AMA: Nextiva Head of Product, Developer Ecosystem and Experience Cloud, Bryan Dunn on Product Management Career Path

I've consistently seen the best PMs do a few things to increase velocity, though I think this would be framed better as impact as a PM since the result of that velocity is shipping more product. Be the voice of the customer - this is the most important thing by far. The best PMs employ the help of their team to solve customer problems. If you do this effectively, you get everyone on the team to focus on the customer problem, not the tech or the design or the architecture. This is where great tea ...Read More

I've been working at fully (or practically) remote companies for ~5 years now and I believe they can certainly work. Tools like Zoom, Slack, and Miro can (mostly) handle the day to day activities of product teams. However, in person time is still critical for some activities and for building a product culture you want. Some rules I have: I try to do a team offsite at least quarterly. This allows for free flowing discussions and brainstorming that don't translate well virtually. I plan a few days ...Read More

This is always a deeply personal decision, but over the years, I’ve found myself in scenarios where I stayed too long because I was comfortable. Here is my rubric for determining whether to stay or go: Am I still learning? If you’re not learning something new, it’s easy to become complacent. The earlier you are in your career, the more you should demand to be in a position that challenges and stretches your skillset. If you have great leadership and perform well, you can often find ways to grow ...Read More

I've seen this situation quite a bit and the single most effective way to drive change towards impact-based product building is bringing data to show the downsides of the current approach. I personally failed to drive change early in my career because I tried to debate the merits of different approaches without bringing evidence (only theory). Even if you are to operating in a project-focused way, there are things you can do to shine a light on a better way: Measure the impact of everything you ...Read More