You may have heard of OKRs<\/a> (objectives and key results) which is a framework for setting business goals. When setting OKRs<\/a>, ensure that they are related to your overarching business objectives.<\/p>\n similarly, you would also be familiar with S.M.A.R.T. goals<\/a>\u00a0before, but it never hurts to repeat. When you set them, keep in mind that they have to be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Adhering to these principles will allow you to transform a vision into a clear course of action. So, let\u2019s put it this way.<\/p>\n If your main long term goal is to launch your new software or app successfully, it\u2019s good to break this down into SMART long term goals such as:<\/p>\n These specific and measurable goals can actually be assigned as clear tasks for various company departments. Then, you can easily branch them into smaller short-term goals and tasks. For example, creating case studies includes approaching potential partners, tracking their results, writing a study, and promoting it using SEO strategy<\/a> or through paid campaigns.<\/p>\n But what happens once things move from the starting point? As things shift from inner workings and move towards communication with customers, the main challenge for product managers becomes differentiating between routine daily tasks that move things forward and the ones that are hindering the project.<\/p>\n For example, finding the balance between product maintenance and releasing new features often means walking a thin line. Too many complaints from customers without a clear solution can kill your product. Focusing on every single complaint and spending too much time fixing minor issues can prevent your long-term product development.<\/p>\n This is why your act of balance needs to be driven by clear data that allows you to differentiate between things that need to be done now, things that can wait, and things that should be dropped.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll talk about this in one of the following sections, but before that, let\u2019s deal with another crucial component of product management<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a product manager, you\u2019re a meeting point for the development team, marketing team, and upper management. Being on the same page takes a literal meaning with high-quality productivity tools such as\u00a0Nifty<\/a>, which allows you to:<\/p>\n We mentioned that product managers have to deal with some tough decisions involving prioritizing between short-term, medium-term, and long-term tasks and goals. Using a good collaboration tool with a clearly outlined roadmap is one way to keep tabs both on the \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d and \u201ccreative vision\u201d aspects of the product. This also prevents product managers from falling into the trap of excessive micro-managing.<\/p>\n If there is one more piece of advice for every product manager looking to achieve great team collaboration \u2014 it\u2019s transparency. But in 2020, transparency doesn\u2019t only have to be about the internal organization. Being transparent with your customers is a great way to ensure that you\u2019re accountable to them, yourself, and your business goal.<\/p>\n Our suggestion? Introduce your users to your product roadmap! It\u2019s not only about being clear \u2014 it\u2019s also about giving people a taste of what\u2019s about to come and making them part of your journey.<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s focus on the clear-cut goals that will guide your decisions and plans.<\/p>\n As the insights about user engagement<\/a> drive your decisions and priorities, your goals also need to be measured against your stakeholders\u2019 expectations and budget. Many product managers may feel compelled to simply build the product lifecycle based on some pre-established frameworks.<\/p>\n However, our suggestion is to avoid sticking blindly to frameworks that have been around for decades and don\u2019t really reflect the reality of the SaaS product development<\/a> lifecycle. Sure, every product goes through four stages \u2014 introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. But what does this mean in terms of a SaaS product?<\/p>\n Roughly, the SaaS product lifecycle can be divided into six distinct stages with specific goals:<\/p>\n As you\u2019re managing your product\u2019s lifecycle, each step should be driven and supported by data.<\/p>\n Developing a comprehensive KPI list may be a daunting and time-consuming task in the beginning, but it\u2019s a task that pays off tenfold. A solid KPI dashboard allows you to turn a mush of data into actionable insights and directions. Some of these metrics should find a way to every good product manager\u2019s dashboard.<\/p>\n Onboarding engagement is one of the metrics that is particularly important for product managers, so let\u2019s dive deeper into this specific goal.<\/p>\n In the SaaS industry, engaging users is both the end and the mean. On one hand, you want to sell your product \u2014 but at the same time, by selling this product, you get to learn from users. Then, you can leverage this knowledge to fine-tune and improve your\u00a0product development<\/a>.