This week, Product Faculty hosted Masooma Zakir, Product Supervisor at Drift, for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Masooma tells us how she knew she was prepared to guide a crew, discovering Product-Market Match, and balancing strategic pondering and execution.

Meet Masooma

Masooma Zakir is a Senior Product Supervisor at Drift. With greater than 10 years of expertise in management, she focuses on technique, end-to-end product improvement, and venture administration life cycle simply to call just a few. Earlier than becoming a member of Drift, she operated at Financial institution of America the place she labored her approach up from Portfolio Product Supervisor to Digital Product Supervisor. Previous to that, she was a Enterprise Techniques Advisor at Wells Fargo.

Do you advocate a selected technique framework on launching a product in a pink ocean market?

Nice query. Figuring out which framework to make use of is at all times an attention-grabbing determination to make. I discover that the match normally relies on the trade and setting you’re in.  For instance, once I was at a bigger company we took a different strategy from the hyper-growth firm I’m at now.  We’re rather more scrappy the place I’m at now.

You have got 10 years of management expertise. As a PM when did you come to the purpose the place you have been prepared to guide Product Groups? What elements/occasions introduced you to that time?

Oh there’s a lot I can speak about right here! Thanks for the query. I at all times say it’s my curiosity that led me to Product Administration. I aspire to study as a lot as I can from clients to find out one of the best ways to unravel for his or her ache factors. I knew I used to be prepared to guide Product Groups due to this drive.

Extra particularly, nonetheless, I recall being in conferences watching our Product Leads and pondering ‘oh that’s precisely what I used to be pondering. I need to do THAT’.  I additionally turned a lead in an area the place I felt comfy with the merchandise and clients.  Having that data base and the present relationships made the transition seamless.

Take a look at: What Nice Product Groups Look Like in 2022

What’s one of the best ways for one to hold out a product evaluation for a brand new function or product?

While you say ‘evaluation’, I’m assuming you’re speaking a few Product Market Match? If that’s the case, I discover that one of the best ways is to interact with clients immediately.  When I’ve an idea in thoughts, I associate with design to mock up or prototype the function.  We then validate it with clients immediately. This has been essentially the most helpful approach in my expertise. 

Other than this, the opposite classes to contemplate are ‘what ache level does this remedy for?’, ‘does the info assist us fixing this drawback?’ ‘how impactful is it in the direction of our enterprise aim?’, ‘what’s the ROI for us (ex: elevated income or decreased operational prices), and lastly ‘whats the hassle to implement this?’.

I’m at the moment planning on upcoming tasks and I discover myself on an internal back-and-forth of pursuing a single large venture or many smaller ones, do you may have any particular suggestions on tips on how to higher steadiness these two for improvement?

PM is a enjoyable balancing act, isn’t it? I’d ask myself questions alongside the strains of ‘what is going to carry the client essentially the most worth?’ and base my evaluation round that, aside from another prioritization situations to contemplate.  Moreover, I come throughout this in my every day skilled life incessantly and one strategy that’s helped is discovering a method to break up the only large venture into smaller worth increments. Even when it’s one thing that may solely be launched collectively, I discover that breaking it up into smaller items makes it extra ‘digestable’ and simpler to prioritize/scope for the Product Groups.

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What are the issues that go into constructing a potent technique?

As I’ve talked about, the way you outline technique is closely influenced by the trade and setting you’re in. There are such a lot of nice frameworks like Porters 5 Forces which is normally my go-to to start out interested by technique after which I normally customise the framework based mostly on my wants.

How do you steadiness your time between strategic pondering with knee-deep execution?

Truthfully, that is an on-going problem for me, nonetheless, I discover making use of prioritization to my calendar and the way I spend my time is essential to sustaining the correct degree of steadiness. In my day-to-day, I attempt to spent 50% of my time on strategic pondering – this implies blocking out my calendar to do exactly that. I label the blocked time with what a part of the technique I need to deal with so it’s a reminder for me to proceed focus in that space.

What are frequent misconceptions/myths about technique in observe that you just’d wish to make clear? Do you ever need to do a one-off function or job that’s not aligned with the technique?

I believe I’ve seen this happen essentially the most as a consequence of surprising new buyer ache factors, traits available in the market together with a competitor launching a product or function that impacts our aggressive moat. I’ve additionally seen this occur when a brand new buyer deal is within the pipeline that may herald important income. If they need a particular function earlier than they resolve to undertake, then that’s one thing which will even be thought of outdoors of the technique.