1.4: A Customer-centric Approach to Product Delivery - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->While project management focuses on how to deliver,</v> product management focuses on what is being delivered. Product management is considered a relatively new discipline. However, it started hundreds of years ago. While the concept of buyers and sellers are not new to the market economy, the idea of building, selling practices around the needs of the customers has not been formally defined until 1931. When Proctor &amp; Gamble introduced the concept of customer centricity called the voice of the customer. They started hiring so-called brand man whose job was to understand the voice of the customer, and what problems their products are trying to solve for their customers. They understood that it was not enough to sell soap. Instead, they wanted to understand why people were buying soap. How they used their soap. What they liked and disliked about different soaps. Neil McElroy, a junior Proctor &amp; Gamble executive, who later became the president of Proctor &amp; Gamble, and then U.S. Secretary of Defense wrote a memo on the principles of brand management in the 1930s. He's considered the father of product management. Under his leadership, Proctor &amp; Gamble became customer-centric. Even its organization was structured around product groups, which were given independence. This concept influenced young engineers Bill Hewlett and David Packard. One of the early innovations at Hewlett Packard was actually creating the product manager role. Upon advice from Nick McElroy, they made product management a title. Influenced by the success of brand man in Proctor &amp; Gamble, Bill and Dave consistently supported the project management function throughout its history. This was the early start of product management practices in information technology. The 1990s became the rise of product management and software delivery. From the invention of the internet to next generation gaming stations. Amazon, Netflix, email communications, product creation and delivery were oriented towards their customers. All these inventions led to the formal introduction of product management as a profession, which the agile manifesto incorporated into its philosophy. After becoming Google's first product manager in 2002, Marissa Mayer came up with an idea to create the associate product manager program to train the talented youth. This process completely changed how Google works. And in 2002, the modern profession of the product manager as we know it was born.