Main Takeaways: - Internal customers are customers too - API Designs need testing & validation just like human designs - Platform teams = service teams

1. www.productschool.com
Platform Product Management in 2021
by Square Product Leader

2. CERTIFICATES
Your Product Management Certificate Path
Product Leadership
Certificate™
Full Stack Product
Management Certificate™
Product Management
Certificate™
20 HOURS
40 HOURS
40 HOURS

3. Corporate
Training
Level up your team’s Product
Management skills

4. Free Product Management Resources
BOOKS
EVENTS
JOB PORTAL
COMMUNITIES
bit.ly/product_resources
COURSES

5. Platform Product
Management
Chris Heisel, Group PM @
Square

6. Agenda
- Intro
- What is a platform
- Platform
customers
- Platform
interfaces

7. Who am I?

8. Who am I?

9. What is a
platform?

10. What is a
platform?
- At its core: Sharing
- A platform enables multiple products to run on it by sharing data,
experiences and value with its developers
- Might be
- External - developer.squareup.com
- Internal - Cox
- Hybrid - Kabbage

11. What is a platform?
Examples
- Square Virtual
Terminal
- Bentobox
- Simpletix

12. Shared data, experiences, value
- Data: Building blocks
- Payments, Refunds, Orders, Catalogs, Items, Locations
- Experiences
- Payment entry & processing, seller dashboard, refund notifications, sales
reporting
- Value
- Less to build, managed payments

13. Platform
customers

14. You are not a service team: Who is your
customer?
When in doubt - follow the
money
Platfor
m
App
developers
App
customers

15. Who is your customer?
AWS - App developers are the
customer
AWS App
developers
App
customers

16. Who is your customer?
Square Payments Platform - Sellers are our
customer
Square App
developers
App
customers

17. Who are your customers?
- Double your customer
research
- Enlist allies
- No ivory towers

18. Platform
Interfaces

19. Platform Interfaces
- Application Programming Interfaces -
APIs
- Aka REST APIs, HTTP APIs, JSON APIs, GraphQL
- Software Development Kits - SDKs
- Native “wrappers” or more experiential
- SDKs can have their own APIs

20. What are APIs
- Applications use APIs to interface with your application
- Humans use graphical user interfaces to interface with your application
- Or voice
- Or text
- Less adaptable
- APIs allows software to software operations on resources: Verb +
Noun
- Create
- Read
- Update
- Delete

21. Platform and API
Validation
- Cagan’s Four Big Risks
- Value risk
- Usability risk
- Write the docs first!

22. APIs
- Small building blocks
- Spend time designing, stress test your design
- Backwards compatible
- Don’t be afraid to version
- Do be afraid thoughtful of releasing new APIs, new fields, and
endpoints
- Lest you find yourself supporting it while doing The Big Rewrite™

23. Summary
- Platform: Shared data, experiences, value
- External, Internal, Hybrid
- Who is your customer - follow the money
- Even internal platforms have customers!
- Research the developer, and their
customer
- APIs
- Machines talking to machines
- Design, design, design
- Write the docs first
- Validate value, usability

24. Thank
you!
Chris Heisel, Group PM @ Square
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmhe
isel/ https://careers.squareup.com

25. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
Corporate Training