How an external Product manager can help early-stage companies to gain momentum (1)

1. Byteridge How an external Product manager can help early-stage companies to gain momentum

2. Byteridge Introduction • At early-stage companies, teams are usually small and that make it difficult to accommodate a dedicated Product Manager and a engineering team lead. • Since start-ups need a faster development cycle, often the engineering lead has to take strategic product decisions. • When a single person is responsible for both product and engineering decisions, it is usually a compromise and might not be the right strategic choice for the success of the product. • Combining roles into one might help you initially with iterating new ideas and finding a product-market fit, though after establishing the product-market fit, you have to work on further developing the idea which will require more specialized work such as developing elaborate use cases, user personas problem statements, features, and functionalities, where you need a dedicated product manager.

3. Byteridge Why do you need a Product Manager? • To get a clear picture, it would be better to first ponder on what value addition a product manager provides to the product development process. • Product Managers start with why decisions are made, and how people use the product. It’s also about building a shared understanding within teams. An understanding of customers, their problems, the strategy, and the opportunities. • PMs usually start with a user centric design which is a design approach that focuses on creating products and experiences that meet the needs and preferences of the target customers. • It involves considering the customer’s perspective throughout the design process and tailoring the design to meet their needs and expectations. This approach is based on the belief that if the design meets the needs and expectations of the customer, it is more likely to be successful and satisfy the customer.

4. Byteridge Why an external product manager? • Expertise: An external product manager may bring a specific area of expertise or industry knowledge that the company lacks internally. This can be especially valuable if the company is entering a new market or developing a new product. • Objectivity: An external product manager may be more objective and unbiased than an internal employee, which can be beneficial when making difficult decisions about the direction of a product. • Fresh perspective: An external product manager can bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the company, which can be helpful in generating new approaches to solving problems. • Resource flexibility: Hiring an external product manager allows a company to have more flexibility in terms of resource allocation.

5. Byteridge Common misconception and challenges: • Making product decisions outside the team might not sound brilliant at first, as per a common misconception that the team will be dependent on some external person and risks of disconnect between engineers and users but it usually turns out to be the opposite because often external PMs came up with outside of box ideas and big picture view on a product that internal stakeholders haven’t really thought of. • The other reason it could go wrong is the lack of empathy or communication between the product and engineering teams. • Especially when product managers could not understand the use cases from the engineering perspective and where engineers could not understand the big picture.

6. Byteridge CONTACT US Contact:+91 40491 74522 Mail : info@byteridge.com Address: WeWork Rajapushpa Summit, Financial District, Hyderabad, Telangana Visit here for more : https://www.byteridge.com/expert-opinions/how-an-external-product-manager-can-help-early-stage-companies-to-gain-momentum/