As a product manager, your role involves determining what needs to be built next. To do this, you need a list of potential features and a method for prioritizing them. Ideas and feature requests can come from various sources, and it’s important to collect and organize them effectively.
The acronym EMUC represents four main sources of ideas:
Employees: Ideas and requests can come from your coworkers, management, and even yourself. These are suggestions from within the company based on their insights and experiences.
Metrics: Problems and inefficiencies can be identified through analyzing metrics and user behavior data. By observing how users interact with your product, you can uncover areas that need improvement or redesign.
Users: Feedback from users is an invaluable source of ideas. This feedback can come from forums, emails, social media, or any channel where users provide input. Listening to your users’ needs and pain points helps you understand what features or enhancements to prioritize.
Clients: This source applies primarily to Business-to-Business (B2B) product managers. Clients are the companies or individuals who purchase your product or service. Their feedback and requests are crucial in shaping the development of your B2B product.
The importance and volume of requests from each source may vary depending on the type of product manager you are. For example:
Internal Product Managers may receive ideas primarily from coworkers and employees within the company.
Consumer Product Managers may focus on user feedback, but should also consider metrics and input from colleagues and management.
Business-to-Business (B2B) Product Managers receive requests and ideas from both employees within the company and clients who use or purchase the product.
Remember that as a product manager, your role is not solely to generate ideas but to collect, evaluate, and prioritize them based on their value, alignment with company goals, and the needs of your target users.
