<aside> 👉 📚 Topic: Discovery & Delivery

🏛️ Industry: Web-based PDF handling and collaboration

🚀 Mission: Fill the Technical Product Manager role for the PDF Web Viewer product

🗓️ Length: 6 months

💡 Key Results:

✅ Increased customer engagement and satisfaction by meeting customers weekly / monthly to provide product updates, and offer testing features before the launch.

✅ Increased the completion percentage of Key Results by involving the development team in the decision-making process.

✅ Developed and executed an outcome-based roadmap that aligned with company objectives and customer needs.

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The Client: pdftools / Smallpdf

Pdftools is a company specializing in the development of software solutions for PDF and PDF/A documents. The company was founded in 2002. Their product range includes various tools and services for creating, processing, viewing, and archiving PDF documents. The company emphasizes its commitment to building reliable and efficient products for developers and businesses, aiding in the integration of PDF functionalities into various workflows and applications. Pdftools has been acquired by Smallpdf in March 2022.

Smallpdf, founded in Switzerland in 2013, offers a user-friendly platform with over 20 PDF tools. It has helped over a billion users in 195 countries and offers features like file conversion, PDF editing, compression, E-Signatures, and OCR. While basic services are free, premium subscribers can access additional features like batch processing and offline access.

The Mission: Interim Technical Product Manager

We joined pdftools / Smallpdf to strengthen the PDF Web Viewer SDK product and determine the direction for product development by considering internal and external customers, end users, competitors, and market trends.

🧑🏼‍💻The product

PDF Web Viewer provides PDF viewing and annotation functionality for browser-based applications. The product is used by developers. Developers build applications like CRM, and documentation apps by integrating PDF Tools into their applications.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑The team

• The team consisted of:
  • 3 developers (1 FE + 2 BE)
• The Engineering Manager started supporting other teams after we joined. We managed scrum events after this change.
• There was no dedicated UX designer for our team, so we filled the role by creating low-fidelity designs on Figma.
• There was no dedicated UX researcher for our team, but we got consultancy from the UX research team when we needed it.
• A Group Product Manager was supporting multiple development teams as a Product Manager before Product People came in as interim support, they needed a dedicated Product Manager for the PDF Web Viewer team.

Launch: We Onboarded Very Fast

In our first month;

• Firstly, we created user flows for our customers, which are developers, and for end users to understand the product also prepared the user flow for our main competitor’s product to figure out differences and get inspired from their features.
• Secondly, we prepared a gap analysis by checking our product’s features and our internal customer’s needs and aligned with the internal customer on this analysis.