Zen of PM - Grokking the Space

Grokking the Space

Now that you areimmersed in information about customers, competitors and more, what does ittell you? Wouldn’t it be great if you could apply a simple formula to produce aprovably correct roadmap for your product? You can stop searching the Internetfor that formula and look in the mirror. Even with all the data in the world,you can’t prove what features to build or what design to pursue. Thesedecisions are part art and part science and mastering that mix is an importantpart of being a program manager.

Get your headaround the data; mull it over; talk to your teammates and others about whatyou’ve learned and where it should lead you. Some of this is about determiningwhat information is noise and what is signal. Some is about finding connectionsbetween disconnected or seemingly disparate pieces of information. Ultimately,it’s about getting to the point where you can see what is meaningful and getready to tell the story of where the real opportunities lie.

Don’t be surprisedif you feel like you’re staring at a wealth of information and seeing no bigpatterns or deeper meaning. It takes time, iteration, and even conversation tocoax direction out of data. Often, it is only after annoying your co-workerswith drawn out whiteboard discussions with far too many little boxes andseveral abandoned slide decks that it all start to make sense to us.