Why One Product Manager Didn't Second Guess Signing Up for Lean Product Development

Ilya Krasnov is a product manager at Termine24, a Munich based startup for appointment booking. As product manager, Ilya is responsible for competitor research, building prototypes and mockups for new features, writing user stories, and testing. After hearing about Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course through David Kadavy, author of Design for Hackers and “Summer of Design”, Ilya didn’t second guess his decision to enroll. He took the course to acquire more skills and methodologies to apply to his current company, and to develop his own venture on the side.

As with most product managers that take our Lean Product Development course, Ilya found great value in the lectures, and was able to apply them to his current company. During a team meeting at Termine24 suggested a new way that engineering teams could structure their user stories to improve their product development process. The team was enthusiastic after experiencing the results that came from the new structure.

While Ilya found a lot of practical concepts to bring back to his team, he also learned techniques for getting great feedback to validate his own venture. As he was creating a customer questionnaire, Ilya referred back to some of the lessons and his notes to ensure that the questionnaire included insightful questions. Sending out the questionnaire to about 300 people, Ilya was able to get back 70 responses, which he then grouped and analyzed. The questionnaire gave great customer feedback, insight for improvement, and provided a road map for the features he wanted to build.

Ilya also appreciated the open discussions that students got to have with their instructors, and the discussions that took place with instructor’s during office hours. Ilya was also impressed by the practicality of the course due to the expertise of the instructors and the actionable takeaways from the lectures. Although, Ilya has finished the course he is looking forward to future courses by Femgineer in areas such as Web Product Development.

If you’re like Ilya and would like to learn techniques that can benefit your product team, learn more about the course here. Applications are due this Friday April 18th!