AMA: Automattic VP, Product & Operations (WooCommerce), Clara Lee on Establishing Product Management

There are many great approaches to this question – and to some extent, it will depend on what the company values. If you're a first Product Manager, it is most important that customer needs / expectations are at the forefront of any framework. With my teams, I sometimes like to use a graph, where one of the axes represents customer impact (how much does this product or feature postively improve their lives?) and the other maps effort or investment. That will give you an easy 2x2 where there is a clear set of high impact, low effort/investment things that represent quick wins. You'll also have a category that points to high impact, high effort/investment that require deeper exploration. Another approach I've seen popular in some areas is defining features as table stakes, nice-to-have, or surprise-and-delight – and scoring from there where current offerings stack up, compared to market. While there is no question we must offer table stakes, how the company approaches the other tranches of value will depend on the company's point of view on the market, the team's capabilities, differences or nuances in the customer base, and overall ambition.

The biggest surprise was how hard it was to convince others that Product Leads / Product Managers would be an asset to the team. This sentiment was more common among those who had been at Automattic and WooCommerce for several years, and perhaps not worked with a Product Lead / Product Manager before. The questions I heard included: * Would this role add an extra administrative layer? A: It's actually a new type of work that would help us ensure what we build meets users' needs. * Shouldn't Engineering and Design do this work? A: They are certainly capable, but it can sometimes get lost among other functional priorities. Having another person dedicated to defining customer value, establishing business viability, and collaborating with GTM teams would make efforts more consistently successful. * Are these people just going to come in and order everyone else around? A: Good product managers accept ownership and responsibility for the product, but they are in no way trying to take over or dictate the role of Design or Engineering. Two years after our COO introduced the role at WooCommerce, the team has come to embrace Product Managers in driving customer understanding, cross-functional collaboration, internal and external storytelling, and manage project scope/timelines. Overall, they aid their colleagues in removing roadblocks and helping others focus on the thing they do best.

To me, the first 90 days are all about communication with your new team and cross-functional partners – even more so if you're setting up the Product Management function for the first time. Treat your communications a bit like internal marketing for PM (and yourself), meaning they should be tailored to your audiences, showcase how your PM skills create value for the team, and address potential concerns head-on. The first 30 days are your time to listen and learn. Spend time with Engineering and Design to observe team dynamics and collaboration styles. Also talk with Marketing, Sales, Data, and Operations, to align on what they expect of you – all the while being aware that if they have not worked with PMs before, you may have to inform them what to expect of you. At the 30 day mark, share back in writing what you heard – to demonstrate that you listened and show that you're integrating the information that you've been given. At 60 days, be ready to publish your hypotheses about product strategy and thoughts on what's needed to validate those hypotheses. Depending on your background, you may not feel like an expert in this space yet, so I'd encourage you to be vulnerable and ask for feedback even after the memo is out. By 90 days, you should have a plan of action that is fully aligned with Engineering, Design, and cross-functional partners. You should be a part of the team's cadence and active in all the right meetings. You should also aim to deliver frequent updates – bringing everyone along on your journey, sharing what you're doing, and tying these to long-term shared goals. 

The product organization at WooCommerce is organized by merchant needs: * Start: Merchant onboarding, from the moment they click the CTA on WooCommerce.com to when their store is ready to sell. * Manage: Back-end and admin tasks including product catalog, order management, and settings. * Grow: Spreading the word about their products and business via sales and marketing channels like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Pinterest. We have native channel integrations that merchants can attach to their stores that help facilitate pushing products and offers. * Email: This is where merchants manage their customer and prospect lists, applying segmentation and automation to maintain healthy relationships with shoppers. * Transact: Getting paid is arguably the most important thing to our user base. We enable users to offer the most popular payment methods depending on the countries they sell in, plus accelerated checkouts like Apple Pay and Google Pay. * Fulfill: Integrations with carriers like USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL allow merchants to print labels and mail products from the comfort of their store/home. Each of these focus areas is managed by a Product Lead who works with an Engineering Director covering 2-8 Engineering teams. We've found that organizing by merchant need allows us to focus on a key part of our customers' journey with us, while maintaining flexibility across Engineering teams.

One way to get Engineering excited about customer focus is to invite them to listen in on interviews. We post all customer interviews on a shared calendar and use webinar settings that ensure observers hopping on / off are not disruptive to the participant or moderator. We also run an internal back-channel where observers can discuss responses or suggest follow-up questions. Often, I see that hearing directly from individual customers drives a level of engagement for Engineers that is much higher than if they were merely reading a written summary of aggregate responses at the end of a study. For Engineers, hopefully that can make more tangible the impact that your products can have on customers' lives and inspire greater empathy for customer challenges.