At Asana, we don't use leveled job titles to indicate seniority (e.g. Product Manager III or Senior Director of Marketing), but that doesn't mean that we don't have management structures in place. Instead, we use Success Guides for every team that help employees understand what success looks like for each role level at Asana. Another way we demonstrate ownership and growth in role is Areas of Responsibility, key areas of the business that have one designated owner who is responsible. AoRs act as a directory so employees easily can understand who does what, and they offer employees additional ways to stretch and grow outside of a traditional role structure. * As a more junior PM you are working on a well-defined initiative driving the backlog of a single program team or large workstream within a program team. You contribute to the strategy for a program, while the high level elements are largely defined already. You drive work with end-to-end responsibility around execution in a problem space that is fairly well defined. At this stage you are open and curious - your growth mindset is a career accelerant. * As a more senior PM you have a lot of autonomy in running a program team or large workstream within a program team, and are thinking boundarylessly outside your program to drive a seamless customer experience. You may be contributing to multiple backlogs and your work likely touches experiences that are owned by others. You are expected to set the strategy for your program or workstream based on the broader pillar strategy. This strategy must help Asana win. The work that you tackle is difficult, ambitious, ambiguous, and does not have a clear solution from the outset. You coach other PMs informally, and may seek out a more formal mentorship opportunity. Once someone is demonstrating all the competencies at their current level, we then start giving them extra responsibilities. It is only after demonstrating those new competencies consistently do we decide they are ready to be promoted.

The level of detail that people on other teams need depends on what they are using the roadmap for. Our roadmap planning tool enables us to create multiple views of the roadmap - we tailor each view to the use cases of the consumers. For example, we have the following views: * A view for our quarterly planning process - this view is primarily used to communicate to execs so it focuses on the high level business goals that each roadmap item supports and doesn’t contain many implementation details. * An internal view that go-to-market team members can use to understand estimated delivery dates for items in active development or beta - this view contains much more detail - for example the user needs that the release addresses and how to sign up for betas. * A public view that is available to our customers - this view contains customer facing explanations of each project and information on how our customers can help us develop it. For example, an item might have a few questions about the customer’s use case and interested customers can send us answers to those questions.

I have a very simple framework for building 0-1 product - IVC framework 1. Identify: * The first step in developing any product or feature is to identify the user's needs. Hence, your goal should be to talk to as many users as you possibly can to understand what they say, do, think, and feel. This also helps you learn who you are solving for and who you are not solving for and create a problem statement 2. Validate * Building Conviction by testing Discovery, MVP, market analysis, possible conversion. During this time also you should be talking to customers to validate the problem and solution 3. Create: * Create the right team to build the product and also a plan on how you will bring the product to market.

Reality these days is that we mostly work in remote settings, and even when we do go to the office, some people will be dialing in. As a result, I believe 80% of the strategies have to do with focusing on the fact that we are all people, 20% are tactics and adjustments for remote settings. General alignment strategies: * Build trust ahead of time. This is fundamental and driving collaboration without it is hard * Focus on common goals. There’s typically a higher goal that teams can easily align on (e.g. Revenue, Engagement, Better experience), and the differences show up as you start double clicking into the “how”. Starting the discussion with a longer term view can also help in skipping tactical disagreements and alignments * Frame, rather than take a position. With common goals in mind, center the discussion on what the characteristics of a good solution are, rather than starting with comparing options. This helps setting a more objective ground before jumping into the solutions * Call out your biases (easier to do when you have trust). In an environment where there is trust, I expect my teams to be able to call out other considerations that may cause them to pull in a certain direction, those can be different stakeholders that push in other directions, past experience and others. Some of those reasons may be valid, some may not be valid. Calling them out can help the entire team work through them. A few remote specific tactics: * Set the right structure, if possible. This includes minimizing the number of time zones each team has to work across (In my organization we are trying to limit ourselves to 2 time zones per team, when possible). If you can, hire senior enough people in the right locations to be able to run autonomously. * Invest in getting to a clear strategic direction. Having an upfront debate on the direction is time consuming, but can then help in setting the guardrails for autonomous decisions that can happen within the teams, locally. * If you do have the opportunity to meet in person, do so. Especially when working across time zones with little overlap, a good relationship would allow you to accomplish more offline, and can dedicate the overlapping time for working more effectively through the tougher topics. While I still mostly work from home I prioritize going to the office when team members from other offices are coming to town (and I am writing this note from the airport, while waiting for a flight - going to visit my team in Austin!)

Not sure I would call them hacks, but I have various things I do to manage both my workload, product execution and overall team management. 1. ToDo List Goes without saying. Be organized and find a system that works for you. Pen and paper? Go for it. Trello board? Do it. Adoption Notion? Fire away. For me, it's been about finding what system works for me and being relentless with it. My memory is generally solid, but our roles as PMs mean we shift a lot ,and keeping track of things is the only way to be successful. You don't want to be known as the PM that people have to remind about asks over and over again. 2. Manage Your Calendar with Precision I manage my calendar carefully. I block the time that I need for things like responding to interruptions and checking in with various projects each day/week. Unless it's critical, I won't move those slots and that allows me to stay organized and on top of things. 3. Kanban for the Win I have been using a Kanban-style prioritization process for over a decade. Allows me to easily see what's in flight, what I need to keep an eye on, and at any given time, what is top of the pile to focus on. Lots of great tools for this, like Trello. I try and keep it simple with a backlog of items, what's in flight, and then what's done. 4. Automate to Success So many of our daily tools have automation capabilities that we can leverage to help with the simple things. The more "little things" I can take off my plate the better off I am to focus on the value-added things in my workload. Don't fall into the trap of "it's just easier for me to do it this time". If there is a way to invest a small amount of time to automate repetitive tasks or items.....do it.

