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Nicolas Liatti

AMA: Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category, Nicolas Liatti on Establishing Product Management

April 29, 2025 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. How do you retain good talent, especially when PM roles are in such high demand across the industry?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    I think it all comes to knowing the intrinsic motivation of your team. Money is just one part of the equation, and usually not the biggest one. When it comes to intrinsic motivation, people want to feel that:- they contribute to something greater that will impact people- they have autonomyI try to foster a culture for PMs where they can really feel this, where they feel empowered as part of the product teams to come with solutions.What helps also is having a manager that really knows what is "pr ...Read More

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  2. What is your advice for creating and/or improving the product management process when joining a small but growing team? Particularly for a small company with no or little structure?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    Product Management is not about structure or process, it's about the mindset. I would hence spend all my time on ensuring the company and team has the right mindset: we are here to build products customers love, yet in a way that help business we are all working on the same goal it's a long road that will be made of failure and success etc. Having the right mindset and culture is what you need for a company to have a chance to succeed. The structure for how to scale should come once you have est ...Read More

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  3. How do you coordinate and work cross functionally with the product marketing team to create commonly shared KPIs?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    The process to make this is different between every team, but the mindset is the same: I believe marketing team should sit around the table with the rest of the product team (engineers, design, PM) when discussing roadmap and KPI. This helps having a common alignment of what we are building and why.

    668 Views
    1 request

  4. What are the biggest surprises when going from a company where product management was established to one where you have to establish product management?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    The biggest surprise is usually not understanding the true role of product management. It is often confused with "project management", or focusing just on the delivery aspect of the job.

    It takes a lot of time for both leadership AND team to truly understand what product management brings to the table, that it helps companies create meaningful product that help impact business.

    485 Views
    1 request

  5. Question about org structures - what does your product team org structure look like?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    I like to follow Conway's law, which basically say "a system is designed following internal organization of a company".

    This means that your product org should ideally match what you want customers to experience. We often say "you want to ship your org", meaning the org structure should usually match your customers experience.

    434 Views
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  6. How do you effectively explain how a tech company and PM function should operate to leaders who are not familiar with technology?

    Nicolas Liatti
    Nicolas Liatti

    Adobe Senior Director of Product Management, 3D Category • 1y

    The most important aspect is that successful products are built by teams cooperating together to find the best solution that works for customers and market. As part of this cooperation, the roles as the following: PM are accountable for the value and viability of the product Design is accountable for the usability Engineering is accountable for the making and delivery PM should hence be a function working along with engineering and design and other stakeholders, and should help to mitigate risks ...Read More

    651 Views
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