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Product Management is at its essence decision making.

But what happens when there’s no data, low information or poor metrics to decide?

Recently I spent some time with friend, former-colleague and overall awesome Product guy Shamail Tahir just talking shop about the Product Manager role.

One of the most interesting parts of the conversation happened when I asked the hypothetical, if confronted with a decision and you have no data, no metrics or analogues to go by and more importantly how do get buy-in up and down the org? His approach is the following (in no particular order):

🔭 Company objectives: how does the proposed decision align with stated company objectives?

🔓 Use-case unlock: does the proposed decision unlocks a use case or potential sales in the pipeline?

🌎 TAM expansion: proposed decision opens up the addressable market?

💻 Tech enablement: proposed decision enables a separate/different feature to be implemented?

My question stemmed from the fact that “data driven” PM decisions is almost a cliche. Clearly you want your decisions to be based on data, but that’s the “easy” part. But real decisions, especially in a nascent product or area, have to be made with incomplete or fuzzy data, at best. And that’s a part of the skillset anyone in Product should be aiming to hone. It’s critical to make reasonable guesses based on multidimensional criteria and more importantly build your case based on non-data aspects in order to attain organizational buy-in.

Are you a product manager? How do you handle these types of decisions?

Originally published on March 22, 2024.