Two Types of Product Management Case Studies and Step-by-Step Guidelines

As a Product Manager, understanding the scope of work is crucial. The role is broad, covering various responsibilities. Within this scope, two types of case studies follow a similar process but requi…

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As a Product Manager, understanding the scope of work is crucial. The role is broad, covering various responsibilities. Within this scope, two types of case studies follow a similar process but require different approaches. The first is proposing a new product, and the second is product improvement. Let's break them down one by one with a step-by-step guide.

1. Proposing a New Product

In this case, proposing a new product also means creating a business plan. When developing a new product, we must think strategically about its market entry, including the launch strategy. This involves outlining its value proposition, market potential, and implementation strategy. Our ability to analyze and plan the business is crucial in this process. In this case, the goal is to launch a new product successfully in the market.

Step 1 - Understand the Problem Space

Before building solutions, product managers must first understand the problem space. This means deeply exploring the challenges, opportunities, and unmet needs that exist in the market before deciding what product or feature to create. Focusing on the problem space ensures that solutions are grounded in real user needs, rather than assumptions.

  1. Research Market Needs, Trends, and Gaps
    A critical first step is to analyze the market landscape. This involves looking at industry trends, emerging technologies, and competitor offerings to identify gaps. For example, a market may already have several solutions, but none that cater to a specific customer segment or address usability challenges. By researching these areas, product managers can spot opportunities where their product can deliver unique value.

  2. Define the Target Audience
    Understanding who your product is for is just as important as knowing what problem it solves. Product managers should create clear user segments by considering demographics, behaviors, and goals. Defining a specific target audience helps sharpen product focus and avoid the trap of building for “everyone.”

  3. Identify Customer Pain Points
    Once the audience is defined, the next step is to uncover their struggles and frustrations. Pain points can be functional (e.g., slow processes, missing features), emotional (e.g., frustration with complexity), or aspirational (e.g., desire for growth or recognition). These insights can be gathered through interviews, surveys, user testing, or observing customer behavior in real contexts.

By thoroughly exploring the problem space, researching the market, defining the target audience, and uncovering pain points, product managers can ensure they are solving the right problem before investing in solutions. This process builds a strong foundation for ideation, prioritization, and ultimately, product success.

Step 2 - Define the Product Vision and Value Proposition
Your product vision must clearly articulate what the product will achieve and why it matters, while the product proposition highlights the unique selling proposition (USP).

1. Define the Product Vision
Your vision is the long-term, aspirational “why” of your product. It explains what future you want to create for your users and the market.

How to define it:
  • Start with the “why” = why does this product exist?
  • Think big and future-oriented = what impact do you want in 3–5 years?
  • Make it inspiring & memorable = short, simple, and motivating.
Example visions:
  • Apple's vision is “to make the best products on earth, and to leave the world better than we found it."
  • Netflix's vision is "to become the best global entertainment distribution service by diversifying revenue streams, investing heavily in a wide variety of original and live content, and leveraging technology (including AI) to create highly personalized user experiences."
  • Walt Disney's vision is "to make people happy."

2. Define the Value Proposition
Your value proposition is the clear promise of value your product delivers to users. Unlike vision (the big picture), this is practical and user-focused.

Answer these four key questions:
  1. Who is your target user? (specific persona, not “everyone”)
  2. What problem are you solving? (pain point)
  3. What’s your solution? (how you solve it)
  4. Why is it better than alternatives? (differentiation/competitive edge)
Example value propositions:
  • “For freelancers struggling with late payments, our platform provides instant invoice payouts, faster than traditional banks, with zero hidden fees.”
  • “Unlike generic fitness apps, we deliver personalized 15-minute daily workouts designed for busy professionals, keeping them consistent without overwhelm.”

Step 3 - Market Research and Competitive Analysis

Market research blends consumer behavior and economic trends to confirm and improve your business idea. It’s crucial to understand your consumer base from the outset. Market research lets you reduce risks even while your business is still just a gleam in your eye. Gather demographic information to better understand opportunities and limitations for gaining customers. This could include population data on age, wealth, family, interests, or anything else that’s relevant for your business. A few methods you can use to do direct research are surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, and in-depth interviews.

