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I will share first two steps that I follow. Step 1: Is this problem worth solving? 1.1 Problem definition and user segmentation * B2B product: A business customer must have a genuine painpoint that they are willing to pay for. Some problems are not big enough problems, hence not high priorirty for the business users, these are not worth pursuing. Fine tune the problems till they hit * B>B>C: The business user/stakeholder may have rightly identified a problem but may not have the best ideas in terms of what solutions can work. Validate the problem is real with user research. * B2C: Similar to B>B>C, some segment of users have a need. Identify who they are and what the real problems are. 1.2 Is the Problem TAM big enough Step 2: Why us? Why now? 2.1 Do competitive studies 2.2 SWOT analysis 2.3 Are you best positioned to build this and build now?
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As you progress from PM to senior PM, competencies in these 3 areas should grow: Autonomy💪🏽, Scope 🌫️ and Leadership 🙋 . There are a few clear indications that someone is ready for the senior level, like increased scope, being a reliable partner and being results driven. Here are some less obvious ones: #1 You recommend initiatives based on your strategic evaluation, instead of waiting for them to be handed to you. You are influential in your field and feel confident putting forward these initiatives. #2 You leverage relationships across the org. You can drive results from partners outside of your immediate team. You are fully entrusted to tackle complex, multi-team problems with little necessary supervision. #3 You are seen as an available and trustworthy mentor and actively seek out opportunities to help others be their best. This is my favorite by far. What are the key stages that distinguish the different levels of PMs? I think a little bit of this depends on the problem space and company. In my mind, PMs are professional collaborators, strategic assassins and bring out the best in their peers. If you can look yourself in the mirror and say you’re doing these things at scale, well, I’d say you're on the right track.
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Marion Nammack
Braze Director of Product Management • February 8
Let’s say that a product team and an executive team are aligned on the goal of improving customer satisfaction with the product (measured by a CSAT survey). The product team will then do research and perform experiments to validate the best way to impact customer satisfaction. Including executives in the research process via stakeholder interviews is a great way to get input early - executives are viewing things from a much different perspective than team ICs and often have great ideas. When the team prioritizes opportunities to pursue, the framework they use for prioritization can also be used to convey their point of view on the best way to impact customer satisfaction. If an exec suggests making an adjustment to the roadmap during the team’s roadmap review, seek to understand why and dig into their thought process. Then, seek the truth. Is there a quick way to validate or invalidate the feedback? What does the objective evidence point towards as the best opportunity to impact the goals? For more on this topic, I recommend “Cracking the PM Career” by Jackie Bavaro which has a chapter on working with executives.
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Avantika Gomes
Figma Group Product Manager, Production Experience • December 21
There are a few that I consider important to set up (and refine) as you grow your team: 1. Processes for top-down sharing: As your team grows, knowledge sharing becomes harder but also more critical. PMs can only do their best work when they have context about conversations and updates from across the organization. For instance, "context" could include new product updates, changes in company strategy, takeaways from executive conversations and board meetings. I'd explore ways that you can provide this context either synchronously (e.g., through a team meeting) and/or asynchronously (e.g., through a "here's what's top-of-mind" slack message or email 2. Processes for upwards sharing: It's important to also think through the best ways for your team to share what they're working on (product updates), but also for them to share feedback on how the team is operating (upwards feedback). This is necessary with a smaller team too, but in larger teams becomes more challenging to do this ad-hoc and 1:1 - additional processes like a recurring survey or a shared product launch calendar. Keep in mind that this is not just important for you, but for the entire PM team and XFN partners too, so be sure to do this in a transparent way. 3. Team-building processes: Often overlooked, these are important to increase the cohesion and connection that your PM team feels. I like to use a weekly meeting or a private slack channel to share wins, talk about product news, share personal updates. It should feel like a trusted space for your team to share their thoughts and get to know each other more personally. Also, in today's remote climate where team members can often feel more disconnected, you might want to think through team rituals (e.g., beginning of every meeting with a win, learn and a "smile" - something that made you smile in your personal life) and in-person bonding (e.g., as a team, we meet in person once a quarter). A helpful tip - carve aside 30 mins each quarter to also do some "housekeeping" of your team processes. Audit what's working and what's not, which meetings are useful vs. not, what are themes from your team surveys. Iterate on your team processes just like you'd iterate on a product!
