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 staff, discovering Product-Market Match, and balancing strategic considering 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 growth, 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 Methods Advisor at Wells Fargo.
Do you suggest a specific technique framework on launching a product in a crimson ocean market?
Nice query. Figuring out which framework to make use of is at all times an fascinating resolution to make. I discover that the match normally is determined by the business and setting you’re in. For instance, after I was at a bigger company we took a assorted strategy from the hyper-growth firm I’m at now. We’re way 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 had been prepared to guide Product Groups? What elements/occasions introduced you to that time?
Oh there’s a lot I can discuss right here! Thanks for the query. I at all times say it’s my curiosity that led me to Product Administration. I aspire to be taught as a lot as I can from prospects 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, nevertheless, I recall being in conferences watching our Product Leads and considering ‘oh that’s precisely what I used to be considering. I need to do THAT’. I additionally grew to become a lead in an area the place I felt snug with the merchandise and prospects. Having that information base and the prevailing 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?
Whenever you say ‘evaluation’, I’m assuming you’re speaking a couple of Product Market Match? If that’s the case, I discover that one of the best ways is to have interaction with prospects straight. When I’ve an idea in thoughts, I companion with design to mock up or prototype the function. We then validate it with prospects straight. This has been essentially the most helpful approach in my expertise.
Other than this, the opposite classes to think about are ‘what ache level does this clear up for?’, ‘does the information help us fixing this drawback?’ ‘how impactful is it in direction of our enterprise objective?’, ‘what’s the ROI for us (ex: elevated income or decreased operational prices), and lastly ‘whats the trouble to implement this?’.
I’m at the moment planning on upcoming tasks and I discover myself on an interior back-and-forth of pursuing a single enormous venture or many smaller ones, do you’ve gotten any particular suggestions on the right way to higher stability these two for growth?
PM is a enjoyable balancing act, isn’t it? I’d ask myself questions alongside the strains of ‘what’s going to deliver the client essentially the most worth?’ and base my evaluation round that, other than another prioritization circumstances to think about. Moreover, I come throughout this in my day by day skilled life ceaselessly and one strategy that’s helped is discovering a approach to break up the only enormous 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.
Learn subsequent: Full Information to Function Prioritization for Quick-Rising Startups
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 business 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 fascinated with technique after which I normally customise the framework primarily based on my wants.
How do you stability your time between strategic considering with knee-deep execution?
Actually, that is an on-going problem for me, nevertheless, I discover making use of prioritization to my calendar and the way I spend my time is vital to sustaining the precise degree of stability. In my day-to-day, I attempt to spent 50% of my time on strategic considering – 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 widespread 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 process that’s not aligned with the technique?
I feel I’ve seen this happen essentially the most attributable to sudden new buyer ache factors, tendencies 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 usher in important income. If they need a particular function earlier than they resolve to undertake, then that’s one thing that will even be thought-about outdoors of the technique.
