Product management portfolio

Arun Muralitharan

I work through product problems out loud and on paper: pick the user, name the pain, rate the options, decide how to measure it. This site has my case write-ups, the frameworks behind them and the metrics I use.

19 case write-ups 15 question frameworks 7 North Star Metric examples

About

How I think about product

I am building my product management practice by working through real product questions end to end. Each write-up here starts from the company's mission and strengths, picks one user group, ranks their pain points, and ends with solutions rated on reach, impact, effort and fit.

Many cases have two or more attempts. The versions shown here are my later ones, so you see where my thinking landed after the first pass.

Start from the mission: A product idea has to fit what the company is for and what it is unusually good at, before market size or competition matter.
Choose one user, one pain: List every stakeholder, then commit to the group where the problem is biggest and reaches the most people.
Rate before building: Every solution gets scored on reach, impact, effort and alignment with the goal, so the pick can be defended.
Define success first: A North Star Metric, supporting metrics for each side of the product, and guardrails that catch harm.

Case studies

Product cases

Open a case to see the full outline: clarifying questions, why the problem is worth solving, goal, users, pain points, solutions and metrics.

Highlighted lines mark where I chose to focus. Letters after a solution rate it High, Medium or Low on the criteria named in the case.

Frameworks

How I answer each type of question

The outline I follow for each common product question, so the answer always has a shape.

GUCCI

Use for product strategy questions, such as what the strategy should be for a newly launched smart bottle.

Porter's Five Forces

Use for industry attractiveness questions, such as whether Google should enter the EV market.

Ways to monetize

Subscription
Freemium
Transaction fee
Licensing fee
Physical goods or links to an external marketplace
Cross-sell the company's other products

Company missions I keep on hand

Metrics

North Star Metrics

A North Star Metric shows that the customer got what they came for, and it should move revenue with it.

If the metric rises 10%, revenue should rise with it.
It should not lag too far behind behavior or be too narrow.
It has to be easy to measure.
It should cover both quality and scale. If one number cannot, look at the company's stage: early on, reach matters more; once established, depth and quality matter more.