What Packing For A Year Long Trip Around The World Taught Me About Product Management
In the past year, I have spent 9 month with just one suitcase, travelling the world. I have visited China, Indonesia, Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Russia, Austria, US, and Canada.
First thing I had to think about travelling in such diverse geographies is what to pack in your bag. Currently, I’m travelling with a 60L suitcase, along with a 12L backpack, meaning all the essentials I will need for next several months have to fit it. I admit it, there are a lot more efficient packers around there, so I don’t try to utilize these super packing skills, and rather rely on a decent comfort/simplicity ratio.
That said, packing is still an art shrouded in mystery. That is, despite years of packing experience (sorry, can’t really put that on LinkedIn, can I?), every time I end up packing things that I don’t use.
That taught me to make lists of things I don’t use along my journey. So if I spent a week or two without touching an item, I would put it on the list.
This whole experience of packing everything into a small bag matches the feeling I get about product management — there are physical constraints on how many features you can strap onto your product. These imitations comes in form of a screen real estate, user’s attention, or the size of the team.
In fast, it’s almost impossible to pack for both scorching hot summer in Taiwan and brutal winter in Iceland within one bag. That’s similar to product management too — it’s better to specialize, and to excel in doing few things well.
When “packing” your startup with features, executives might see it easy to throw everything they see as important — throw in this feature, throw in that. The problem becomes apparent when you take all this baggage with you on the road, and have to carry it through muddy roads, busy streets, or up and down the stairs. This is when you realize, damn — I shouldn’t have agreed to implement that feature.
So a good product manager is the one that can say no to an endless feature creep. Yes, you might not be 100% comfortable on the trip, but you’ll stay lean, and with a light baggage of features you’ll get farther faster.
The art of packing, just like high quality product management, is an iterative process. It means following a process, such as having a retrospective (or, in case of my packing, writing a list of unused / underused things), and staying lean, focused on the larger mission.
If you are running startup, or you are a product manager within a smaller size company, consider this:
- When you implement a new feature, do you have the resources to keep the support forever?
- How is the new feature going to be perceived by the customers? Does it help a small subset of users, the whole base, or designed to benefit the company?
- Can the feature be designed independently or it has to be integrated into the product right away?
- If you have to cut this feature in the future, what would be the impact?
- Why do users come to you, what is the problem they are solving first?
Once you answered the above questions, you should have a clear understanding of what is the key, and what is just window dressing.
As with most things in life, a 80/20 rule would apply — 80 of revenue (or satisfaction) comes from 20 of features. Nurturing that, and realizing what is the core of your company success will help you “pack your startup with features” more effectively, ensuring you have a great adventure ahead!