Then answer the following questions to get a good sense of your market:
  • Demand: Is there a desire for your product or service?
  • Market size: How many people would be interested in your offering?
  • Economic indicators: What is the income range and employment rate?
  • Location: Where do your customers live, and where can your business reach?
  • Market saturation: How many similar options are already available to consumers?
  • Pricing: What do potential customers pay for these alternatives?
Competitive analysis helps you learn from businesses competing for your potential customers. This is key to defining a competitive edge that creates sustainable revenue. Your competitive analysis should identify your competition by product line or service and market segment. Assess the following characteristics of the competitive landscape:
  • Market share
  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • Your window of opportunity to enter the market
  • The importance of your target market to your competitors
  • Any barriers that may hinder you as you enter the market
  • Indirect or secondary competitors who may impact your success

Step 4 - Draft the Business Model in a Canvas
https://www.thepowermba.com/en/blog/business-model-canvas


The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a powerful framework that helps entrepreneurs and product teams visualize, design, and refine their business strategy. It provides a structured way to map out how a business creates, delivers, and captures value through nine key building blocks:

Customer Segments - Who your target customers are.
Value Propositions - The unique value you offer to solve customer problems or fulfill their needs.
Channels - The paths through which your products or services reach customers.
Customer Relationships - How you engage, acquire, and retain your customers.
Revenue Streams (Monetization Strategies) - The ways your business makes money, such as subscriptions, one-time purchases, licensing, freemium models, or advertising.
Key Resources - The essential assets (people, technology, intellectual property, capital) required to deliver your value proposition.
Key Activities - The critical actions your business must perform to operate successfully.
Key Partnerships - External alliances and collaborations that help you grow or reduce risks.
Cost Structure - The major costs involved in operating the business, such as technology, marketing, staff, and distribution.

By laying out these nine blocks, you can clearly see how each part of your business connects to the others.

  • Monetization Strategies: This part of the canvas explains your revenue model—whether you plan to monetize through direct sales, recurring subscriptions, tiered pricing, or alternative approaches like ads and affiliate partnerships.
  • Distribution Channels: Here you identify the most effective ways to reach your customers, from online platforms and apps to physical stores, marketplaces, or B2B partnerships.
  • Cost Structures: This highlights where your main expenses lie and how your model balances fixed vs. variable costs, economies of scale, or cost-driven versus value-driven approaches.

The Business Model Canvas makes it easier to test ideas, pivot when needed, and ensure that your monetization, distribution, and cost strategies align with your overall value proposition. It’s a living document that evolves alongside your business.


Step 5 - Create a Roadmap

https://productschool.com/blog/product-strategy/what-is-a-product-roadmap


A product roadmap is a high-level tool for phases (MVP, scaling, growth) used to outline a plan for the development of a product and clarify the overall goals of the effort. It is a communication tool for the product development team, stakeholders, customers, and partners. It outlines the company's vision, goals, objectives(define success metrics), key milestones, and timelines for developing and launching new products or features. 

In Agile development, a product roadmap is a living document that is continually updated and adjusted based on stakeholder feedback and market changes. It is a vital tool for Agile product management, providing a shared understanding of the product vision and goals for all team members.


Step 6 - Build a Pitch Deck


A deck (presentation slide deck) is an essential tool for Product Managers when proposing or building a product. It’s a way to communicate vision and align stakeholders. Pitch deck will summarize your findings in a concise, compelling presentation, include visuals, data points, and a clear call to action.

Why do we need to summarize findings in a Deck?
  • Clarity: Distills research into key takeaways instead of overwhelming details.
  • Engagement: Visuals, charts, and mockups grab attention better than raw text.
  • Decision Making: Busy stakeholders can quickly understand the situation and what’s needed from them.


2. Product Improvement

After launching a new product, a Product Manager's role is to assess its performance in the market. This includes evaluating whether the product meets success metrics, fulfills market needs, or encounters any issues that require immediate resolution. In this process, a Product Manager's analytical skills are essential. In this case, the goal is to improve an existing product to meet customer needs and increase engagement.

