 Hello, thank you for joining my webinar. I'm Nithi and today we are going to talk about predictable and unpredictable scenario in product management journey. Let me quickly share my screen and then we'll get started. Okay, so the predictable and unpredictable in product management journey and as I said, I'm product manager with AWS. I'll tell a little bit about myself before we dive into the content. So this is me. I've been product manager for more than 15 years. Currently, I'm with AWS. I'm the senior technical product manager at AWS, and I'm the part of end user computing team with the focus on security. Along with being at AWS, I'm also board member, program chair and marketing lead of IIT Bay Area, alumni association, a huge group of people who we support, and there are a lot of content and work that we do all year long. So that's another role that I have. Before joining AWS, I was principal product manager at Nutanix. I've been at multiple companies all along a product manager for my entire career. My longest experience was at Oracle. I was with Oracle for 10 years, and I managed their storage product line and solutions. From industry knowledge and expertise perspective, my expertise are in cybersecurity, storage, and compute infrastructure. I've been BM for both software and hardware product, and they're both very different from product management journey perspective. I've managed multiple products in multiple phases and in parallel so that you can tell from my 15 years of experience, I've been part of different journey of product over time. All right. So let's dive into what we're going to talk about today. Okay. So from agenda flow perspective, we're going to talk about product management, how to view it from different scenarios perspective. There are many ways of looking into the role of product management. So we're going to talk about when we're looking at PM role from predictable and unpredictable scenarios, how does that look like and why is it a critical area to address? That's one. Then we'll dive deeper into some of the scenarios that could lead to an unpredictable outcome. We'll talk about how can we prevent from that unpredictability and how do we manage that unpredictability if we get into that situation? And then in the end, we'll talk about some of the key takeaways. So it's a lot of content to talk about. So let's keep going. All right. Product management. As a product management, we are product advocates. We are leaders. We are storytellers. We are the people who inspire teams inside our organization and outside about the product goals. And it is very important as a product manager to be very clear on our goals. So we strategize and we craft products to vision. We don't just build a product. We build an experience for customers. We basically solve their problems, right? And that's the whole goal of being a product manager of designing something that it's eventually going to make a difference in someone's enterprise or someone's home, someone's life, right? That's the whole purpose of building a product. So in a process of that, we influence the process of product being built and it's a huge and long process, right? And you can see that in the picture on the left, right? So you're in the center as a PM and there's everything going around that. Part of it, you own directly. Part of it, you don't own directly, but you're still the center point of contact for everything that goes on. So you are responsible for product decisions, whether that is from strategy point of view, whether that is from product development, development-based point of view, whether it is from product marketing point of view. Because when you're defining the vision of product, you're actually thinking about the end who is going to use the product, right? And so what is the messaging? What is the positioning? Why are you actually building that product, right? So you own all of it. And that is what makes a role of product management so critical for the product, for the organization, for the customers, because you're making decisions every point in time, right? And that decision is going to affect the future of product. So as I said, you strategize the product, you craft product vision, you influence the process of product being built and you also drive customer engagement, right? You understand customer requirement, you speak in their language. So in your whole product journey, you'll be speaking many languages. You'll be talking to your management telling about why you want to build this product that will come with a lot of context that you get by talking to customer or sales or reading industry or white papers or a lot of information that you find, right? So you build your perspective and then you tell that story to your management that why you want to build that product. Then you tell that same story from a different angle to your development team, right? That why this should be built in this way? Why this product should be built within this time? Why does it matter to customer? And then you tell that story slightly differently to your customers. You take the angle of value proposition. Why does it matter to them, right? So same product, same idea, but the narrative that you tell every time is in context of who you're speaking to. All right. So this sets in the stage that product management role is important. It's very critical and the decisions that you make are changing something. So they matter. And that's where the criticality comes in, right? Because there are so many moving factors and once there are so many things involved at the same time and you are the one making decisions, there will be scenarios that will be unpredictable, right? There will be some areas where there will not be much clarity. So let's move to next slide and let's see what could be just few of those scenarios, right? Let's see. There you go. So I clearly, these are few scenarios, not all, few scenarios that can lead to unpredictable outcome. These unpredictable outcomes come from what? They come from uncertainties, right? They come from unknowns. And your bigger buckets are you have product, you have customers, and you have, as you can see here, operational impact. And along with that the daily challenges. And if you go and read the reports today, you will see the biggest challenge in PM's life is you don't have time. You actually don't have time to think through and make