Today, our org structure follows the ethos of "Small, autonomous teams". In this structure, we generally have a PM paired with a Technical Lead (Eng), somewhere between 3 - 5 Engineers, and a Business Systems Analyst to focus on operational and analytical tasks. Some teams have a Design/UX representative as well, where applicable. Hierarchically, we have these teams organized into Pillars, with a shared broader mission/remit. Pillars are led by a triad, with a Senior PM, Product Lead, or Group Product Manager aligned with an Engineering Lead (above TL) and a BSA Lead or Design Lead where relevant. Finally, those Pillars roll up into Groups, where the Director level can provide guidance to the respective teams. The main thing to note about these structures, though, is that they take time to mature; where we are today is a step function change from where we were last year. Eventually, I do hope to land in the formation outlined above, but we will continue to transform as individuals grow in their roles or are brought on board over time. 

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.

Great question! The move from Senior PM to Director level and above is a challenging one. In general, the change really involves the transition from product management to product leadership. You are typically going from managing one team at a high level with one roadmap and no direct reports to a role managing multiple teams at a high level with multiple roadmaps and direct reports AND driving an effective vision & strategy for your portfolio that brings those elements together AND provide tools and conditions for the whole org to get better at being PMs. Whew! Given the changes in responsibilities, you’re likely going to have to evolve into performing at the Director level so you can set your” opportunity table” for a Director opportunity. Given where the Senior PM level usually sits, here are probably the kinds of skills and experiences you’ll need to try to acquire: 1. Learn how to manage and mentor people. Does your company hire interns? Manage one or more of them! Does your company hire new people that need mentors? Become a mentor! Manage people volunteering somewhere! There’s lots of ways to get skills and experience here, great books too (Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek I highly recommend.) But in general the best teacher for managing people is experience. 2. Learn how to build product strategies at the portfolio level. If you’ve gotten to the Senior PM level, you probably know how to develop a strategy for your product or feature. But doing this as a portfolio level is different. It requires thinking longer term about multiple teams with multiple strategies & roadmaps. The best way to learn this skill is to take on the responsibility of doing this or sharing it with your boss or higher-ups. This is a stretch to do in the beginning, but the more you do it the better you get at it. Some good practice is also crafting strategies for products you like or companies you admire. See how many of them come true and how right or wrong you were. Learn, rinse and repeat. I also recommend Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rummelt. Amazing book on this topic. 3. Help your fellow PMs in the org level up via skills like org design, policy design, tooling upgrades, etc. Basically practice the art of leveling up a team by creating an environment for PMs to level up and do great work. Think about your own experience doing your best work. What kinds of tools, policies and cultural norms were in place that really helped you level up? Now think of ways you can get from where you are today to that ideal. What tools do you need? What policies need to change? How does the culture need to change? From here, learn how to drive the highest priority items. You don’t need to be a Director for this, you can pursue it by speaking up in feedback forums on these topics, work with your peers or managers to make things happen, etc. If someone was taking initiative here, you can bet managers will be considering them for leadership spots. That’s the high level summary! The opportunity actually presenting itself requires being at a company where there is a need for someone at that level, which requires a bit of luck and timing. So all places aren’t going to be best fits for you, and you should assess that on your own as well. As for types of tracks, PM leadership skills are pretty transferrable. Director, Senior Director and VP are more traditional paths. But I’ve seen old bosses and colleagues go lots of different ways. Something I hear a lot is that the PM role prepares you for being a start-up CEO. Have certainly seen that happen! An old boss is CEO now. But I’ve also seen lots of people end up in Marketing, Design, Engineering, Strategy…there’s no one set path!

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!

Unfortunately there’s no perfect ratio – each Product Ops team I’ve run or learned about has a very different structure and mandate! I’ve heard of successful models with Product Ops to PM ratios of 50:1 and of 1:1, so it’s less about the number and more about working with what you have. If you understand the pain points of product leadership and front line PMs, you’ll be able to develop a strategy that delivers value to the Product team regardless of the number of resources you have. That being said, I do have two rules of thumb I’ll share about resourcing: * If you are embedding Product Ops within pods, target 2-3 pods per Product Ops resource. While it’s not a perfect science, I’ve noticed other embedded functions (like Program Managers, QA Analysts, Scrum Masters) try not to go beyond 3 pods. It makes sense – more than 3 pods and sprint ceremonies alone would take up most of the calendar! If your pods are especially big or complex, you may need to stick with a 1:1 ratio, but this can be a very tough resourcing ask if you don’t have a track record for results. * If you are a Product Ops team of 1-2 and have a PM team of ~7+, you should be looking for work that can impact the whole Product organization – you do not have enough resources to embed with specific pods! These may include things like optimizing the Product Development Lifecycle or creating a standard Go-To-Market checklist. Remember to engage stakeholders early and often and I highly recommend piloting your recommendations with a subset of the department!