AMA: Meta (Facebook) Head of Technical Program Management, Vasanth Arunachalam on Technical Product Management

I’ll try to answer this first question along with the question of - “What metrics do technical product teams look at to define success, what do you find to be the most important?“ because they are similar.KPIs or Metrics are essentially a way to measure how successful your program or product is. There are a few traits any ‘metric’ should possess - they should be explainable, able to move/influence by the team, able to test for impact, without any bias and more importantly tied to the business go ...Read More

It could be a combination of any of these things - Look at data (dashboards, customer feedback channels, internal partner team feedback) to check progress (on product success, platform performance) -Take any actions necessary (filing bugs, resolving a SEV) Supporting your cross functional team to deliver on roadmap projects -Brainstorm product and technical solutions. -Sprints, design reviews, code reviews -Removing blockers Look at data to proactively surface opportunities, hot spots, technical ...Read More

This response also applies to one of the other questions asked here - "What qualities stand out in some of the best TPMs you know?" I strongly believe that you can be a successful technical product manager regardless of your background, as long as you have the passion and growth mindset. It is not rocket science (for that matter, look at Elon Musk for rocket science). So I’ll focus on some of the desirable soft skills that makes one a successful technical product manager - Able to technically gr ...Read More

I love this question because it flips one of the previous questions to focus more on the individual. IMO the success of a Technical Product/Program Manager largely lies in the ‘What’ and the ‘How’. What impact did they have? This individual measure of success should be tied to the business (product or platform) goals. The TPM should directly be held accountable for delivering on those goals. This is also the (relatively) easy part to measure (Eg: How many new users signed up for the app?, How mu ...Read More

I'll answer this question in combination with "How is the role of technical product manager different than other product managers?" There is likely no formal definition of ‘technical product/program management’. Like I mentioned earlier, it is this fungibility aspect that makes this role a much sought after one in the industry right now. While a traditional product manager focuses on building products to solve consumer (or business) problems, a technical product manager takes it further to tackl ...Read More

I talked about my take on desirable qualities in one of my previous responses, so I’ll focus on the common mistakes I’ve personally made in my career in the past, that hopefully will help others avoid those pitfalls. Mistaking motion/effort for progress (This is also one of Meta’s posters on the wall in our campuses) Rushing to prove my value (whenever I switched roles or teams). Not being able to articulate the “So what” well. Eg: I’ve launched this shiny new feature, so what? Assuming everyone ...Read More

Great to hear that more and more SWEs/SREs are considering transitioning into this career. I was a SWE myself before I transitioned to this role. Technical Product/Program Management (TPM) is a well established industry standard role now. I see more start ups hiring their first TPM even before they hire their first PM because of the technical bent and the fungibility the role comes with. A technical product person is able to operate more freely in the spectrum between Engineering and Product Man ...Read More