Product Management — Left brain or right?

It’s not only a debate, it’s a preferred polarization that many product managers live by, every day.

The left brain’s approach — market data influences and decides the product concept, secondary data is extensively used to single out features for implementation, instrumentation of every possible user touch point is the raison d’être, metrics from usage is sliced and diced to make product improvements and the cycle continues for the next version. Growth hackers swear by this approach and engineering teams love it (naturally!) because this is science.

The right brain’s dream — feel of the market and users’ unstated need decides what product to build, work is done hand-in-hand with UI/UX designers and early users to sketch out multiple mocks that feed into a feature’s implementation, dogfooding every build is more important than the day’s meal, talking to real users at length to understand if/how/what they like/hate about the product is the feedback mechanism of choice, living the user’s life determines whether there is real value that will lead to repeat usage, engaging with users on forums/app-store-feedback influences product improvements for the next version. You’re building a dream, it’s an art.

I started off as a right-brain-polarized product dreamer and the approach worked till the features were small and simple. As I started handling increasingly complex products, the left brain had to come to my rescue. On the way, I became a student of growth hacking — analyzing metrics regularly to assess what’s going on with the product clubbed with fast iterations in collaboration with designers & engineers started making real impact. I am still 70% dreamer, but now I pepper it with a healthy dose of mathematics to try and make it a reality!

• What’s your preferred style?
• Are you polarized or do you have a middle ground crafted for yourself?
• Does the approach differs in startups versus bigger companies?

Would love to hear your side of the debate …

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/product-management-left-brain-right-vineet-taneja/