The Product Management Scenarios Series examines scenarios presented by fellow product practitioners and others interested in the field. The goal is to start a conversation around scenarios—real or imagined.
Read 4 Iterative Practices for Navigating Product Management and Life for essential background on the foundation of my approach.
Scenario 1
You’re a Product Manager at Facebook. You’ve been tasked to build e-commerce into Facebook. What next steps do you take?
Quick summary: Seek to understand the opportunity and the mental models of your users, distill and share insights to generate ideas, and test what you expect to happen with actual users.
Good decisions need wisdom and humility
Let’s start with an observation about scouting opportunities. Many product managers I know, including myself, enjoy discovering new opportunities or recognizing problems we could solve for the users of our products. There’s a certain “pride” in this, even though pursuing this on our own can cripple…
