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

Challenges of platform backlog prioritization

Platform backlog prioritization is tricky and challenging because of the network effect with the web of users interacting with each other. As discussed earlier, user interaction on platforms is not a one-directional funnel, but it is a mesh. And this mesh of interaction brings a few challenges with it when we are planning and prioritizing features or enhancing the experience of our platform. The following are some of the challenges encountered while prioritizing features for the platforms:

  • Striking a balance between connection and noise: As we discussed earlier, to increase accumulation and connection, we must be careful not to increase the noise and to respect everyone's privacy. Striking this balance is a challenge while prioritizing capabilities that will increase the number of users on the platform and enable them to connect.

We must intentionally plan the features that do not let users invade each other's...