Book Image

Effective Platform Product Management

By : Tabassum Memon
Book Image

Effective Platform Product Management

By: Tabassum Memon

Overview of this book

Scaling a platform is a lot different than scaling a product. This is why product managers developing or transitioning to a platform model are often facing completely new challenges – both technical and strategic. But if you want to build the next Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, or a completely new type of platform, then you need to adopt a platform-first approach to change how you invent, develop, and market solutions. This is where Effective Product Platform Management comes in. This book addresses product management as a critical pillar of platform development. It'll help you understand the difference between traditional and modern product management for platforms and even decide whether the platform business model is the way to go for you. As you progress, you’ll be able to build the right platform strategy, define the MVP, and focus on ongoing backlog prioritization for successful platforms. This book will also walk you through the practical steps and guidelines that can ease your organization’s transition from linear products to platforms. By the end of this platform product management book, you’ll have learned the essential aspects of product management for building successful and scalable platforms. You’ll also have a clear understanding of the next steps you need to take to perfect and execute your new platform strategy – and take on the world.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Building the Right Strategy for the Platform Business Model
6
Section 2: Building the Platform
10
Section 3: Measuring the Performance of the Platform

Identifying metrics

After defining the goals, we need a way to track those goals, which is when the metrics come in. Each goal should have metrics tied to it so that it can be tracked and measured. Different types of platforms should track different metrics in various phases of their life cycles. The following are some of the metrics that are applicable to different platform types:

  • Producers and consumers: The number of active producers and consumers broken down by day and month is the essential metric that must be tracked for any platform during the start up phase. The total number of users is a more appropriate metric for platforms such as social media or information sharing, where producers and consumers are the same.

For marketplace and service-oriented platforms such as Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb, it is essential to track the producer to consumer ratio. These metrics are useful for the start up phase and will help measure the platform's accumulation goals. Total...