decisions. I mean, if you had the time in the whole world, anyone can do due diligence and decide and six months time, but that's not how product management works, right? You have to take decision in time and act in time. So some of the unpredictable outcomes are, for example, if you're building a first gen product, right? You don't have any previous data from previous product, right? So you're basically starting in a new space and that's what uncertainty kicks in. You don't know if this product is a right product to build. There is no data. You don't know how it's going to do a market. Another one, for example, I mean, you can read through this whole list. And then another one, for example, is you're entering a new market space. There is no prior customer reference. No one has ever built that product, right? So how are you going to, for example, convince your customer that this product is actually going to solve their problem? Let's say you have a lot of ideas, but you want to, let's say you're a small team, there are not many resources for you to brainstorm or validate your ideas, right? So there's that uncertainty factor kicks in again. Or let's say you're, you have the ideas, you're moving ahead with the product and then in product development phase, you're short of resources, right? So you have to manage that as well. Again, the uncertainty piece in it. Let's say you have brilliant idea, you have resources, but you're pushed against timeline, your customer needs the product. So you have limited on time to execute just like that. For example, you have wrote the requirement and there are some scenarios that kick in at the end of the life cycle, not life cycle, end of product development timeline that you were, you thought you were on the same page with your development team, but there is mismatch and understanding, right? They're not aligned and what, when you see the product demo, you say that, hey, this is not what I expect, what was said in the requirement, probably the requirement were understood differently. So communication is a key in the product management role. And again, you have to tell the story from the perspective of who you are talking to. So there are many, many, these are just few scenarios. But the point is, the whole complexity that comes in with product management, there are a lot of scenarios that can come in that, right? And pretty much you look like this, the situation comes in like this image on the right, right? There's a lot of chaos going on and you as a PM have to stay center and lead the team through that and drive your product to delivery to closure in a right way and right form. So how do we do that, right? We do that by solving the unpredictability. The better you are in identifying the unpredictability, you can lead that to a predictable scenario, right? And make better decisions. The goal is, as a PM, you'll be making a lot of decisions. The goal is that you make right decisions at the right time, okay? So let's see, how do we do that? All right. Preventing, so there are two categories basically, right? There's unpredictable scenarios. There are two things that you can do, right? One is, based on your knowledge and process, as you understand, you can prevent the unpredictable outcome, right? And we'll talk about that here. Then there's a second subset, which is basically, you could not predict it. It is unpredictable scenario and there is a situation that occurred. Now you have to manage that unpredictability. So the best case is you can prevent the unpredictable outcome. If not, then you have to manage it. But as a PM, you have to be ready for both because it is, well, it's challenging, but it's part of being a product manager. So how can you get yourself ready to handle the unpredictable outcome? Well, it's basically a mindset. See, it depends which product you're managing, which company you are in, what stage the product in, are you very early in the product development or later. Those scenarios will always vary among all of us, right, what we are managing. But your mindset is what you can, you can follow a framework to get to a certain level of certainty. Let's see. So the key to preventing a predictable outcome is first, you have to know, you have to figure out what you don't know, which means you have to think through, you have to be vigilant, and you have to start early. For example, if you can identify what you don't know, you can plan for that. Ignorance is not always less, right? You have to know to solve the problem. Once you identify that there is an issue, you're starting early, you can simplify that problem statement because many times, the problem statement look very big and they are very vague, they are very subjective. Until you break down that problem into small pieces, it will be very difficult to lead to predictability. And why it becomes easy when you break down the problem is because mostly one bigger problem that seemed like big, it's actually a combination of some small problems. And probably part of that, you know the answer, right? But it's just those small pieces where you don't know the answer. And when you break down into small pieces, you know which part you are not able to handle. And that's where you know that this is the part that I don't know. So you know that unpredictability and you can handle that in the best way that you can. It is very important to know your resources. And by resources, I don't just mean assuming you have a team of people. Your resources are many. It is your knowledge, your knowledge about product, your knowledge about process in the company. It is also your reputation, your rapport that you have built with other people. It is the people that you can reach out to when you don't know what to do, when you don't know if any part of the process is not clear. So resources is a lot of these things. It's also time, it's also your capability of making decisions. All of these are your resources. So what are your strengths? What are your resources? You need to be aware of that. So you can apply those when you face these bigger problems. Many times we run on autopilot. We focus on a problem statement and we use the resources that are in front of us. That is why it is important to think through and realize which resources you're not using. And I'll talk about a couple of scenarios later where at first when you look at the problem, it may seem like, well, there is