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Get answers from product management leaders
Avantika Gomes
Avantika Gomes
Figma Group Product Manager, Production ExperienceDecember 21
There's a lot written about basic PM competencies (https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/), and for any PM on my team, they should be able to do all these things you'd expect from a PM (write specs, understand the customer, communicate upwards and outwards, GSD). I'll focus my answer on a few attributes that I think are really "make-or-break" for me: * Good communication skills, both written and verbal, are an absolute must-have for any PM on my team. Whether it's through writing specs, influencing stakeholders, or pitching product ideas, PMs have to be able to communicate effectively across mediums (written, verbal), forums (large groups vs. small groups vs 1:1) and audiences (to developers, marketers, sales, executives). In particular, they need to be able to tell good stories (e.g.,, can they get their team inspired about an idea?), structure their communication effectively (e.g., can break down ambiguous problems using a framework?) and make technical concepts easy to understand for non-technical folks (e.g., can they explain how routers work to someone without a CS background?) * Great PMs "own" the problem. They're not afraid the step outside the boundaries of their function to do what it takes to get the product out the door. They rarely ever use phrases like "that's not my job" or "this was the designer/developers responsibility". Their strong sense of ownership of the problem leads them to passionately debate about the right solution, speak truth to power when necessary, but also be open to other points of view (because it's not about "them", it's about solving the problem).
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Tamar Hadar
Tamar Hadar
The Knot Worldwide Senior Director of Product | Formerly Trello (Atlassian)February 2
As a first PM, you will need to be very judicious with how you allocate your time and resources. In fact, I think that’s true for larger companies as well. There are always going to be more ideas than resources available. As a product manager, you are responsible for translating the company’s vision into a roadmap so your first priority should be internalizing the company’s goals. Is it to drive sign-ups? Increase retention? Increase MRR? Or something else altogether? Narrowing in on that top goal helps to weed out work that may be less relevant. Once you’ve identified the top goal (there may be more than one), filter out any initiatives that do not map to this goal. The exceptions being pressing engineering initiatives (i.e. a platform upgrade, reducing technical debt etc.) or time-sensitive projects. Hopefully, you’ve been able to narrow down your list through this process of elimination. This is where a prioritization framework will come in handy. My go-to is the impact/effort matrix. It is very similar to ICE and RICE but simpler and more visual. For each initiative, assign an estimated impact to a measurable goal and a level of effort. Make sure to collaborate with your engineering and design counterparts when evaluating each initiative. This will reduce the chance of your own bias getting in the way and lead to better prioritization. For those initiatives left on the cutting room floor, think of a way you could still make some progress—is there an MVP you could run to learn something while the teams are working on the selected initiatives? There might be a low-cost way to validate assumptions via user research or data deep dive so that by the time you go through this exercise again, you are able to make a more informed decision.
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12920 Views
Hiral Shah
Hiral Shah
DocuSign Director of Product ManagementMarch 30
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.
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1680 Views
Boris Logvinsky
Boris Logvinsky
Vanta VP ProductDecember 12
Perhaps a contrarian take, but technical skills aren't the most critical for the majority of PM roles out there, except for deeply technical products or platform positions. For the general PM role, it's much more important to demonstrate your ability to delve into customer problems, set strategy, execute, and drive impact that aligns with your organization's mission and vision. Technical skills matter, but they are secondary. They usually revolve around your ability to work with engineering counterparts and understand enough technical concepts to make trade-offs, and to work with data and perform analysis for decision-making. In my experience, both of these skills are often inquired about directly.
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4564 Views
Marion Nammack
Marion Nammack
Braze Director of Product ManagementFebruary 8
Good framing is essential for effective prioritization, especially in cases where departments have different perspectives on what to prioritize. In many companies, including my own, the sales team is an important stakeholder in the product roadmap. When working with other departments or teams, you want to ensure that there’s a common language in which to communicate. For example, are both departments aligned on the prioritization of high level business goals? Is there a clear ownership model? Once there's tentative alignment on these topics, it's much easier to have an objective discussion about the opportunities to influence a goal. At Braze, feedback and observations from Sales and Sales leadership is one of the many inputs that we incorporate into forming a perspective on the best way to achieve high level business objectives.
