AMA: Volley Head of Product, Roshni Jain on Building a Product Management Team

This varies a lot based on the size and stage of the company - so it's important to think about: Which audiences you want to communicate updates to What level of detail each audience needs What frequency each audience needs What existing mechanisms and forums exist where you can make these happen Once you do this analysis, I would recommend starting with the most detailed and frequent need (perhaps it is to the other teams in your pillar who need good detail every week). Then use this to create ...Read More

PM to engineer ratios can range wildly from 1 PM to every 2-3 engineers to something 1 PM to 15 engineers. This largely depends on the size of the company and the type of product. In a more entertainment context, like a gaming start-up, you might have leaner engineering teams with more PMs to develop the ideas and concepts for all of the experiences. In a scaled big tech company you might require many engineers and teams to work across all the platforms involved, so the ratio of a PM and product ...Read More

This can be a challenging situation as there are many places the 1-2 PMs could add value. I would recommend taking two filters to the workload. First, categorize the priority of the existing multiple products across the three horizons: Horizon 1: Strong current drivers of value that need to be actively maintained, but are not expected to drive future growth Horizon 2: High-potential products that are expected to grow in impact over time through more investment Horizon 3: Emerging products that c ...Read More

I would work on doing both. When you start out in a new role it's important to get quickly up to speed, create a plan and start adding value. Most likely you'll see many opportunities to make things better now that are a light lift. So, I would add these best practices (could be simple things like getting a new tool, email updates, adding a new ceremony to the team), while you figure out the ideal team composition and start filling those roles. A potential way to think about this might be to pic ...Read More

There are only particular instances when, in my experience, it can make sense to have multiple product managers within a team. If your engineering structure is a squad/pod model where there is a dedicated set of engineers along on a core mission with clear ownership, I would most typically have 1 dedicated PM to this team. Instances where you could consider adding a second PM include: Wanting to train another person in a specific area so there is an opportunity for future transition. The additio ...Read More