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

Running a hybrid model

A critical aspect of the transition to the platform model is that you will be running in a hybrid model for quite some time. Sometimes, it will be your long-term strategy to run the business in a hybrid model as a linear product and as a platform. In some cases, running both in parallel will be a short-to medium-term approach until you transition entirely. Let's look at the logistics business example that we touched upon earlier in detail to understand what that transition will look like.

We discussed in the example that there is an existing logistics business that contracts and hires delivery personnel to fulfill the online orders taken by different manufacturers. Later, the business expands and starts accepting online orders and continues with the fulfillment service for orders taken elsewhere. We discussed in this scenario that when the business decides to transition to a platform model, it should first focus on platforming the fulfillment service...