I am the Product lead for Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative(SFARI). My title and job puzzles most scientists I work with as well as outsiders. I routinely hear questions like “What is a product in a research institute?”. “What does business need mean? We dont sell anything.” I have honed the explanation of what I do to various level of details. I have shared them in this blog.
Note : This is what I do as a Product lead in a research organization. Not global definition of what Product Management is.
Translator
In one word, I am a translator of information between many stakeholders who speak different languages. I need to be proficient in the languages of empathy, data, systems, security, privacy, basic genetics, ethics, and psychology. Stakeholders include families and individuals with autism, the organizational leadership, the engineers, the designers, and the research team of geneticists, clinical psychologists and research ethicists.
One line explanation
I help the organization make decisions (strategy: prioritization and tradeoffs), make the most out of key resources(execution: primarily empowering the engineers to do what they do best), and keep the organization in sync on what is working and what isn’t. (impact: rigorously measure outcomes and communicate up and down the organization).
In one paragraph
My job is to define the product in compliance with the policy and principles of the research and coordinate the activities of functional teams in order to enable the success of the product. The research organization has identified activities which when executed creates value for the research participants and other stakeholders. For example, an activity in the value chain is ‘build and engage a cohort of autistic individuals and families’. Various online tools (products) enable experiences of the different stakeholders in those value creating activities. For example, families provide informed consent for sharing their medical and genetic data. I define the experience of a participant providing informed consent and coordinate the activities of communication, compliance, engineering, designers to make the consenting process a success.
Note: This is a definition of PM job by Shreyas. It works well for what I do.
Read more on the concept of ‘Value chain’ and Strategy.
The full story
The WHY : The movement of massive amounts (scale) of data of various types between stakeholders, in a format they can consume, in a fast (efficiency), safe and secure manner creates value for the ecosystem. The Product vision for SFARI is to build tools and infrastructure that makes the movement of data possible. (Mental model: Movement of electrons in a conductor is electricity)
When the product vision is achieved, insights from researchers reach families instantly in the form of “news they can use” and thus potentially improving quality of lives of individuals living with autism. The data of how and what therapeutic services for autistic individuals are affected during covid lockdowns reaches policy makers in a timely manner, thus driving key decisions about public health. The number of families with a rare genetic condition reaches Pharma and researchers thus driving or supporting investment in drug discovery and therapeutics.
The WHAT :
- Build tools and experiences for research participants and scientists with an emphasis on user experience, privacy and security
- Prioritize unique participant value proposition
- Unique Participants values – contribution to autism research, learning about autism and about their unique genetic condition
- Unique Researchers values – SFARI as one stop shop for scientific insights and collaboration, funding, human subjects and validated data for research
- Optimize for level of engagement that leads to long term(decades) retention of researchers and participants with the SFARI research, tools and experiences
Note: I am a fan of Gibson Biddle’s DHM template for strategy and GELe for product vision.
The WHO : A mother of two children with a diagnosis of autism is looking for different value from the autism research compared to an independent adult with a diagnosis of autism. What does the SFARI research team believe is the optimal journey to recruit and retain an adult vs. a mother? Who are the other stakeholders involved in each of the journeys and what are their needs? I work with the project teams responsible for the various activities in the value chain and draft and maintain such participant segments and their optimal journey through the research project.
The HOW and The WHEN : Working with the leads of each primary activity of the organization, I collect and organize the work into categories ; 1) stakeholder needs and pain points, 2) organizational priorities, 3) product strategy needs and expansion, and 4) system or scaling needs. I then prioritize and scope projects within each activity.
I further prioritize features or capabilities across activities based on the anticipated reach, impact on one or more of activities in the value chain, and the organization’s strategic priority. For example, adding SMS/texting as a mode of communication, opens up multimodal communication for the data team and the genomics team. Finally, I work with the engineering lead to understand the changes needed in the system to support scale and efficiency, understand tech debt, and sequence the resulting tasks for execution.
Note: I strongly recommend the Reforge course on Product Strategy to learn more about developing a product work plan.
For the concept of Value chain, refer to Prof. Michael Porters strategy framework.
Creative execution : As Steve Jobs says here, even after defining the product on paper, the context of the user might change, tech tradeoffs might be required. One of the important work I do is to execute on the plan with creativity and with the focus on solving problems for the user.
Impact measurement and communication : The most important work I do is to measure if the feature/experience was adopted by the intended user, did the feature solve the problem, what is the outcome as measured by the agreed upon metrics, and communicate the success, failures, and lessons learned to the rest of the team. Every year I kill an unused feature is a successful year.