Building a Product Management Team

Contributing myself and supporting my team can be at odds with each other. Coaching and supporting my team is always my number one priority. There are times when I simply need to say no and depriorit

As a first PM, you will need to be very judicious with how you allocate your time and resources. In fact, I think that’s true for larger companies as well. There are always going to be more ideas than

Honestly, the first product manager for a company is probably not ready to establish a prioritization framework. The first PM probably needs to focus on customer discovery, market discovery, MVP intu

There are many great approaches to this question – and to some extent, it will depend on what the company values. If you're a first Product Manager, it is most important that customer needs / expectat

The great thing about being the first hire is something that is also great about Product Management: there is room for interpretation. My philosophy has always been more heavily focused on understandi

First PM in a company! I have not done it, nor have anyone in close network to have a good understanding. My guess is that they have to establish right roles/responsibilities on what to carve out from

When you are the first PM, you are straddling several priorities: Finding product market fit Scaling the team Scaling the product The biggest failure mode is trying to do 2 and 3 before you do 1: As

In my experience a prioritization framework is foundational to establishing a great working relationship within your own team and stakeholders. I'd also argue that if executed well in the beginning, t

There are a few different vectors to consider here. There is the effort/impact matrix, which is pretty good at helping identify low hanging fruit - essentially mapping out potential workstreams on a 2

Thank you for the question and I'm sure this is exactly not the answer you're looking for which is, "it depends" You're balancing building trust and relationships, understanding your users and the bu

The fundamentals of prioritization are not too different when you're the first at a company. But in the early stages of a company or product, it's even more important to focus.  At an early stage com

This is a great question about how to pave the way for two things: product strategy and product management execution. I can see this being applicable to not only first Product hires at start-ups, but

The product manager's primary responsibility is to ensure that the right product is delivered to the market at the right time. In order to do this effectively, you will need to establish a framework f

Know your customer - Often this can just be the investor in the company/company owner. Meet their basic expectations from the product first, and win their confidence. Aim to build a functional protot

The ideal product manager-to-engineer ratio can vary depending on the nature and complexity of the products being developed, the size and stage of the organization, and other factors such as the devel

I have been a part of small teams, large teams, a PM consultant and an entrepreneur. I have yet to scale a PM team beyond the first PM but here are the things I would consider: Structure your team ba

The simple answer is to hire PMs :) .  That said, I'm assuming you are asking more of how to structure the team to scale to the needs of the organization as you hire Define the discipline: Hire PMs t

This is a situation that our team went through last year, scaling from 2 PMs to 10 over 12 months. Before hiring any additional PMs, we first took the time to survey the teams that existed in our curr

Building with intent is key. As a first PM or TPM, you are often running a one-person show. You wear multiple hats and you tend to be scrappy, flexing to what the business needs you to do. That approa

The first PM hired into a company, or in a division of a company, will usually be an individual who can wear different hats on any given day. (see one of my favorite product management graphics: https

I'm not sure it is the most effective because I've really only used one strategy, but it has been effective for me. Grow your own scope, take on more than you can handle, do a good job of pitching th

Contrary to popular belief, it's not about writing a job description as fast as possible and starting to hire! It's important to spend some time upfront thinking about the team you are trying to build

As I mentioned in another answer, lean on those around you; there is a wealth of knowledge to be amassed from stakeholders and peers that have likely interacted with the product that you've been broug

Assuming this is an early stage company, the priority should be learning the basics of the business and building relationships with as many colleagues as possible. Use those learnings to construct a m

Absolutely, welcome to the discipline, you're in for quite a ride and I'm super excited for you.  Optimize for learning and honing your craft. There's a balance to have the confidence to make decisi

If you are a junior PM who is the first product management hire, it would be fair to assume you are working at an early-stage startup where likely the founder is acting as the product leader. You were

Congratulations! Being the first PM at a company can be a really exciting and formative experience, in shaping the product vision and the product organization. Here's a few things I'd suggest: It's a

The candidate must “spike” (“8/10” or higher) in all of these areas, in order of importance:  1. Critical Thinking Given how many decisions and complex problems are thrown at PMs, this the #1 most im

I'm lucky in that Google has a really rigorous interview process that I benefit from. Google is also known for taking a long time during that process but I promise you that is largely because of the r

The product manager's job is to identify the most impactful problems to solve, enable their team to build and ship solutions that delight users, learn, and iterate. Product managers need a multitude o

There's a lot written about basic PM competencies (https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/), and for any PM on my team, they should be able to do all these things you'd ex

I'm going to suggest a few processes, but please do scale each process to the size of the organization. Treat your processes like you treat your product - establish 2-3 internal customer problems that

Expanding the team from 1 to multiple people comes with a set of pitfalls that I’ve learned the hard way. And many other factors such as Org culture, line of business, product lifecycle etc, have a te

Here's how I'd think about it: Some planning cadence where strategy and roadmap can be reviewed at different levels of fidelity. (Annual, Quarterly etc.) Product review with key cross functional sta

The most important process you can set up is a retrospective of some kind. I talk about this in more detail in another answer, but as you add people, ensuring that you have ways of sharing and improvi

Adding every new member to the team adds friction and operation overhead increases. You will need to set up processes that allow the team to operate independently and work with each other effectively

There are a few that I consider important to set up (and refine) as you grow your team: Processes for top-down sharing: As your team grows, knowledge sharing becomes harder but also more critical. PM

Interestingly enough I see two trends in the types of KPIs product teams miss.  1) Aligning with the larger's organization or business goals - Ensuring that your product roadmap is actually impacting

In terms of KPI's shared between product and engineering, I would say "Effective Resource Utilization" can be missed primarily because it can be hard to track and measure across projects/teams. "Inte

Many product organizations focus on delivery, Net Promoter Score, and user counts. One metric that I think is important to always consider is your availability and consistency of user experience in th

This is a good one. I think there are two that often get missed and largely it is because they are hard to measure and expensive to move. Product excellence. How do you measure customer delight in a

Oftentimes, I find that Product Management teams are focused on getting the product to market that they forget that their #1 job is building a business. As a business leader, you can't be simply focus

This is a great question. In my opinion, a lot of product teams especially ones that are focussed on customer-facing products completely miss tracking product health KPIs like bugs in the product, pro

There are different types of updates that need to be communicated to the rest of the company and how those get communicated is different Vision/Roadmap: At least annually, live at the annual kickoff

At the company level, there are a few different methods of communications to keep everyone abreast of updates: Product Notification emails (Ad Hoc) - These emails have a set template and allow produc

Great question, and it doesn't have a single answer. One thing that is important is having a consistent, accessible, forum/location for people to see: What's been released; What's coming up; Metrics;

Communicating as a product manager is probably 90% of the job. I would say you need to make sure you establish clear chains of communication, both internally and externally, especially as a pertains t

What product management updates get shared with the rest of the company and how they get shared will vary based on the size of the company and the function of the company. The goal for communication,

This is a scenario that teams often find themselves in, especially in fast moving parts of a business. The question I would ask when looking across the existing products is "Where do I gain the most l

Prioritization is key. I don’t believe in dividing ‘all’ available work across my team. I believe in ensuring my team focuses on the top business priorities and are having the most impact. I typically

I like this question although more specifics would help as the answer varies. It certainly is a tough skill to master though but worthwhile because this will always be the case. Even at the big compan

If your PM team only has one or two people responsible for covering multiple products with complex features, I would recommend building a prioritized list of deliverables that are necessary to achieve