no solution. But when you break down and you think through, well, maybe there is no ideal solution, but there are other ways you can handle that situation. And that is why it is important to know your resources, knowing what resources I have not leveraged to solve this problem. Always think about your goal first and stay focused on that because whole product management can be chaotic. You want to make sure that your goal is defined. You want to, for example, a simple goal that you want to build this product with these features by this time. Once you have your goal clear, at least you can track your progress against it. You know where you stand right now. What are the goals that you can achieve and what maybe you cannot achieve at this time? Maybe you can do it later. So it's important to know your goal and work backwards from there. Always retrospect, review the outcome because we always think that we're doing the right thing later on realize with data and look into the data and look into your success or failure and see what went right, what didn't go right. And that's a learning for you to go back and apply to your next project and to keep getting better at it. So always go through the retrospect process, review the result and improvise. Get feedback. It's important whether it's critical. It's not critical. Once you hear the feedback from other perspective because many times we start building the product, we think in a certain way. We are passionate about it, but sometimes with passion also comes that kind of vision. So you want to make sure that you're thinking the bigger picture and there is be acceptable to feedback. Whether it's critical, it is not critical. It is positive, negative. Everything is welcome. Listen to feedback. Decide whether it makes sense or not and then take that feedback in to improve yourself more and always own the outcome. No. You remember the first picture that I showed you? You are a product manager. You're in the center of it. Whether it is your engineering team, whether it is operations, whether it's quality control, whether it is release team, even if you are not directly working on it, you own it. You own it in terms of consequences because it's your product. It's your vision. It's your idea that you have built and you want to make sure that it reaches the finish line. And you own the outcome of it, whether it is positive or negative. And once you have that ownership, then you'll take extra steps to gain more resources as well, right? Because once you think that maybe that release plan, product release on time is my ownership, that engineering delay that is happening is my ownership as well. You'll make, you'll grow your subset of resources. You'll have better repetition with your engineering team. You'll have better repetition with your quality team. You'll look at reports, different kinds of reports, not just your revenue reports or competitive intelligence. You'll also look at how's my tech debt looking, right? How are the reports from engineering perspective looking? And that's when you grow your resources. You've grown your knowledge. Your knowledge is your biggest resource, right? And by gaining, in paths to gain that knowledge, you'll also build other contacts or other resources that you can use over time. So to tame the unpredictable outcome, to prevent the unpredictable outcome, once you go through all this process, make sure that your goal is to maximize the value, right? And I'll talk about another scenario, what could be your goal, right? So your goal in this case is you maximize the value that you get from this because I'm assuming that you have time to think through and make right decision in this for the best value of product. All right. Okay. So we talked about what are the unpredictable outcomes? Now, there are some scenarios, just for an example, right? What could be a scenario for having an unpredictable outcome? One could be you are a new PM with a goal to deliver product on time, you are new to the company. Now think, what unpredictability can come with that? One could be there's a new process in the company, right? And you're aware of that, you know, you're new, you don't know the process, the process of releasing the product in the company, grow your knowledge, read the documents, talk to people, listen well in meetings, ask a lot of questions, that's how you grow your resources. You're aware of the uncertainty, right? So don't, the work you work and learn will be very different than anyone else, right? Who has already been in the company for a long time. That's one scenario two is, for example, you're building a product, a first gen product in a new market space, right? Once you have, if you're building a second gen or next generation product, you have a lot of data point to go after but building a first gen product, you don't, right? So it's a different scenario and you're aware of it. So do something about it. For example, you know that you're not going to find prior data points, you'll still have to make critical product decisions at some point. Look for alternate data, look for industry data points, look for other products that are within your company that maybe don't solve their problem directly but handle it in some way. What are those customers talking about? How do products look in that space? How those products have been doing? Look into the competitive market space. Even though you don't have your own product previous generation, you can still go and find those details. So the key to finding predictability in unpredictable scenario is basically you being ready, you being vigilant, right? You being proactive in thinking through that what could go right and what could go wrong and just because something could go wrong doesn't mean it has to go wrong, right? You have to go and find out what you can do about it. You can bring some predictability into that, right? And there could be many more scenarios in this. Let's move to the other category which is managing the unpredictable outcome and I love this picture. It's basically you're blindfolded, you're going and you don't know what is ahead of you but you face an unpredictable outcome and there is nothing you could do about it before or there is something you could do but it was not done so now you have to manage that unpredictable outcome, right? What do you do in that case? First thing, acknowledge the problem. Don't deny it. Don't