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When joining a new team as a product manager, is it better to have the right soft skills and have to learn the hard skills of the job? Or vice versa?

1 Answer

Milena Krasteva

Walmart Sr Director II, Product Management - Marketing Technology • June 10

This reminds me of an interview question I got a very long time ago: "Is it better to have a bad team or a bad manager". In both cases, you'd rather not find yourself in either extreme. In both cases, there is no right or wrong answer and a lot depends on additional circumstances and assumptions.......Read More

951 Views

What is your favorite product management interview question and the best answer you've heard?

7 Answers

Anton Kravchenko

Carta Director of Product Management • February 4

My favorite interview question was asked by a hiring manager ~8 years ago when I interviewed for an Associate PM position at MuleSoft. I was asked the following: "Imagine humans decided to take the moon and put it through a giant chopper/grinder. The mass that comes out of the chopper is being d......Read More

452 Views

Should product management decisions be data-driven or more so data-informed? Should Product Managers lead with intuition and use data to back up their assumptions?

4 Answers

Mamuna Oyofo, MBA

Shopify VP of Product • February 9

There is definitely a fine line here. Every decision cannot be data driven and will likely be informed to some extent BUT part of the excitment of product management is leaning on that intuition. In some cases, you will have data to back up your assumptions and in others you will not. Every situa......Read More

515 Views

What metrics do you use to justify a pay raise?

4 Answers

Anton Kravchenko

Carta Director of Product Management • February 4

It's less about metrics and more about the outcomes you are creating for the business. For example, you might bring 10,000 new users or improve a UX for a specific feature -- but what matters at the end of the day is how you impacted the business. Has any of that made the business grow faster or ......Read More

333 Views

There are different frameworks to prioritize the product backlog. How practical is the use of such frameworks? How to manage top management expectations?

3 Answers

Natalia Baryshnikova

Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Agility • February 17

Ultimately, prioritization comes down to a chain of decisions. Regardless of the framework that you use, the question I see folks overlooking a lot is "who is the right person to make this decision". Is that you, the PM? Is that your manager? Or maybe, if the work relates to security vulnerabilit......Read More

522 Views

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

17 Answers

Tamar Hadar

The Knot Worldwide Senior Director of Product • February 3

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 vi......Read More

2907 Views

I’m the first PM hire in my company. What advice would you give to someone tasked with establishing this function in an existing business structure?

6 Answers

Virgilia Kaur Pruthi (she/her)

Microsoft Principal PM Manager / Product Leader • February 1

Wonderful, congrats! Get into a rhythm by understanding the business/company goals. Then understand how the tech works (look at the customer/user interface first and then make sure you understand how the system behind the UI works). Begin collecting data in a transparent way and share your learn......Read More

430 Views

What is an important KPI that you see product teams completely missing?

7 Answers

Virgilia Kaur Pruthi (she/her)

Microsoft Principal PM Manager / Product Leader • February 1

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 the success metrics (OKRs, KPIs) of the business itself is critical to knowing if you are invest......Read More

459 Views

What metrics do ML product teams look at to define success? Which do you find to be the most important?

5 Answers

Savita Kini

Cisco Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI • March 4

Metrics are an interesting question. This really depends on the type of product we are building that leverages ML. Since ML can be use for example in electronic records, sales workflows, computer vision type use cases or speech / audio use cases some of which I am familiar with -- we can break it......Read More

289 Views

What level of data and analytics competencies are needed for a Technical PM?

2 Answers

Navin Ganeshan

Amazon Head of Driver Products, Amazon Relay • June 1

To be blunt, I think they are critical. Data is the currency for any decision-making, and analytical competencies are exactly what empower product managers, technical or otherwise. For technical PMs, there is also an expectation of data self-sufficiency where they are not as dependent on BI or ot......Read More

649 Views