AMA: GitLab Director of Product Management, Jacqueline Porter on Influencing the C-Suite

Wow, great question. The best roadmaps are ones that contain a lot of feedback, iteration, and discussion with the company as well as external customers/stakeholders. I have seen a couple of strategies applied to ensure priorities for the roadmap are clear. 1. Identify the top metric/business result you are influencing. 1. This will help drive the discussion. Anything that needs to get added should have a tie back to this metric 2. Have percentages for types of scope on the roadmap and communicate these percentages in advance so stakeholders understand there is a limited amount of scope that can be delivered in a given time frame 3. Be transparent about how something gets on the roadmap 1. Most of my roadmaps are based on two things: data experiments or validation with customers/end users. The items with customer insights are to the roadmap if a significant portion are impacted or there is a material impact to the metric in #1 above. Generally, with these three items known in advance, your stakeholders will be able to understand and contribute while being aware that their request may not fit in the broader course.

Personally, I do my best to stay current with industry analysts, top leaders and product innovators in my space, and connecting with people who are doing product management at the level I currently am. The best way to make sure you are sharp and current is to engage with your industry meaningfully. Talk with customers, go to conferences, talk with PMs at your competitors to learn how they do things (not what they are doing). These are all strategies that can help expand your skills and capacities as a PM.

Thought leadership is one of the most valuable tools as a PM. There are many ways to build a thought leadership portfolio. Here are some of the ways I use and coach others: 1. Attend industry conferences and make connections 2. Attend meet ups and be a speaker 3. Lead talks/panels with other industry leaders 4. Publish blogs/share content on social media/record short videos on your POV and share on social media 5. Become a published author With all these methods of becoming known, it makes it easier to carry influence within your org and with other leaders.

I have personally struggled with this many times in my career and most organizations do. The executives should be able to articulate the overall company goals and targets quarter by quarter (these are commonly OKRs or MBOs) This is the main method I like to rely on to have executives streamline priorities so the product organization can contribute meaningfully. Secondarily, as PM is it essential you identify the business case for your roadmap. What will be the business impact if you can successfully launch everything on your plan? Once you have that data point, it can be very useful when expressing trade-offs with leaders. You can say "yes, although I would need to trade off a feature that will help unlock (X # of deals, $XM ARR, # of new logos)". The executive team can then acknowledge if this work will benefit the company more or not.

When I started my PM journey a posting from a prominent Amazon Product leader was something that was referenced. In this piece, the author suggests there are a few traits that put PMs above and beyond others. As a product leader now, I would say the shortlist is: * Communicate * Forecast & measure * Execute * Write effective copy As a junior PM, doing these four things exceptionally well will get you recognized and noticed in your role and most likely give you the opportunities to get more career advancement. I wanted to point out though - in many cases executive exposure might not always be a good thing. For example, when things are going well typically executives won't be super involved and when things are not going well, they get involved. I would definitely question the need/motivation for executive exposure.

I usually align myself with other parts of the organization's metrics and OKRs rather than a specific person. When you are supporting others' metrics they are accountable to, you will have their attention and commitment to accomplishing a shared objective together. If I align with a single person, this often means when that person leaves I need to find a new relationship to build. Rather I tend to focus on helping the entire group accomplish what they need to get done (by supporting it with Product delivery or contributing engineering effort to specific issues).

At GitLab we have a DRI (directly responsible individual). The DRI is the one who's decision matters and even if there are senior leaders if they are not the DRI their opinion doesn't necessarily mean it be an outcome. But let's say the company does not have this concept and as a PM you have to take both POVs into consideration. I would make sure to restate the company/business/division/product goals. I would then provide any evidence or data to suggest which direction is better. If there is no data, I would suggest conducting research for 3-4 weeks to better understand the problem space and market. Those are usually helpful strategies to iterate forward and disagree/commit/disagree.

1. Assuming the C-Suite is right 2. Not coming with a clear decision point to a call 3. Not having sufficient data or research to justify the product investment 4. Over preparing detailed assets without an executive summary and forecast