process! Here’s the room for improvement:

• I have user problems but need to couple it with where is our product is underperforming. The difference between ‘here are user problems’ vs ‘here are problems we are failing to solve for effectively.’
• With that top problem in mind, go through our website. Are there obvious ‘gotchas’ that we miss? Go after what has large problem area opportunity size plus findable glaring gaps on our site today.
• For a given problem, how big of a problem is it and what would be the potential quantified business result of solving it?
• Once you’ve chosen top problems, list top proposed solutions against this top problem and estimated impact of the solution.
• There is a difference between problem area opportunity sizing and impact sizing for a specific solution. Both are useful exercises! But socialize that you’re conducting rough napkin math and how you arrived at your estimations.
• Even when you have a list of solutions: “Okay so you have that idea. What else?” How far out ahead can you think about your product area?