73: ABCs of Platform Product Management

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcomes Arjun Subramanian as they discuss platform product management. This is one of the most challenging roles in product management as they are the ones who have to work closely with the engineering team to ensure that the product is well-maintained. For those PMs who are interested in this role, in order to be successful in this field, you need not only to understand the core technologies but be able to look at the long-term scalability of the product.   Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.   Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.   What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 03:42 What is a platform product? 07:42 Platform as a channel of delivery 12:05 Building a platform too late 16:09 Platform economics 17:48 Metrics of success for platform 21:47 Measuring cost savings 25:05 Mean time to recovery 26:39 Funding the platform team 29:38 Who can be a platform product manager? 34:22 Platform PMs need to be more technical 36:50 Edutainment 38:25 Advice for PMs stitching technologies together into a single platform 42:21 Building a unified user experience 44:27 Final thoughts