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Building a Product Management Team

If you were starting out in a rapidly growing company would you start by embedding some best practice and then start to build out a team or start by building a small but mighty team and tackle it as a group?

4 Answers

Mike Flouton

GitLab VP, Product • May 4

My bias is always to start building a small but mighty team of A players. A players will make magic happen despite a lack of process. Process is helpful in larger organizations (and to help get more production out of less skilled players), so put more process in as you grow and things get more co......Read More

327 Views

What is a good product manager to engineer ratio to maintain as you scale?

3 Answers

Deepak Mukunthu

Salesforce Senior Director of Product, Generative AI Platform (Einstein GPT) • February 23

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 development process, company culture, and resources available. However, a common rule of thumb is to a......Read More

658 Views

How do you communicate product management updates and activities to the rest of the company?

10 Answers

Rupali Jain

Optimizely Chief Product Officer • March 2

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 to the company. A recording should be available at all times, as well as part of the sa......Read More

703 Views

If your PM team has only one or two people responsible for covering multiple products with complex features, how would you recommend dividing the workload in the short-term so as best to support long-term growth and expansion of the team?

5 Answers

Zeeshan Qamruddin

HubSpot Senior Director of Product Management, Flywheel • April 12

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 leverage from innovation?" There are certain products that simply need to work, and that have a......Read More

1323 Views

When is it appropriate or feasible to have multiple Product Managers at different levels (PM, SPM, PPM) within a team/squad, without altering the size of the engineering team?

1 Answer

Roshni Jain

Volley Head of Product/VP • November 23

There are only particular instances when, in my experience, it can make sense to have multiple product managers within a team. If your engineering structure is a squad/pod model where there is a dedicated set of engineers along on a core mission with clear ownership, I would most typically have 1......Read More

624 Views

How do you think about shared KPI’s with your engineering team? And what are ones that product teams often miss?

7 Answers

Virgilia Kaur Pruthi (she/her)

Expedia Group Senior Director of Product, Head of Trust and Safety • February 1

Product teams in my opinion consist of product, engineering, and design (at a minimum). With that said, product KPIs should always be shared with engineering since what they are building essentially impacts the KPIs of the product in question. All the work that product teams do should always buil......Read More

628 Views

How do you effectively split your attention between contributing individually and coaching your PM's? Do these two priorities ever conflict with each other?

4 Answers

Melissa Ushakov

GitLab Group Manager, Product Management • March 8

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 deprioritize things to ensure I have enough time to support my team. It's important to have open commun......Read More

991 Views

What is your advice for creating and/or improving the product management process when joining a small but growing team? Particularly for a small company with no or little structure?

5 Answers

Rosa Villegas

Zynga Senior Director of Product, Central Technology • August 3

Be adaptable to change - don't be afraid to try different things or change a process that is no longer working for the team. For a team that is growing quickly oftentimes process gets ignored because the team is so focused on delivering/executing that they feel process may slow them down. In some......Read More

906 Views

How have you dealt with possible overlaps between Product Managers, Business Owners and Marketing?

I was just reading an article by Marty Cagan about the scenario of Business Owners "versus" Product Managers, especially for companies using a matrix organization. Now, I'm living in a similar situation, and not only in the case of Business Owners, but it seems that depending on the side of the organization, the scope of Product Managers is divided more than expected, causing various types of issues. So, I'm curious if other companies, big or small, have also had to deal with this. Here's the link to the article: https://www.svpg.com/product-managers-vs-business-owners/

1 Answer

Casey Flinn

Realtor.com Sr. Director, Product Operations • July 27

Ah yes, I remember this article :) I think the key point Marty makes is "Things go wrong when these two roles are not clearly defined." There are two aspects of "defined" to work out here. From a management and org structure perspective, there needs to be definition of who is accountable for what......Read More

435 Views

How do you approach building a well rounded product team?

5 Answers

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • December 8

A well-rounded product team requires three main features: * Diverse composition * Top talent in the domain * Rigorous product management processes Diverse talent can be accomplished by hiring with a specific schedule of product manager you want to hire. This can mean location diversity gende......Read More

798 Views

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