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Why Do Product Managers Need To Focus More On The Universality Of Products?

May 17, 2022 by Dane Palarino

Have you ever wondered why some products are so easy to use for everyone? Suppose you are in the metro and see an older person trying to get a ticket from the ticket vending machine but unable to get one. After all the efforts, he seeks help from someone. Here, a product manager needs to focus on the scenario where the elderly couldn’t get help from someone. Product teams need to focus on this situation and iterate carefully on making a product universal. That is a product design that everyone and anyone can use.

Product manager interview questions are now drifting towards a more comprehensive approach to product design- universality. Let’s have a closer look at what universal design means.

What Does Universal Design Mean?

Product development is an extensive process. It includes going back and forth like a pendulum from iteration to wireframing until desired product goals are achieved. Today, with changing market trends, universality concerns more product companies.

Here you can question the reason behind this.

Like in the above example, numerous products need updates so that everyone who wants to use the product can easily use it. So, by definition, universal design is that product design that makes the product easily accessible to all people regardless of condition, age, gender, disability, and other factors. The beat here is to create a universal product without any modifications. Look at these examples to better understand the versatile design of products.

Spotify: Spotify is an online music streaming platform that allows users to enjoy different genres of music at a very affordable price. Their design is universal because you can listen to the same music on your pc or laptop that you were listening to on mobile with just a click.

Automatic doors: When you go to a shopping mall, you must have encountered automatic doors. It is always a fun sight to enter without pulling or pushing anything. Did you know that its design was made to suffice universality? Maybe not, then try to think now. Suppose there’s a person in a wheelchair or a mother with bags and her baby. Can they open the door with a doorknob? Maybe yes, with a slight push or pull here and there. But, their experience would have been different and more comfortable if they could quickly enter the mall without requiring any help or pulling some strings. That is where universal product design comes in.

Why Do We Need Universal Product Designs?

Agree or disagree, there’s one point in life where we can not function as per our ability. In those instances, products based on universality principles can help us use a product or service without feeling isolated. Universality forms its basis on two principles-

Understanding and respecting the diversity in people
Informed responses to a variety of people

What Are The Key Principles Of Universal Design?

Universal design primarily promotes an inclusive approach to include every group or section of society as its users. In simple words, it will help maximize the number of users benefiting from the product or service under development. Universal design has seven fundamental principles that guide product teams to make a universal design. These were designed to make communications, products, and environments more inclusive and universal. Here’s the list of seven principles:

Practice Equity

Equity as a value means to be fair and impartial. No one likes to be treated differently because of their ability. Therefore, products should focus on fair use and provide a similar experience, if not identical.

Flexible use

Products and services shall be able to accommodate different abilities and preferences. The designs shall allow users to control and use the product as they wish.

Intuitive and simple design

The products should be simple to comprehend and use for every user irrespective of their age, qualification, knowledge, or skill. In simple terms, users must know which steps to take after carrying out the first step.

Perceptible information

Every product design must be simple enough to communicate all the necessary information to the user effectively by using multiple verbal and non-verbal cues.

The low magnitude of physical effort

Product teams must know user satisfaction is their priority. So, every product they develop must aim to make users’ lives easier.

Error tolerance

Remember the undo button on pc, and it works the same way. Here, product teams must know that their users may commit some accidental error, and there shall be some mechanism.

Size and space

Teams need to enhance the user experience by providing a proper approach for use, i.e., irrespective of the user’s shape, size, posture, or mobility, and he must be able to access the product.

Takeaway!

This is why a product manager recruiting agency like Palarino Partners works to bring consensus among the candidates’ expectations and the product companies so that a potential candidate can work at the desired place without compromising values and vice versa.

How To Answer Behavioral Questions In Product Management Interviews?

March 24, 2022 by Dane Palarino

Product management is one of the most sought out job profiles these days. With a suitable position comes a good amount of responsibilities. You are here for a thorough insight into the prospective questions you will be asked in your interview. Questions can go from generic to specific technical questions. However, one set is most favorite for interviewers today, the behavioral questions. Behavioral questions aim at identifying your ability to handle any situation with examples from the past and future. Product management recruiting agency Palarino Partners will introduce you to some sample behavioral questions here, so keep reading!

What Are Behavioral Questions?

A product manager works at the interface of a diverse team and leads the team to complete a product development process. As the job demands, the product manager needs a multi-skill set in his hands to handle a tricky question. The main goal of asking behavioral questions is to test a candidate’s potency for the company. Because a company may go from ups and downs, a candidate must know how to cope with most situations. These questions are structured to judge your interpersonal skills, critical ability, analytical thinking, to name a few. There is no clear standard to test these skills. However, a product manager should have the right attitude and behavior.

Sample Behavioural Questions Asked In A Product Management Interview.

As a beginner, a candidate is often under the loop of skepticism about devoting time and energy to this particular set of questions. It’s good to think because time is precious for a product manager. You are already on the right path. Now, shift some thinking about the role you will be playing, which involves decision-making at every step. These decisions are related to your colleagues, teams, stakeholders, designs, projects, users, and the list. Hence, it’s best to introduce these behavioral questions briefly. Following are a few sample questions to help you raise the bar for every candidate after you.

1.Tell Us About When You Had A Conflict With Your Fellow Team Member. How Did You Handle It?

This is a must-question and a prevailing situation for a product manager. Because product managers are often involved with cross-functional teams, this question aims to assess your conflict-management ability and your relationship and attitude towards your fellow workers. You can describe your prior experience working in groups, or you can take your time and relate this situation to any person or school scenario. There is no perfect answer, but there’s always a unique answer, so try it

2. How Did You Handle Negative Feedback From A User About Your Product? Were You Able To Resolve The User’s Issues?

To answer this question, you need to understand that user experience is essential for any product. If the user has genuine issues and your product cannot resolve his problems as promised, you need to sit with your team and iterate again. This question is about your critical thinking, user importance, and prioritization. For this question, follow a simple approach to showcase your integrity to admit and correct your mistakes and keep the users your priority.

