AMA: Momentive (SurveyMonkey) Vice President Product Management, Aleks Bass on Product Management 30/60/90 Day Plan

Every organization is different and has a different culture, different role definitions, different ways of getting work done, different objectives, secret sources of power, and unwritten rules. Finding out about as many of these things as you can as quickly as possible will be extremely helpful to you in your career. Lets start with the questions to ask your R&D partners (engineering, design, research, operations, and in some situations product marketing). Every company has challenges and opportunities within its physical or digital walls. You have an opportunity in the first 90 days to efficiently find out about the challenges and opportunities so you can more intentionally steer towards your intended outcome. I'll provide an answer from the perspective of the IC and the leader because the focus is a bit different. As an individual contributor your objective is to understand what elements can contribute positively to your effectiveness in this role, as well as the things that block progress. The most important thing to remember for these first conversations is that in order for you to get any useful insights that aren't just canned answers which maintain the status quo, people will need to trust you. Start building trust by asking these individuals about themselves. Find something that you both have in common to connect on, build some rapport, then dig into some of your questions (You'll get richer answers). Next you'll want to dig into the projects, people, process, and tools, as well as anything you have questions about that was covered in onboarding. Ask about anything you are unclear on relating to the topics mentioned. Remember to save some time for some unstructured discovery: -Who is the best product manager you have worked with and what made them great? -What do you hope this role will accomplish for the organization? -How can I be a great partner? -What works well here? -What doesn't work well here? -Where have others struggled? And my personal favorite.... Are there any topics or projects that are a touchy subject here? (I've avoided many awful situations with this one). If you're lucky, this one can help you avoid the traps. For product leaders, the altitude changes a bit. Instead of figuring out how you can be the best IC, your goal is to make sure the function is performing well in the organization. Adjusting the verbiage so that it's applicable for the product function should elicit some thoughtful responses. One question I'd recommend asking specifically is "how is the product managment function seen in this org?" Perception isn't always reality, but it can help you uncover glaring process gaps, or opportunities for relationship and rapport building between key groups. If you need a PR level overhaul for product managment, you'll be able to start sooner if you find out about it early and speed is of the essence. The elements you uncover with this exercise can help you formulate your most impactful short term contributions for your 30/60/90 day plan. For xfunctinal geoups like marketing, sales, support, and others, the questions can be similar, but it helps to get some more underlying detail from these groups. Ask if you can shadow a rep on the lifecycle of a deal to learn. Ask if you can see the distribution of support cases and shadow a support representative. Similar scenario for marketing on new campaigns and plans. Offer to be of service to build those relationships. Not only will these conversations help you learn so much about what is going on in the organization so yo can be more effective in your role, but once open, these lines of communication can keep you aware of shifts and changes for a long time to come. When asking for materials like these, remember to be a good corporate citizen. It would not be strategic to criticize it upon reciept, or talk about how inefficient those "other" roles and functions are. Use it to learn, help make it better if you can, but never throw stones with no positive intended outcome in mind.

The 30/60/90 plan is very helpful for anyone coming into a new role, but specifically for PMs there is a simpler way to break it down. This won't libe up perfectly, but I'd think of it as a product managment process... your first 30 days are for discovery. You are talking to people learning about the company, the customers, the product, the processes, everything. You should be analyzing and synthesizing themes and coming up with hypotheses for what you think is needed, and that will be different at each company. For example, sometimes I've come in and the strategy was sound, the ideas were sound, but the way it was being being communicated to customers and internally didn't make sense. Other times I've come in and the idea itself was suspect. I would approach those challenges differently, but I first need to understand what I am dealing with and then I can figure out how to approach it. That's what your first 30 days are for. The 30-60 day stage is for concepting. At this point you should have identified some challenges and opportunities and have some ideas or hypotheses on how to have an impact. You will have some ideas that are great, and some that others have tried and failed implementing. It is helpful to uncover which is which quickly. In days 30-60, you should start sharing these opportunities to gauge support and interest from xfunctional groups you will rely on for execution. Pick things that are best positioned for success. For example, don't pick the project everyone is against as your first one. Maybe save that for later when you have more momentum behind you. Days 60-90 are for execution. This is where you should start executing on the opportunities you've discovered. Dont forget to promote the changes you are making, but in an authentic way. If no one knows about the things you are working on, did you even do the work? Thats extreme, but you get the point. Make sure people know about the work you are doing and the impact you are having. One more tip: The biggest mistake I see people make on their 30/60/90 day plans is to do them in secret. At the very beginning of your tenure at the company, you want to align on your plans with your manager. This will be the fastest way to detect whether your expectations are aligned or if there is a disconnect between what you think your should be doing vs what your manager thinks you should be doing. 

The first 90 days are for quick wins. This is to help establish and validate your reputation quickly. You are going to want to pick something realistic that you can accomplish in 90 days. You Should also consider the following criteria: - Can it be measured? If the answer is yes, get that set up before you work on the initiative so you can show your impact. - Does it have the potential for high visibility? For example, if there is no consistant roadmap view and you pull it together, its something that will be applicable to the whole team and likely will be shared with internal groups like marketing, sales, etc. - Does it showcase your orher skill sets? Do you have a background in data analysis? You may want to pull a dashboard together the team needs but doesn't know how to create. Do you have a background in research? You can help facilitate some discovery sessions or put in place a customer outreach program, etc? Find a pain point and help make it better by either measuring the impact, making sure the opportunity is visible, or by leveraging your skill set to increase the quality of the output above what exists or other could do. 

Great question, and I'll make some assumptions before I answer. I'll assume that the PM function is new but that there is an engineering and design team already established at the company. In this case, my first goal would be to find out what is being built and how well it resonates with the target market. The primary objective would be to avoid wasting engineering rescources by not knowing what to build. If the engineering rescources are occupied with high value work, I'd move on to my second objective. If they weren't working on high value work, I'd synthesize the information from competitive and customer feedback to determine the most high value opportunity for the team to work on. The second objective would be to look at the backlog and make sure we have at least 2 months worth of high value work for the eng teams to execute on. If that is the case, I'd move on to my third objective, if not, I'd spend time in this stage partnering with cross functional groups to feed the backlog with the next set of most important work. Once the backlog is in a good place, I'd be working on the short to mid term strategy for the product and making sure there was a clear and efficient process for ideas to go from idea to experiences in the product and be prioritized by the expected impact. Once that's working well, I'd expand my focus into a fourth objective. The fourth objective would be to make sure we have a solid long term strategy in place. Do we have a good sense of how the industry and market is shifting? Do we have clarity on our competitive strength and how we are going to differentiate on those, etc. This is also the stage during which I'd be working towards systematic efficiencies. Do we have a consistant process for getting customer feedback? Do we have a framework for evaluating priorities? Do we keep tabs on competitors? + more