What Could Be In a Product Management Portfolio (Pt.2): Writing About Products
A short while ago, I wrote the first part of creating a product manager portfolio: Building a product as a product manager newbie. This touches on the step-by-step process one could follow to exercise product management skills before getting a job.
In this article, I’ll be talking about another way to build your portfolio as a product manager — newbie or experienced. Writing is a skill PMs are encouraged to have and one way to grow it and show it is by simply writing, lol. There are different ways to showcase this skill in your portfolio:
Product Reviews
This is David Ijaola’s specialty. He reviews software products in his Product Spotlight series using this simple format:
- Background: He gives a background into the problem customers face
- Introduction: David then introduces the product. He gives some information about the company and how they’re solving the problem stated in the background
- Process Flow: He then breaks down the product features for readers to get a good grasp of the product functions
- Conclusion: This could include links or whatever he deems fit to add
Product Case Studies
Recently, Ini shared two articles on how he landed a European remote role by writing case studies.
It reminded me of the first one I wrote, though it wasn’t as detailed. I have now lost the article but I still have access to the wireframes. It was a product improvement for Spotify, and Spotify actually launched this feature (not because of me, though. Haha).
There are two kinds of case studies you could write on:
- Improving a product feature
- Introducing a new product or product feature
Both will require you to conduct some User Experience (UX) research. Kevin Liang in his 6-part series on YouTube shares how to conduct user research. To summarise his points, do the following if you want to carry out research:
- Background: understanding the problem, the user demography, etc.
- Goals/Objectives: having a goal drives the whole research. It answers the questions, “Why am I building this product?”, “Is it worth building?”, “What do I do with the results of this research?”
- Research Materials: These could be prioritised questions you choose to ask your participants or A/B tests you wish to carry out to find out the preferred choice.
- Success Metrics: You have to define success for your research. These are metrics to help you know if the goal was fulfilled. For example, getting 90% of 2,000 people to fill a survey form or the majority of participants carrying out activities you want them to in an A/B test.
Writing a Product Case Study
After UX research has been carried out, documenting the process in your portfolio comes next. You can follow these steps:
- Background: Write a general overview of the product you want to improve on
- Problem: List the problem you are trying to solve with this case study
- User Persona: A summary of your ideal customer — age, location, pain points, assumptions, etc
- Research: User research can be done to be sure you're solving the right problem
- Solutions: Different solutions to the problem you want to solve
- Prioritise: Prioritise your solutions with any framework of your choice. Some of them are RICE, Value vs Effort Matrix, Kano Model, Story Mapping, MoSCoW Model, etc.
- Test: Validate your solutions by conducting user testing
- Document: Document your findings for the case study. Include wireframes, user flows, business models, customer journey maps, PRDs, etc., to communicate the outcome of the case study.
- Iterate: If your test was not successful, you can iterate by doing more research, carrying out tests again, and documenting the learning process as well
You can use my editable research templates to create your case study.
I also created this deck to give you an overall view of what can be in your portfolio and the tools you can use to build one.
If you found this helpful, please let me know. Feel free to reach out on Twitter: @anesii_
Till next time,
Anesii (My Portfolio: bit.ly/anesii-pm)