Step 1 - Identify the Problem

The first thing we should do to identify the Problem is ask the question "What is the problem that we are trying to solve?" 
Go through your current product and search for inputs, for example:
  1. Look at the data: are users going through your purchase process smoothly? What is your churn rate? Registration ratio? Subscription ratio?
  2. Talk to sales: what are the biggest challenges for sales to sell your product, and what is the customer feedback? Are there any topics that occur all over again?
  3. Talk to customer care: which topics are the most often ones people are struggling with?
  4. Talk to UX designers: what areas do they think deserve attention to increase user experience
  5. Talk to the UX Research team: if you have a dedicated user research department in your organisation, talk to them, look at the research findings


Step 2 - Generate Hypotheses & define success metric

After identifying the problem through gathered inputs, the next step is to generate hypotheses. Strong hypotheses are based on observations and data, not intuition alone. It’s also valuable to brainstorm potential solutions with other teams, as sometimes the best solution isn’t limited to digitalization.

Example insight:

    “Users abandon the checkout page 40% of the time after seeing the shipping cost.”

Formulate the Hypothesis, use a clear and testable structure, such as:

    Template 1 — “If… then…”
    If we [implement this change], then [this outcome] will happen, because [reason or assumption].

    Template 2 — Problem → Solution → Result
    We believe that [doing this action] for [this user segment] will [achieve this measurable result].

Example:

    "We believe that adding a progress bar during checkout will increase completion rates because users will feel more aware of how many steps remain."

Before testing, define how you’ll measure success:
  • Conversion rate
  • Click-through rate
  • Retention
  • NPS (Net Promoter Score)
  • Task completion time
Example:

    Success metric: Checkout completion rate increases from 60% → 75%.



Step 3 - Test Solutions

Based on the hypothesis that we have developed, we can do a test with many methods, and pick a test type (usability, A/B, survey). After we pick a test type, the next step is to build MVP prototypes by the designer team.

For example, in the A/B testing method, two versions of a product feature or design element are compared to determine which one performs better. Product Managers use A/B tests to make data-driven decisions, optimize product features, and improve user engagement.

Hypothesis

    If we show estimated shipping costs earlier in the shopping process (e.g., on the product page or cart page), then fewer users will abandon checkout because they’ll already be aware of total costs before reaching payment.
Compare two checkout experience examples:

    - Version A (Control): Shipping cost displayed only on checkout page.
    - Version B (Variant): Shipping cost estimate shown on product page and cart summary before checkout.

Step 4 - Prioritize the Issue

One of the popular product prioritization methods is RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort). When managing a product, it’s impossible to fix or build everything at once. The RICE framework helps decide what to work on first by scoring ideas based on four factors:

Reach: How many people will this change help?
Impact: How big a difference will it make for them?
Confidence: How sure are we about the benefits?
Effort: How much time and resources will it take?

The formula is:


https://productschool.com/blog/product-fundamentals/rice-framework


RICE Score=Reach×Impact×ConfidenceEffort\text{RICE Score} = \frac{Reach \times Impact \times Confidence}{Effort}

A higher score means the fix brings more value compared to the work needed. This way, teams can focus on improvements that help the most users, create real impact, and are realistic to deliver.

Step 5 - Implement and Monitor

In this step, before moving to implementation, it’s better to share the proposed solution with everyone involved in the product. Communicate with stakeholders, project managers, marketing teams, and engineers to ensure alignment before building and launching the product feature.

After the feature is launched, monitor its performance by tracking the predefined metrics and collecting both quantitative and qualitative data to inform further actions.

  • Quantitative: conversion %, click-throughs, time on task, funnel drop-off.
  • Qualitative: user quotes, observed confusion, emotions, workarounds.
After we collect the data, we can decide what we do next for this feature or product & act (iterate, scale, or kill).

  • Validate = Roll out: Confident positive result → plan gradual rollout.
  • Partially validated = Iterate: Adjust hypotheses and run another experiment.
  • Invalidated = Pivot or kill: Use the learnings to form better hypotheses.


Summary

Product management is essentially about researching to discover opportunities and solving problems with a balance of business mindset and user focus. In a digital context, a product manager needs both technical proficiency to understand product development and strong soft skills to effectively lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams.

The write-up above provides a general overview from the author, outlining the typical steps a product manager might take to address challenges in a work environment. For more detailed insights, the references below may help readers explore the topic further.


References

https://ninaolding.medium.com/writing-good-pm-case-studies-2b2ee4f76426