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

Defining the problem

If we are building a digital platform, or any product for that matter, we are trying to solve a problem. So, it is very crucial to understand what problem we are trying to solve. Many product managers or business executives often miss this step of defining the problem and directly jump to the solution.

We cannot provide a solution unless we understand what the problem is, and to understand the problem, we must first know our users. If there is a perception that a problem exists and that problem can be solved in a digital platform space, we should validate whether the problem is a good candidate for the platform use case or can be solved by the linear product.

As a result, it is crucial that we look at the problem from the platform users' perspectives, which are present on two different sides. Therefore, we should know about the users from both sides of the platform. To define a good and accurate problem statement, we should know precisely who the producers...