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

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 ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 somethi ...Read More

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 o ...Read More