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

The role of a product leader is to develop products customers love, yet in a way that helps business. Specifically, the product management function's role is to help reduce the risks on value and viability of the products. I don't see any difference between a traditional "product manager" title and "product growth manager" title. Those are just titles, and eventually what is expected from them is the same: help develop the best products, in a way that helps business. What may change is their area of focus and how they achieve it.

On a daily basis, product manager's job is to bring clarity and alignment among teams. As a consequence, working with cross functional teams is part of the job. I wouldn't have one answer on how to do so, as it really depends on the situation. There are lots of different frameworks that can work depending on the situation, and the best PMs know which ones to use in which situation. But at the end of the day, what really matters and what makes a difference is the relationships you have with other teams. So as a PM, I would advise to spend time on creating relationships with other teams, rather than focusing on the process.

Metrics depend on the context. The most important is to have metrics that are aligned and shared with other stakeholders (marketing, sales, engineers, etc.). That's the most critical part: alignment. However, don't forget that metrics are just compass, and most of the time you don't have real influence over it. At Amazon they prefer focus on the input for example, as you can control it, than the output: if we display 10 articles on a webpage we can achieve this. What happens if we display 20? what is the optimal number of articles we should display?

Marketing is a key partner, and the mistake is to want to split KPIs between teams. I am a big advocate of shared KPIs for team + stakeholders. It's really more about alignment and discussions - and it's different in every teams - rather than applying a framework.

The right time is when you feel you are stretched too thin to grow without it. A good signal is when the product is growing super fast, and stakeholders start to be misaligned on the different topics to tackle.

The biggest mistake I see is PM thinking they should just apply frameworks, and that they "know" what to do, without having the legitimacy they need. Product management, in which I see growth PM as a sub-category, is an art, not a science. And like every art it takes time to craft and master it. Product management is a late rewarding career, you will see the impact you are making after 10-15-20 years. It happens by working with other people, by creating relationships. Without relationships and trust from others you don't go anywhere as a PM.

The same skillsets as for PMs: be humble, be great at communication with anybody - and especially business! - , and have the ability to develop a product sense.

I think a roadmap is just a tool to get alignment with stakeholders, it should not be used as a commitment on what's coming, and definitely not like a plan to just follow. So any roadmap for product growth would actually map out the outcome and then the different initiatives to reach it, and adjusted any time necessary.

It really depends on the size and structure of the company. I'd say if there is no data team, then do it by yourself. If you have a chance to have a data team, or a data analyst in your team, then work with him! But eventually data is just a compass, what really matters is your product sense to figure out where to go. Don't count on data for this.

I think it depends on the company. If both are doing a similar job, they may have different titles depending on the company. Eventually a pure sales role is about selling a product, with all the process of negotiating contracts, etc. - while a PM acts on influencing the team to improve business.

The first question I ask is "what skillset does the team need?". And then I figure out the roles. I would always start by what skills for the team, rather than specific roles. If you have a sales person that is doing the job of a growth PM, then use this person rather than hire specifically a dedicated PM.

As product led growth is a go-to-market strategy, the best tools to measure it is usually on the business impact, meaning revenue tracking and analytics tracking.

Product management is all about reducing risks and blurriness on the value and viability of the product. So I would say start from the user, move backwards and chose the area where you have the biggest unknown. Make an experiment there so it helps reduce the risks.

It is important to understand that PLG is a go-to-market strategy, not a product strategy. I would thus encourage reading about go-to-market, and of course the different resources about PLG itself that exist.

Experiments are made to fail. It is know in the tech industry that around 85% or experiments fail. If we'd know in advance what would work, we would just go straight for it and not make any experiments. That's why it's critical to really treat this as an experiment - and not a full solution - and be able to move fast to the next one. You will usually get success after experimenting and failing tons of time.