Welcome to the first article in the "10 Commandments of Product Management" series. I promised this series about a month ago - or as one of our commenters (Josh) put it, "pre-announced"! The article is finally here, so you can't accuse me of selling vaporware!

Okay, the first question you may be asking is - "Why a series with this title?". Fair enough. Let me start by telling you what is *NOT* a reason - It has nothing to do with religion. I'm not very religious, I certainly don't consider myself the "Moses of Product Management" and I've never even been to Mount Sinai! Now to the why...

My goal in this series is to distill the core essence of product management into ten (or so) commandments. I find top-ten lists to be very useful to grasp the basics of various subjects - so I hope this list will be useful to product managers everywhere and those who work with them.

What does a Product Manager Do?
Here is a question for you. Can you summarize what a product manager does in two words - by filling the blanks in the following sentence?

A product manager is a _____  _____.

Wait, don't read further yet. Fill in the blanks above before proceeding further, will ya? I will wait here.

Okay, ready? Does what you wrote down match what I wrote down (shown below)?

A product manager is a Customer Expert.

If it matches - that is awesome news. It further proves the saying "Great minds think alike"!

If not, let me explain what I mean. As I mentioned in a previous article in this blog, a product manager's roles and responsibilities could vary widely from company to company. But what is the single, most important, common denominator?

To me - it is the ability to understand the customer needs deeply and translate them to requirements. This is what I mean by Customer Expert - an expert about the customer: what the customers' needs are (relative to your product), how those needs are met by your product today, how they could be met better, etc. This brings us to the First Commandment.

First Commandment of Product Management

Know Thy Customer

In a highly competitive marketplace, the company that "knows its customer" better will beat those that don't. I believe one of the top priorities for those of us in Product Management and Product Marketing should be to enable our companies to get better at this.

Here are some steps you can take to "know your customer" better:

1. Listen to Customers:

   The easiest way to know your customers is to listen to them. Talk to them on the phone, communicate via emails, interact with them in discussion forums, etc. The goal is simply to understand what pains your product solves (or pleasures it provides), how they use it, what value they see, etc.

2. Usability Tests:

   Usability tests enable you to observe customers using your products in "simulated real life" situations and give you tremendous insight into how you can make your products better.

3. Follow-Me-Home:

   Popularized by Intuit, this takes the usability tests to your customer's workplace (for B2B products) or home (for B2C products). This gives you even better insights as you're observing them in "real life" situations rather than in "simulated real life" situations.

4. Walk-a-Mile:

   Use your own product as often as you can - i.e. walk a mile in your customer's shoes. This is especially effective for B2C products, as all of us are consumers too.

5. Customer Surveys, and Focus Groups:

   I don't consider these to be as good as the previous steps, as they tend to be more error prone - but they can provide valuable insight into your customers when done well.

There you have it, the First Commandment of Product Management and some steps to help you follow it. Here is to better products, and more success...

What are your thoughts and comments on this topic? Let the world know what you think by clicking on the 'Post Comment' link below!