3. Tell Us A Time When Your Team Handled An Important Project At The Last Minute.

It aims to test your time-management skills. A product team has a lot on their desks, and they need good prioritization for every project. In this answer, highlight how you strategize things and tools which you will use to stay up to date on your projects. This question is also about motivating your team in tight schedules so as not to let time affect the quality of the product.

4. How Did You Handle It When Your Product Could Not Convince The Stakeholders?

Behavioral questions are about behavior and attitude. This question is widespread as it assesses your integrity. Here, you have to be as polite and humble as possible to admit your weaknesses and potential. Remember, it is about your team spirit also. So, approach this question with an open mind to let the interviewer know every human is a pack of imperfect bricks yet has enough potential to stand firm in those harsh winds. Do not end your answer with just weaknesses because in topgrading interviewing, you must focus on shifting the tide towards your hidden capabilities.

5. Your Team Suffered A Failed Situation. How Will You Motivate Them To Focus On Other Projects?

Project management is the position for leaders. You are tasked with leading the product team to develop a product successfully. And, a team is not about commands; but about taking everyone higher with the right motivation. In a product development process, teams fail many times because a product has to suit the dynamic demands of the users. So focus on how you can maintain your team’s productivity in challenging situations and deliver a quality product.

Bottomline!

Product management needs people to understand current and future trends that will shape the market. You must interact with your team as a leader and as a co-worker; because the product team will bring the innovation that users want. Hence, looking at every question from diverse perspectives will give you an edge to crack any interview. These few sample questions will help you understand the physics of behavioral interviews. For more information on Product management interviews, visit Palarino’s website.

Rise of Product Operations: New Discipline Empowering Product Excellence

January 7, 2022 by Dane Palarino

Product operations is a new job title. How does it aid the effective scaling of modern product management organizations? Product operations, like design ops, emerged out of a need to streamline a scaling function in the last five years. It specifies, communicates, supports, and enhances critical standardized operations like communication, planning procedures, team meetings, and training.

We’ll explain what PALARINO PARTNERS provide and how it fits into product teams, then discuss some of my learnings from the past experiences, including:

Why is product operations required?
What exactly is product ops?

How it’s become a critical component for growing effective product teams

What Are The Responsibilities Of Product Managers?

At PALARINO PARTNERS, our product teams typically include a product manager, designer, engineering manager, and engineers. Spotify, Atlassian, and Airbnb are just a few examples of other tech companies that operate in this manner.

As the new york product manager are increasingly being asked to undertake additional jobs, perform extensive data analysis, and plan with competing agendas in software product development. Strategic thinking, user research, product prioritizing / backlog trimming, data analysis, and communication are all abilities that product managers employ frequently.

Most significantly, great product managers devote time to product discovery, which is the process of iterating and validating new ideas with real consumers. Over the years, We’ve seen the product management team strengthen their abilities in these areas and grow positively, as product operations managers play a vital role in their arsenal.

What Is The Definition Of Product Operations?

Product operations hold product teams accountable for their results and ensure that the product organization is set up to scale consistently and with minimal friction.

Engineering, design, and product team communication/announcements / reinforcing process, policies, and practices are the primary responsibilities of product operations.

Templates, guidelines, how-to references, and resources are all updated. (The product operations person should have access to these and should be able to point people to the most recent versions.)

Creating and sustaining a product manager continuing education program assisting with onboarding. Information about product management best practices was researched and organized.

Why Is There Such A Demand For Product Operations?

Product ops have become increasingly crucial as PALARINO PARTNERS has expanded in size, automating and holding our team accountable for the duties of product managers.

However, Product ops focused on assisting employees in the product organization and their relevant cross-functional stakeholders to deliver products that matter to the company.

Product Operations: A Growing Demand

While the idea of scaling a product organization is not unique, many businesses still struggle to develop their product management teams to the point where they are productive at each stage of growth. Product operations will continue to grow and become more significant. As the needs of large businesses change, the best practices that product ops experts rely on will adapt and mature.

There is a bunch of room to enhance the rigor of this function, just as there is with other parts (DevOps or design ops), to match the complex needs of product teams evolving in their practice. For example, if a company has trouble organizing and finding information that product managers need frequently, it could signify that a product ops person would be beneficial.

Because our role goes much beyond that of an administrator, we believe that firms should invest in product operations professionals to support product managers as their organizations evolve appropriately. We need to lower product management’s cognitive load, make it easier for product teams to work together, and develop a cadence and culture around best practices.

Do You Require a Product Operations Team?

A product operations team’s primary goal is to help the product team make it easier to deliver exceptional products. When your product team has fewer people, they should multitask and own the areas. However, as the squad grows, they begin to face these issues firsthand.

When deciding whether your product team needs to hire someone for product ops, here’s a handy list of questions to ask yourself.

Do your product managers spend more time on administrative activities than their primary responsibilities?
Do you have a product innovation culture that feels out of control?
Do you have any reservations about your team’s data to make decisions, and do you see a straightforward solution to the problem?

However, if you have any of the concerns outlined above, it’s time to think about developing a product operations role or even a product operations team. However, before you go through any of the growing pains mentioned above, you might want to think about adding a product operations function to help your team be more productive.

To Sum It Up!

The PALARINO PARTNERS help you to get the best Product Ops. So, what signs to look for to determine when to begin product operations, how to build a case, who and how to employ, where to focus, and what your next steps are all topics you can answer from our team. If product operations are something you’re interested in, it’s a great option to start.