AMA: GitLab Director of Product Management, Jacqueline Porter on Building a Product Management Team

This is a great question about how to pave the way for two things: product strategy and product management execution. I can see this being applicable to not only first Product hires at start-ups, but new product areas a company has never pursued before. There are a few mechanisms/processes I would establish as a first priority:  1. Establish a feedback loop with the top customers, internal users, and market analysts (product mgt execution) 2. Identify the top 1 or 2 business metrics you are look ...Read More

Gitlab, my current company, the product organization is kind of unique. We have several product directors over each major products section which roles up to a VP of Product Management. Under each of those product directors, there can be a staff product manager, the highest level product manager when it comes right individual contributors, as well as several group managers, which are the managers of a particular product stage that owns a specific domain within the GitLab product. Individual contr ...Read More

I think this is one of my favorite ways of categorizing different kinds of product managers - based off of the KPI’s that they are being optimized for. Product managers who are focused on building products, fast, and shipping them to market are going to be measured a little bit differently than product managers who are about getting sales, reaching a particular enterprise market or even a product lead growth. For example, when you think about KPIs of one who is focused on marketing activities ve ...Read More

Communicating as a product manager is probably 90% of the job. I would say you need to make sure you establish clear chains of communication, both internally and externally, especially as a pertains to product roadmap delivery updates. My favorite method of doing this is to create a safe, publicly available, published version that you can distribute internally and externally so that everybody’s on the same page regarding the major milestones that you’re hoping to accomplish. This can also be coo ...Read More

A well-rounded product team requires three main features: Diverse composition Top talent in the domain Rigorous product management processes Diverse talent can be accomplished by hiring with a specific schedule of product manager you want to hire. This can mean location diversity gender diversity, and racial diversity, but the bottom line is you want to have a population in your team that is representative of your customers. If you don’t have a product team that reflects your customers, you’re l ...Read More