What ideas or projects would you try to take on and lead after landing your first product management role?

This assumes that you have the ability to choose what you work on in your first PM role, which is great if true, but rare since businesses already have a specific idea for "what needs to be worked on" before they make a PM hire. But let's assume that you've just landed your first PM role and you're looking to get some quick wins under your belt in the first 60 days. I would suggest pursuing one or more of these paths: Interview engineering, product, and design leaders across the organization and ...Read More

get some quick wins under your belt: shepherd a small product/feature/enhancement that’s currently in development out to market launch jump into user research calls to understand customer pain jump into sales calls (prospects or existing customers) to understand pain work with user research (or do it yourself) to understand and document the nature of different customer personas/segments, if this hasn’t been done already write a PRD for small product/feature/enhancement, get feedback on it, and r ...Read More

If you are an entry-level product manager or a first-time PM switching from a different function, executing a feature end-to-end is the best place to start. During execution, one can learn system behavior and develop necessary POVs, such as user behavior and the jobs-to-be-done for the persona. During this process, a PM works closely with peers in the User Experience and Engineering teams, helping the PM understand how the team operates. Also, during interactions with customers and the sales tea ...Read More

Frankly, be humble, say yes to things that move the needle, and focus on delivering quality. Whether you’re the Chief Product Officer or just starting your career - sometimes building a process, finding a scrappy manual solution that doesn’t require engineering effort, or making a copy update can drive more immediate value than launching a greenfield product.  Besides getting the job done for the business, everything you work on is a learning opportunity that goes into your toolbox of experience ...Read More

The most important thing is identifying a project that has the potential to be impactful for the product or business. I often see new PMs do 1 of 2 things:1. Go after easy "low hanging fruit" - this is the easy work the whole team knows we need to do but we didn't do it yet. It can be very tempting to take that work on because you will deliver it. 2. Go after the known too hard problems. These are the "we know we have to fix it at some point" problems that all products have. Newer PMs often see ...Read More