What three things do you think define a successful program and why.

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 approach works wonders up to a certain scale but soon exposes its flaws. When you think about scaling out from there, here are a few things to consider - * Understand your business (replace with org or product team) needs deeply, ideally the 1 to 2 year trajectory of where it is going. That’ll tell you what type of product person you need to hire next. Someone with augmenting skills (Growt...

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 are actually worth solving, and solve them with an MVP of a process and iterate as you learn - don't try to introduce everything at once. * Quarterly priorities: Getting into the habit early of writing down the plan for the quarter is a good muscle to build early in establishing the PM discipline even with only a handful of PMs.  Focus on articulating the big bets for that quarter a...

At the company level, there are a few different methods of communications to keep everyone abreast of updates: 1. Product Notification emails (Ad Hoc) - These emails have a set template and allow product teams from around the company to share updates to their areas in a digestable format as major features go out of the door.  2. Product Newsletter emails (Weekly) - The weekly newsletter summarized major product updates and initiatives to all product team members.  3. Quartery Business Review meetings (Quarterly) - These larger meetings gather key parts of the business to...

I've noticed a trend in the tech industry for product organizations to follow a structure that Spotify helped craft over the years, in which a company is organized into business sub-orgs that roll up into their own respective product and engineering leads. And those leads oversee various squads that make up the product areas within that sub-org. At CookUnity we call the product areas "zones", in which a product lead exists to drive the product strategy and manage the PM team. In smaller companies (<500), those product leads are likely the direct leadership team for the Head of Product.  ...