AMA: Atlassian Head of Product, DevOps , Suzie Prince on Product Management Career Path

I don't think there is a typical product career path! Many of the PMs I have worked with or hired have changed careers and moved around in different roles. I see people enter from college with software engineering backgrounds, or experienced senior people moving from other software crafts such as design, engineering and project management into product management. For example, I have former startup founders and former DevOps engineers on my current PM team. If there is something typical about all paths - it is that PMs are people who have interest and experience in technology and truly want to improve customer and user experiences with technology.

Ultimately you need to have impact and demonstrate to those around you that you can create value for the organisation. You should identify a problem or opportunity, create your hypothesis on how to solve that problem and test it. Document and show others that you are learning and that your learning leads to better product decisions and better business outcome.

Before working on developer products I was an technology consultant leading Agile and DevOps transformation and I have seen a lot of slow teams, get faster. Here are the common ways to improve velocity. 1. Deliver less. Deliver the smallest possible thing you can to solve a user problem. Think you made it small, make it smaller. Put it out there and understand whether it had impact and iterate. 2. Pull work in. Keep a flexible backlog and pull work in rather than plan weeks in advance. This ensures the highest priority work is delivered sooner. 3. Create shared understanding. We are slow when we rely on individuals to know or do specific things. By creating a shared understanding anyone on the team can make choices and decisions on what and how to deliver. With shared understanding and ownership, they will rarely be left waiting for someone else to “make the call” and you will deliver more value sooner.

The most important thing is identifying a project that has the potential to be impactful for the product or business. I often see new PMs do 1 of 2 things: 1. Go after easy "low hanging fruit" - this is the easy work the whole team knows we need to do but we didn't do it yet. It can be very tempting to take that work on because you will deliver it. 2. Go after the known too hard problems. These are the "we know we have to fix it at some point" problems that all products have. Newer PMs often see themselves as knights in armor who will fix these problems for good. The challenge is that they can often suck up lots of bandwidth, lead to analysis paralysis and never get delivered. The sweet spot is a finding a challenge you can solve or learn about uniquely; a project where others can recognise clear impact that only you could have delivered.

General advice is to tell as many people as possible that you want to make that career change. I see time and again that if you are successful in your current role, make it clear what you want next then opportunities will come to you. More specifically, in larger organisations the two main ways I have seen people shift into new roles is: 1. Secondments. Look for internal mobility opportunities to try the role out of a while. Often hiring managers are more open to taking on an entry level person when the role is time bound like covering someone's leave or a specific project. By demonstrating your success in a short term role you have more chance of being offered a full time position. 2. Side projects. Seek out projects that are not core to your day job but that allow you to demonstrate your potential in other areas such as strategy. Many organizations have hack days or 20% time that allow you opportunities to show your other skills and interests.

API are generally well documented and so if there are specific APIs you need to work with, review the documentation of how that API works to learn more about it. Seek out other products that use that API and understand how they work. If you have the skills, build out a small app that interacts with that API to learn about how to use it and it's limitations.

I believe that even in situations where you "had to build the features" you can still show impact. Impact is not just about more users, more dollars for the business - impact can be about learning. If you have to ship features, use the time after you delivered them to learn and to bring that learning back to the organisation to impact the future roadmap. For example - you shipped feature x because you had to but you can still show whether feature x was impactful or not and why it was impactful or not. This information can inform others how to be make better choices in the future and allow you to impact the organisation with insights as well as actual outcomes.

I mean I have to say AI don't I! But really you do need to know how AI will: 1. Make you better at your job. Do you know how to use tools to summarise research, build out plans and even write simple code changes? If not, you need to. 2. Change how your users' interact with your products and choose to solve their problems. Just like mobile shifted user behaviour, AI is changing how we all work and you need to know how to use it to help your products stand out and better serve your customers.

I am fortunate that Atlassian has very clear hiring guidelines for all product management roles however, in general I also look for: 1. Flexibility. Flexibility is key for product managers, especially when tackling daily challenges. Unexpected situations happen all the time, and it's important to handle them well. I do not just look for people who can manage change, I look for those who even find joy in uncertainty and work hard to add clarity in these situations. 2. Resilience. Building on flexibility, it's crucial to be resilient in navigating challenges and to take pride in overcoming them. 3. Being decisive and trusting instincts. I’m a big believer in user research, and effective product managers are thoughtful in their decision-making. However, I also look for individuals who can make informed choices on the fly, even when you don’t have all the details. 4. Seeking Feedback. Committing to lifelong learning is a must; we should never settle for what we know. I look for individuals how can demonstrate how they learn and improve every day. 5. Listening. As product managers, we often find ourselves in the spotlight—leading teams and engaging with customers. However, knowing when to hold back and listen is an invaluable skill. When chatting with users, it’s essential to listen closely; when asking your team questions, it’s important to give them time to respond. Being genuinely attentive to what others are saying is a crucial skill that shouldn’t be underestimated.