<\/p>\n First, you have to track and analyze how many daily, weekly, and monthly users you have. How important each of these metrics depends on the nature of your product. If you\u2019re building a period tracking app, it would be useless to expect that users are going to open it every day. If you\u2019re creating a calorie-counting app, you definitely want users to open it multiple times a day.<\/p>\n Using surveys, quizzes, and chatbots<\/a> is a great way to gather feedback from users. They don\u2019t necessarily have to be an interview about the product. They can help you gather more information about your user\u2019s habits, interests, needs, motivation to use your software and other things that can help you build a fully personalized onboarding experience. The onboarding experience can be a series of emails with articles or videos explaining how to get the best out of your product. They can also contain offers with incentives for users who decide to stick around.<\/p>\n To create a truly personalized experience, you can use a quiz builder<\/a> tool to create quizzes that help you gather insights about your users’ needs and preferences. With this information, you can better meet the needs of your users and ultimately increase retention rates.<\/p>\n But this is not where the product manager\u2019s investigative work ends. With the help of analytics tools, t\u2019s easy to track where subscribers come from, how they interact with your website, and how they engage with your product and content during the onboarding experience. This allows you to identify power users \u2014 the ones who are heavily engaged and ready to subscribe long term.<\/p>\n Some of the tools that can help you (read: product manager) understand user engagement and conduct churn analysis<\/a> include Google Analytics, OptinMonster, Typeform, and Hotjar.<\/p>\n It is now a rule of thumb that SaaS products start off their life with several core features and gradually build up towards more robust versions. There are\u00a0two main frameworks for implementing new features<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Agile and Scrum.<\/p>\n With Agile, the development team starts with a core version and gradually works on small modules. Each of these modules is usually a sprint task that takes no longer than a month. After each sprint, the results are evaluated and tested, with customers\u2019 feedback used to fix the existing bugs and define the next module.<\/p>\n Scrum, on the other hand, gives a lot more freedom to the product owner or product manager. In this case, you create a product backlog, prioritizing some of the backlogs. As the sprint is planned, the team decides which backlog will be implemented. This is also a sprint task that takes no longer than one month, with a daily assessment of progress. At the end of the sprint, the feature should be fully ready for implementation.<\/p>\n Based on your product, stakeholders, and team, you can opt for one of these two feature implementation frameworks. Finally, you can also go with the traditional development method and incorporate all the features at once. This is usually recommended if there is a high degree of certainty that a specific set of features is sought by a target market.<\/p>\n Another specific characteristic of SaaS products is that no product is an island. To survive and truly thrive, software needs to dig into adjacent markets and niches and pair up with complementary products. Your job as a product manager is to find these opportunities, study these potential business partners<\/a>, and present the offer to the stakeholders and the partners.<\/p>\n It is recommended to build integrations with the most popular products in their respective fields. For example, software that builds surveys and forms has to be integrated with MailChimp, a well-established email marketing platform. Another source of guidance is the users\u2019 feedback.<\/p>\n A good product manager perfectly understands the product, the industry, the customers, and the development team. This may be a lot of things to juggle at the same time, but that\u2019s the thrill of the job. Ultimately, you don\u2019t have to juggle on your own \u2014 Nifty collaboration tool is there to lend a helping hand.<\/p>\n With a plethora of features built for\u00a0agile development<\/a>,\u00a0product teams<\/a>, and\u00a0marketing & communications<\/a>, Nifty will help you along every step of the way to a perfect product. Whether you need to consult on the latest features, track the product roadmap, or delegate tasks, Nifty makes sure every idea, tool, document, and team member are just a click away.<\/p>\n\n
Organize your team on the same page<\/h2>\n
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Set Product Management Performance Goals<\/h2>\n
1. Get creative with the product lifecycle framework<\/h3>\n
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2. Develop a product KPI dashboard<\/h3>\n
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3. Welcome the customers in grand style<\/h3>\n
4. Use Agile or Scrum to implement new features<\/h3>\n
5. Work on new integrations with 3rd party apps<\/h3>\n
Final Thoughts<\/h4>\n
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