What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Manager at a company establishing the function?

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 resources available. As a product manager, you are responsible for translating the company’s vision into a roadmap so your first priority should be internalizing the company’s goals. Is it to drive sign-ups? Increase retention? Increase MRR? Or something else altogether? Narrowing in on that top go ...Read More

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 understanding how things operate current state, finding out pain points as well as the more successful parts of a product, and leaning on those insights to form your next steps. In certain scenarios, what a team may need is for someone to roll up their sleeves and do the work to keep the lights on for a produc ...Read More

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 intuition, and experimentation. Until you have established product-market fit with enthusiastic customer demand, rigorous prioritization is probably bikeshedding. Once you have that fit, that's when you'll start to get inbound requests/ideas/complaints from current customers, potential customers, new mar ...Read More

Taking a step back, I think the 1st PM needs to act a lot like a head of product in the early days. The ones I see that do well for their company (and themselves) typically focus on doing 3 things well, where others only do 1-2: PM Execution Typical activities you expect from a PM i.e. research, talking to customers, ideation, roadmap This is foundational, but I think you will likely fail or at least get overlooked for leadership opportunities if you only spend time on this Building the PM playb ...Read More

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 the first PM, your foremost priority should be to establish product market fit. Distibuting that effort across more people dilutes the effectiveness because information gets lost along the way. Once you enter scaling, things become more complicated. Here the biggest failure mode is becoming your own ...Read More

Prioritization is hardest and most important problem to solve when you are Product Manager #1 in a company. Because in early stage startups, it can be really choatic with changing needs and market conditions, I don't recommend following RICE or any other standard prioritization framework. In my opinion, Product Manager with most product sense will succeed the most here. Product sense is a combination of deep understanding of jobs-to-be-done for users, continuous user interviews and deep market k ...Read More

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 / expectations are at the forefront of any framework.  With my teams, I sometimes like to use a graph, where one of the axes represents customer impact (how much does this product or feature postively improve their lives?) and the other maps effort or investment. That will give you an easy 2x2 where there is ...Read More

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, the framework may not change much regardless if you are the first or 10th PM at a company. In fact, it may be a bit more straightforward as a solo PM since the prioritized list of needs and deliverables is a direct negotiation between you, stakeholders and your delivery team(s). As the product organi ...Read More

Start by identifying the core lever you need to move. For a B2B product, this might be new customer acquisition. For B2C, it could be daily or weekly usage metrics (e.g., WAU/MAU). Also document your hypotheses about other metrics you want to influence. Create your idea backlog by triangulating between leadership priorities, customer requests, and market gaps. Collaborate with Engineering, Design, Data Analytics, and Marketing/Sales teams to brainstorm these ideas. Implement RICE scoring (Reach, ...Read More

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 2x2 matrix (High effort/high impact, low effort/low impact, etc). This can help cut through the noise as a good first step, but isn't the only thing you should be considering. Other lens I apply are things like: Customer - how many customers does this serve? VIP customers? Is this a want or a need? T ...Read More

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 company, or a new product at an existing company, chances are you're finding product-market fit. When thinking about prioritizing work in that context, you need to be crystal clear on the metrics that matter, and laser focused on moving them.  In my experience, developing and testing hypotheses is a gre ...Read More

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 new product areas a company has never pursued before. There are a few mechanisms/processes I would establish as a first priority:  1. Establish a feedback loop with the top customers, internal users, and market analysts (product mgt execution) 2. Identify the top 1 or 2 business metrics you are look ...Read More

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 for prioritizing needs and deliverables. This framework should take into account the company's overall goals and objectives, as well as the needs and wants of your customers and stakeholders.  There are a number of prioritization frameworks available with RICE, Value versus Effort, and Kano Model bei ...Read More

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 prototype / MVP even before attempting to build a fully functional product - It is always important to be able to showcase your product and always be demo ready - Else we run the risk of being dismissed as vapourware It's easy to get carried away by all the great ideas, Identify your core product USPs earl ...Read More

When I search the internet for "Product management prioritization frameworks" I get back 3.2M results so the options are nearly limitless of what to choose. MoSCoW, RICE, Value vs. Effort, Kano, etc. find a method that makes sense to you and the data is mostly available to apply to the framework. Now comes the hard part, sharing that list. Start with some friendly faces, share the context of what you knew for sure, what you had a good idea about and what you totally made up to find out where you ...Read More

Establish a Framework: Establish a framework that works for the product and company stage. Simplicity is key. Organize requirements using a straightforward framework like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have) or a Value vs. Effort matrix. Then, create a prioritized list by ordering requirements based on customer value, business value, or team voting. Prioritization Goals: Deliver Value/Early Wins: Focus on demonstrating the value of product management. Prioritize and execute on ...Read More

Great question, and I'll make some assumptions before I answer. I'll assume that the PM function is new but that there is an engineering and design team already established at the company.  In this case, my first goal would be to find out what is being built and how well it resonates with the target market. The primary objective would be to avoid wasting engineering rescources by not knowing what to build. If the engineering rescources are occupied with high value work, I'd move on to my second ...Read More

When you are the first product manager, it usually means the company is in the early stage or is a more grown startup. The framework guidelines I suggest to follow would be: Define Product Strategy and Build Roadmap: Define the product strategy and vision. Once you have that, set goals that are aligned with the company's goals. Then, start building your roadmap, prioritizing features that align with your goals and are based on customer needs and the market. MVP Approach: Identify the core featur ...Read More