AMA: Atlassian Director of Product Management (Confluence), Paresh Vakhariya on Building a Product Management Team

Here are the top things I would look for in a product manager on my team: Customer-Centric: understanding and serving the needs of the customers/users possibly via user interviews, surveys, or user testing. Good understanding of the domain: Although this is not mandatory, it would be good to have a good understanding of the domain such as Social Networking, Security, Consumer products, Enterprise etc. Communicates their ideas clearly via written and verbal communication at any level from team me ...Read More

Here is my advice for a junior PM in a small company: Get to know your product. Learn to ue it everyday and document any issues you see Talk to customers about their experience using your product. Document these issues Create a prioritization framework: prioritize the problems you see that are biggest for the customers Pick metrics you want to measure. What will drive the biggest impact for your company and customers? Create a 3-6 month roadmap and share it with all your team members. Align on c ...Read More

It is important to tailor your communication methods to your company's culture, teams, projects and their needs. Here are some of my favorites ones: Slack (messaging) Updates: Send out regular email updates to relevant stakeholders via short but sweet Slack messages. These updates can recent product launches, upcoming features, and any significant metrics or even challenges. Town Hall Meetings: Hold regular meetings to share updates. This could be a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meeting where yo ...Read More

As a PM leader, it is imperative to balance individual work and managing teams of PM's. There are some key tasks I would focus on as an IC such as setting up the right vision/strategy for the entire group, clear business metrics and customer impact that need to be communicated across the organization (and to leadership) In terms of coaching PM's, I would focus on 3 areas: Clear team wide priorities and OKR's: make sure the team is focusing on an overall goal to achieve. The way each PM+team migh ...Read More

Here is my advice for a junior PM in a small company: Get to know your product. Learn to ue it everyday and document any issues you see Talk to customers about their experience using your product. Document these issues Create a prioritization framework: prioritize the problems you see that are biggest for the customers Pick metrics you want to measure. What will drive the biggest impact for your company and customers? Create a 3-6 month roadmap and share it with all your team members. Align on c ...Read More

Setting a solid product vision, strategy and a clear roadmap for atleast 3-6-12 months is the top activity for a PM leader. Some benefits of having this in place are: Determine and solve customer problems Clearly articulate the impact you will have on company or product metrics Alignment across the entire organization on what you will deliver by and when Make sure resources are allocated to the right initiatives as outlined in the roadmap Inspire Engineering, Design, Marketing, Data Science and ...Read More