AMA: Atlassian Director of Product Management (Cloud Platform), Paresh Vakhariya on Product Management Career Path

Leadership levels require a broad set of skills and experience, as well as a strong commitment to leadership, team mentoring and cross-functional collaboration. A lot of time is spent in deciding the strategy/vision, seeking alignment with leadership and cross-functional stakeholders. Once strategy is completed, hiring the right PM's (and other functions) to align with the strategy is key. Also ensuring the org structure supports the strategy and empowers the teams to do their best work. Team coaching and mentoring is also a key factor in growing from a senior PM to higher levels. Ability to align the teams to a broader vision and then providing them feedback along the way is crucial.

Some key types I have encountered are: 1. UX/UI product managers: These product managers are responsible for the user experience and user interface of a product. 2. Platform product managers: These product managers focus on building and managing platforms that enable other products or services to be built on top of them. 3. Growth product managers: These product managers focus on driving growth and increasing user acquisition, retention, and engagement. 4. Technical product managers: managing the development of complex technical products. They work closely with engineers and designers to ensure that the product is technically feasible and meets the needs of the target audience. As for each type, the skillsets vary broadly. For UI/UX having a good understanding of customer issues and be able to ensure a UI can tackle these challenges are key. Metrics are more end user engagement related. For Platform PM's, building a scalable and reliable platform is key. These are more technical in nature and may/may not directly interface with customer needs but indirectly via the products they support. For Growth PM's, a solid metrics and funnel background is key along with UI/UX. For Tech product managers, good understanding of technical systems, their interplay and abillity to collaborate with engineering is key. For all PM's, prioritization, goal/OKR setting, communication, leadership and strategic thinking are a must.

For a PM or Sr. PM, the skills needed are: * Strategic thinking and ability to develop product roadmaps that align with company goals * Deep understanding of customer/user issues and product development processes * Strong communication and leadership skills to lead cross-functional teams * Advanced knowledge of prioritization and risk management * Advanced analytical skills to define OKR's and metrics For a Director or executive, the skills needed are all of th ePM skills plus: * Strong leadership and communication skills to guide and inspire many product teams via a vision and strategy * Advanced stakeholder management and ability to interface and align with leadership on company goals * Advanced understanding of metrics and company OKR's * Industry knowledge and thought leadership * Ability to interface with customers to get a deep understanding of their issues. * Hiring, and mentoring a team. Help guide through inter personal issues.

The best PM's have: - Strong leadership and communication skills. To be able to talk to customers, stakeholders, and leadership with the right context. They are good at leading teams with ambiguous problems and helping them arrive at a decision quickly - Strategy and Vision: the ability to define a problem, size and prioritize them, come up with a solution (along with a set of steps needed to achieve their goal) - Comfort with data, metrics, and OKR setting: set clear goals and a plan to achieve them over time. Rally a team around these goals. - Constant learner: learn about new tech and user challenges to help define solutions with a passion for the products they work on. - Dealing with ambiguity: be able to deal with changing direction, organizational constraints, timeline risks and resource constraints to constantly make progress

The 3 top areas I think are: Leadership and team management Managing a team of product managers, as well as collaborating with cross-functional teams across the organization is key. Provide feedback on all aspects of strategy and execution is key to becoming a leader. Hiring and onboarding PM's is key. Setting strategy and vision for the team Build a vision that the team rallies around, decide on the org structure, OKR's that your team will drive and ensure that aligns with long term company strategy. Also setting product strategy, prioritizing areas for the team to work on, making tough trade-offs, and aligning the product roadmap with business goals. Understand company strategy, market/competitive trends, and identifying opportunities for growth are crucial skills. Cross functional influence: Ability to work with cross functional leaders and set direction for all the disciplines such as Design UI/UX and engineering.

It can be challenging to break into PM space but here are a few tips: 1. Switch roles to PM within your current organization: this is the best path as you already have a good understanding of your company, product, customers, metrics and stakeholders. Find a team that will offer you this career growth (by working with your manager) 2. Apply for roles within your industry and domain. This might help you switch over more easily than a completely new area. 2. Determine the type of PM you want to me (Platform, UI/UX, Data, Growth or Technical). Build your skillset in your current role for these specific types. Then apply for those roles 3. Build a product and blog about how you did this. Build a portfolio based on these projects. 4. Network within the industry and seek mentorship. Keep in mind, switching roles, company and levels at the same time can be challenging. Make these moves in 2-3 steps. e.g. switch to PM, then to a company you like and slowly climb the ladder to the position you desire. This is just an example.

Some key tips are: - Research the industry: what are the specific areas within SAAS you are most interested in? Follow newsletters, influencers and publications/conferences. Network with relevant leaders. - Start a side hustle that showcases your skills. I build a mobile app from scratch to gain relevant experience. This helped me get a better understanding of the in's and out's. Build out a portfolio of your learnings. - Use relevant tools and products that will help you gain an understanding of the feature set - Offer to work with someone on a side project in the industry to gain direct experience.

- Soft skills such as communication, teamwork, adaptability, and a willingness to learn are also important for any product organization. - Work with Engineering on a day to day basis to help build a product by clarifying requirements (which are gathered from various data sources) - Additionally skills such as clear prioritization, OKR and goal setting and a good understanding of metrics are crucial - Good UI/UX skills, ability to talk to customers and help articulate their customer challenges to their teams - Gather stakeholder feedback and craft a vision/strategy based on various data points (including above ones) - Ability to work with Sales and Marketing in addition to UI/UX, engineering to help define success of their product