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Apurva Garware
Upwork VP Product and GM • April 28
1. Ability to communicate well - Someone told me early in my career: The single most important PM skill he looks for when hiring a PM is communication. Communication is really a proxy for building trust, driving alignment, having healthy debates when there’s conflict and committing to a path forward. That’s all under the hood of good communication, and is instrumental in driving product teams forward. 2. Data driven mindset - relevant to qual as much as to quant. Ask yourself and teams the right questions. Become familiar with qualitative research tools, understand what your dashboards need to look like, and get your dashboards in place. Be empowered to make data-driven decisions. 3. Ruthlessly prioritize - every day you have more you want to do than you will have time to do it. That’s just the reality. Every human has 24 hours, and one can’t change that. Make sure you prioritize your team and the team's time and resources.
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Shahid Hussain
Google Group Product Manager, Wear OS • May 21
Prioritise with respect to the key goal that is important to the org -- but balance with your estimation of what you think can land. That sounds simple, but in large matrixed organisations, that can get hard quickly. * Sometimes it's not clear what advances the org's goal -- is there a key metric? Can you forecast a project's impact on that metric, and is that forecast credible? * If shipping a particular project needs alignment from lots of teams, do all of them share the same incentives you do? If not, can they support your goals, or will they deprioritise?
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Suhas Manangi
Snap Head of Product - Trust & Safety • June 6
Product School, Try Exponent, and Product Allinace are good resources for PM interviews prep. Later is a good question. Interesting idea. I don't know of any, but it so interesting that someone should be offering it. Perhaps they might have rolled into certification or cohort courses with live projects!
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Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning • February 16
There is a fork in the PM career path road: one is becoming a people manager, the other becoming an expert in a deep thinking product area sans managing a team. My recommendation is to figure out which one is right for you. Many folks want to jump into management simply because they think this is the only way to grow, make more $$$ and so on. That is not true. Big and small orgs I have been a part of value senior individual contributors that are passionate about their individual craft. Speak with folks from both paths, and see which one resonates more with you. Try mentoring people and see if you like helping others succeed through your guidance as a "management path" check. Then, share your thinking with your manager to get them to help you moving along this path.
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Omar Eduardo Fernández
GitLab Director of Product Management • February 14
To get better at framing and articulation as a product manager, focus on being clear about the business and user problems you're solving. This approach is similar to writing a good Product Requirements Document (PRD), where you detail the problem, the target users, and the desired outcomes. It's about breaking down complex ideas into understandable parts and connecting them to real needs. For more detailed steps and examples, refer to the article on writing a PRD at How to Write a PRD. Start by writing a good PRD, then use the output of that PRD to craft the narrative you'd tell executives, colleagues, etc. about "why does this matter to the company? why now? and how we are solving it."
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Ravneet Uberoi
Uber B2B Products | Formerly Matterport, Box, McKinsey • August 31
This can be tricky! It will depend on a triangulation across a number of factors including: 1. The room to grow in your existing product (both in terms of TAM, the competitive dynamics and your current position in the market) -- this will help determine how much headroom you have to innovate on the existing product vs launch new ones. If you have some obvious "low hanging fruit" on the existing product it's usually a sign that there's more work to be done there before launching into new product lines (unless the competitive dynamics push you to do so). 2. The market demand: Most often the demand for a second product will come as a pull from the market vs a push from the company. Look for signs that your buyers are asking for a naturally adjacent solution or expressing a related unmet need that your sales team can't fulfill today. Look for signs that your users expect / are seeking an extension of your capabilities possibly by hacking together a solution themselves, using developers, or seeking solutions through asks to customer support. Look for signs that competitors are bundling a new offering or building partnerships in an adjacent space. These are tell tale signals that the unmet need is larger than you anticipated and the company needs to expand into a new product or service line. 3. The vision of the company and founders (and related funding): Product expansions are usually only possible if these align with the vision of the founding team. What is the business that they set out to build? How has that vision adapted over time? What do your investors expect you to build (a product, a service, a platform, a ...)? This is the less organic, less talked-about, side of product development that does impact how and when a company decides to innovate.
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