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9783 Views
Ajay Waghray
Ajay Waghray
Udemy Director of Product Management, Consumer MarketplaceAugust 25
I think the best way to break into the industry as a PM is to get after building tech products yourself. Personally, I left a well-paying job in the energy sector to work on a start-up with no reliable paycheck. Thinking back on that experience, it was crazy beneficial to learn how to work with designers & engineers to build a great product or feature. The act of building a product or feature is the best teacher. I’m not advocating that you should quit your job and not get paid to build stuff like I did! There was a lot that wasn’t so awesome about that. 😅 But I definitely WOULD encourage everyone here to think about how you could do that in your spare time. What problems are you passionate about solving? What kind of product or feature could help you solve that problem? How could you bring that solution to life? How can you talk to prospective customers about it? Even PM candidates that make wireframes or prototypes to show a product that solves a real problem have a leg up over most of the other candidates. I’ll take someone with drive, initiative and passion for the work 10 times out of 10.
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5193 Views
Mani Fazeli
Mani Fazeli
Shopify Director of ProductDecember 14
Service Level Agreements (SLA) are driven by three factors: (1) industry standard expectations by customers, (2) differentiating your product when marketing, (3) direct correlation with improving KPIs. For checkout, you'll have uptime as an industry standard, but it's insufficient because subsystems of a checkout can malfunction without the checkout process outright failling. You could consider latency or throughput as market differentiators and would need instrumentation on APIs and client response. With payment failures or shipping calculation failures, you would directly impact conversion rates and trust erosion (hurting repeat buying), which are likely KPIs you care about. So your SLAs need to be a combination of measures that account for all of the above, and your engineering counterparts have to see the evidence that these matter in conjunction. Of the three types, the one that's most difficult to compare objectively is the third. In your question, you mention 1.5% error rates. You could go on a hunt to find evidence that convinces your engineering counterparts that these are elevated vs. competition, or that they're hurting the business. What's more likely to succeed is running A/B tests that attempt to improve error rates and demonstrating a direct correlation with improving a KPI you care about. That's a more timeboxed exercise, and with evidence, you can change hearts and minds. That's what can lead to more rigorous setting of SLAs and investment in rituals to uphold them.
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3535 Views
David Cutler
David Cutler
CookUnity VP Product & DesignJune 30
I've noticed a trend in the tech industry for product organizations to follow a structure that Spotify helped craft over the years, in which a company is organized into business sub-orgs that roll up into their own respective product and engineering leads. And those leads oversee various squads that make up the product areas within that sub-org. At CookUnity we call the product areas "zones", in which a product lead exists to drive the product strategy and manage the PM team. In smaller companies (<500), those product leads are likely the direct leadership team for the Head of Product. You can follow this model at any size company, you'll just see a different scale of how many and how big the sub-orgs are.
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Puja Hait
Puja Hait
Google Group Product ManagerSeptember 13
1. Not validating the problem statement enough. Is this really a problem? 2. For a B2B product, I think its important to think through early on whether this is a problem they are willing to pay for. Often times, this is an after thought and expensive to pivot. 3. Giving up too soon. Its easier said than done to validate the problem statement. Sometimes this take iterations where you get live feedback from real users. So you might be dancing around the problem space for a bit and that's okay. 
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4218 Views
Kie Watanabe
Kie Watanabe
HubSpot Group Product ManagerOctober 13
In my previous answer, re: finding the right opportunities + making decisions - I mentioned four lenses (Customer, Business, Market, and Technology) as key components of coming up with ideas and making decisions. The best advice I have to offer is to be intentional about spending time developing your muscles in those areas. It can be as simple as picking a product or service in your day-to-day life and thinking through what inputs might have contributed to the experience you’re having as a user. Additionally, a lot of product strategy is about being able to identify the opportunity that will maximize impact. How will you hone in on the right problem and arrive at an excellent solution? I’ve found that strong problem-solving intrinsics and the ability to make effective decisions are very valuable. Here are two frameworks I’ve always found helpful: * McKinsey’s Seven Steps of Problem Solving - Helps abstract underlying problems/issues * Playing to Win - Strategy book by the former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley Lastly, communication is essential for being able to get buy-in and execute product strategy. Work on simple, effective communication.
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7532 Views