Product Management, Defined – Interview with Kim Lanza-Russo
February 10, 2020
legal tech legal technology expertise product
In this month’s Expert column, VP of Marketing, Nicole Giantonio, talks with Kim Lanza-Russo, a Director and Product Manager with Elevate.
Kim, we’re excited to be sharing your perspective with our readers. To begin, how do you define Product Management?
Product Management is a data-driven framework that determines if we’re solving the right problem for a large enough market segment– and delivering value through a product solution.
There’s a lot to unpack there.
Yes, the role of Product Management is broad within this space:
- How do you think about complex organizations?
- How do you look at needs from a market perspective?
- How do you listen to the customer?
- Are you listening to the customer?
- Are you listening to enough potential customers?
- Are you taking and bringing a holistic viewpoint to the table?
- Are you solving the right problems?
- How do you iterate very fast?
- How do you build the right products?
- How do you take those products to market?
Product Management is building a technically strong product and understanding how to prioritize the business and user value. Developing the right things, the most important things, in an economically efficient way. It’s a mixture of market research, knowing the technology, listening to your customers, and not just ‘taking orders.’
That explanation is helpful. How does it play out?
First, we look at the market and set up a scalable framework to interact with customers, and potential customers, regularly. Elevate has embraced a ‘design for delight’ approach to learn, listen, and hear what’s occurring in our market. Next, we run ‘experiments’ testing fundamental problems and assumptions across the target market that will ultimately buy and adopt our technology. By accelerating the feedback loop on product ideas and functionality, we eliminate or reduce wasted product development time, effort, and cost.
Let’s talk about what you’re hearing from the market.
There are multiple sources of information for me. Market information and market intelligence are one; another is asking customers and non-customers broad questions around their business needs. We also look at what our competitors are doing.
For our current initiatives, we’ve been interviewing both law firms and law departments, mostly non-customers, about key priorities and the management of various business processes. This live, hypothesis-based testing starts broad and then goes narrow. Themes are emerging, and it’s essential to keep in mind that both sides are evolving, and that our pool of respondents are at different points of maturity along the spectrum.
To find out what we’ve heard from you and your peers, tune into our March e-Newsletter for Part Two of our discussion with Kim. She’ll provide context for an exciting March announcement from the Elevate Products team.
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