Diary of Project / Insurance Product Manager for POSP B2B / B2C Product

Our experience of B2B & B2C project is long overdue to convert it into linear / Project management guide for our future reference.
Considering the resource available at hand and market competitors agility over all i am pleased with the end result.
Our portal has sold over 1,00000, policies in two and year of launch with continuous development & improvements.
we have more than 7,000 registered (Semi professional) Agents logging onto POSP portal with average visit of 10,000 visitors a month.

We thought about converting our non linearly working method for my team members (NOT in any preference order).
This would act as guide & share our learning.

Introducing the team which has worked over 13+ Comprehensive Insurance Products over 37 Integrations & Custom in house CRM project over two & Half years. Special thanks to each one of you. This dedication to the project is rare in my 10 year long career.

1) Love kishan
2) Sanjeev Sharma
3) Deepak Rai
4) Sachin Verma
5) Simran Kaur
6) Ajay Rathor

Managements perspective of project management – The Top down approch

Performance Perspective – The product managers perspective

I have been true believer of Agile / Scrum , probably by nature we are built that way. Top down (Waterfall) approach is not a natural leadership approach & it will tire down your performers. Avoid the pitfall of old ways of working where most of times Project manager wants to steer away from responsibilities.

Always believe in your project managers ability. as goes old Soviet saying , Trust but verify. its the senior managements responsibility to keep verifying through independent means without take control over the projects.

1. Define the Bare bone of the project -THE BIG Product Tree Road Map & User Story
   1. Trunk = Core
   2. Branches = Product Areas
   3. Leaves = Features
   4. Roots = Infrastructure
2. Match the idea of the organization with the product development
3. Assemble the avengers
4. Be Agile – Scrum is responsibility
5. Inspire from the industry experts
6. Release the product module wise
7. Focus of the Agent CRM – Toll Free no is not mainstay but second support mechanism
8. Make test teams
9. Go into the market & take candid feedback
10. Trust your gut but support it with data
11. Build a notch better than the competition
12. Resources for Product development
13. Resources for Support mechanism
14. Resource for Issue tracking
15. Build team of flat structure
16. Look for clean exit & Handover the project the support team

Define the Bare bone of the project -THE BIG Product Tree Road Map & User Story

One of your biggest jobs as a product manager is to translate what feels like a million inputs flying in from across the company into one cohesive product roadmap. Just one.

To help you with this, we want to share a useful product management template with you today: The Product Tree Game.

The output of a recent Product Tree session

The Product Tree game is a feature prioritization technique developed by our friends at Innovation Games. We’re sharing it with you today because it’s a productive way to work out priorities as a team. During this game, everyone gets a chance to bring up the priorities they feel are important for the future of the product. But which priorities will win?

You’ll want to set aside an entire morning or afternoon for this riveting afternoon of discussion, debate and group prioritization.

Here’s an easy how-to guide on running your own session.

How to run your session of the Product Tree Game

What you’ll need

1. The Product Tree template (download below)
2. Post-its (these leaf-shaped post-its are perfect)
3. Sharpies
4. A whole afternoon
5. Coffee? Can’t hurt.

Step 1: Print our product tree template

The Product Tree is what you’ll use to run your session.  It consists of four elements:

• The trunk represents the core features already in your products.
• The branches are feature branches. Optionally, you can increase the thickness of branches that are more important.
• The leaves are individual features that the workshop participants will place on the branches. The closer the leaves are to the trunk, the closer they are to being delivered.
• The roots represent the infrastructure that supports your product. As with any tree, the bigger it gets, the more support it needs from its roots – so remember your technology as you expand your feature list.

How you fill out this tree depending on the kind of product you want to build. If you want to focus on one area, your product

Step 2: Prepare your leaves

Print out all the features you already have in your product, or want to add to your product. Or, write them down on post-it notes. Also make sure to have plenty of empty post-it notes at hand for adding new ideas!

Step 3: Get your group together

Anyone can play this game. The more kinds of stakeholders you involve, the richer the output. It becomes especially interesting if you get customers involved in placing new features on the branches according to which they would most like to see in your product.

If you have more than 10 people joining in, prepare multiple sets of trees and leaves – ideally, you will have 4-10 people working on one single tree. This includes one observer per tree, whose role it is to ask the participants to clarify what they mean if there’s anything ambiguous on the tree.

Step 4: Prune your product tree

Who thought pruning could be so much fun?!

Now the fun begins – like green-thumbed gardeners, get cracking on pruning the tree!

Here are some pointers on how to have a productive and fun session:

• Personalize the tree to stimulate creativity. For instance, participants can add their own little markers to their ideas, or draw hearts around the features they really love.
• Remember that significance of where leaves are placed. The closer the leaves are to the trunk, the more near-term they are. Leaves closest to the trunk are existing features, while leaves on the outer edges of your canopy represent the long-term future.
• Don’t hesitate to use lines to show links or dependencies between features.
• Don’t worry too much if the tree becomes unbalanced, usually, the group participants or the observer will bring this up naturally.
• Take pictures of the development of the tree(s) – this is useful for the review process.

Step 5: Present and review internally

At the end of the session, present your tree (or multiple trees if you worked in groups). Encourage everyone to ask questions and discuss. Often, more ideas will come up during this process, or leaves will be shuffled around.
Once you’re all packed up, take your product tree and the pictures you took and compare them against your current product roadmap. Useful questions to ask are:

• Which “prepared features” got pruned? Especially if you’re working directly with customers, you might find that a much-loved feature is actually dispensable in the eyes of the user.
• Do the trees retain their general shape? If you’re seeing an obvious imbalance – such as lots of leaves on one branch – this could be a signal that your users aren’t aware of (perception problem) or interested in (product/market fit problem) a whole feature set in your product.
• Are you growing your product fast enough? If there are a lot of leaves close to the trunk, you may not be releasing new features fast enough; whereas lots of leaves on the outside shows that they’re looking for great things in the future.
• What does your root system need to look like? If your customers are changing aspects of your infrastructure, it’s likely of critical significance to them to establish trust in the longevity of your product.

This brings us to the end of this how-to. For more on how to use this information when you’re creating a product roadmap, keep an eye out for a follow-up post coming soon!

listen to your customers their problems, Not their solutions