find your way around it or try to put it on someone else. No, that's not going to work. Acknowledge the problem as a product owner. You own it. If it is a problem about your product or an issue caused by that, as a PM you own it. It is your responsibility to go and figure out what happened so acknowledge the problem, inform the key stakeholders, everyone who should know about it though go with a face approach in that. Talk to the core team first. You don't want to cost panic but you just you want to make sure that everyone is still informed. Talk to the core team. Think through the solution which could be short-term and long-term both. In the case of when you're managing unpredictable outcome, just one scenario may not suffice because if it was one scenario that was actually releasing the product on time or that was actually releasing a product which had no issues. Think through a few scenarios. Think through pros and cons. Share idea with your team. Share it with your core team. Get aligned and then socialize with broader team. Work to maximize value always. But also make sure that at some point you may have to make decision where you're minimizing the loss and that is very important. When you're deciding about that, make sure that you make the choice in preference for customer because your customer who are probably expecting some feature or some product at some point in time and their business depends on it, make sure you take care of that for them from every angle whether it means informing them on time, engaging them when you're making a decision, telling them clearly, openly, transparently that what are the pros and cons of that. If there's a genuine mistake, there's no harm in apologizing and tell what is the plan, what is the next step. So make sure maximize value but be ready to think through the scenarios where you minimize the loss and contain the problem. So this is managing the unpredictable outcome. One scenario for managing the unpredictable outcome could be your product was planning of going GA in two weeks. The customer is waiting for it. There's big deals online but there's a product issue discovered. You can't release the product right now. What are you going to do? Well, the first thing, acknowledge the problem. It is a problem. You have to do something about it. Find the root cause. As I said, find a few scenarios and socialize them with your team, starting with your core team and then going broader. Let's say in this case, there are three options. Option A is you can release the product with limited functionality meeting the timeline. You'll need the timeline if that was critical for you but it will have limited functionality. Second is you could release the product with workaround for an issue. It will need a little bit more time but know that you're releasing the product with workaround now. That's considerable but know that lean towards releasing the product which is close to expected because workaround do come with a lot of other scenarios that you may have to handle later. So for that option, do consider all the pros and cons as well. Option C is complete fixed timeline but it's going to take more time. So now let's say these are your three scenarios. What are you going to do? Well, what you're going to do is check with customer what do they want, what do they prefer the most and then lay out the pros and cons for each scenario for them. When you're evaluating pros and cons, ask questions from every direction. For example, what are the challenges if you decide to add the feature later? What are the risks in releasing the product with a workaround? What are the risks in delaying the release for two months? Find the balance in your decision but when you're trying to find the balance, make sure you always bias for customer's preference. After all this, of course, retrospect the resolution and always, always own the outcome because once you own the outcome, you'll learn more, you'll become better over time and you'll increase your resources because once you own the outcome, you're going to think through more, you're going to work in right direction and that'll increase your resources and once you increase your resources, for example, you're going to read more, you're going to know more people, you're going to discuss more, you're going to ask more questions, you're going to talk to your customers more, you're going to reach out to your sales team more, you're going to get better. And the better you are in your product journey, you'll lead those unpredictable scenarios and drive them towards predictability and predictability is a good thing. Whether you can predict that the result of this is not going to be good, but I still have to make that decision. But at least you know about it, right? You're bound by some other scenarios, but whatever decisions you're making, it is in your knowledge. That is why driving towards predictability is important and you'll get it with time. So we talked about all this. Let's walk through the key takeaways, right? So key takeaway is product journey is filled with predictable and unpredictable scenarios. Predictable are good, unpredictable. We try to drive them towards predictable scenarios and it's completely normal. That's what product management is. Product management is a complex space and that's why we are needed to navigate through that chaos. How do you do that is break down the problem. Identify those resources, expand your resources over time, leverage those to navigate through chaos. Find the resources that were not leveraged. Don't go on autopilot and just leverage two, three resources and never think through beyond that. So resources are unlimited. So think through in detail and leverage those. Acknowledge your success. It's good to acknowledge your success. It gives you more confidence and makes you better and over time when you feel good about yourself and you feel good about the decisions that you make. Learn from your failures. Very important. Confidently learn from your failures and that is where the whole retrospect part comes in and on the outcome and always improvise. So that was a very, very high level overview of product management and looking into predictable and unpredictable scenarios. I hope it was useful. If you want to reach out to me, there's my LinkedIn profile. Feel free to drop me a note or ask me any questions and I hope it was useful. Thank you so much.