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Establishing Product Management

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 2

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

2856 Views

As a product manager, what are the make-or-break things for you when interviewing a potential next product manager for your team?

6 Answers

Mckenzie Lock

Netflix Director of Product • August 4

The candidate must “spike” (“8/10” or higher) in all of these areas, in order of importance: 1. Critical Thinking Given how many decisions and complex problems are thrown at PMs, this the #1 most important attribute I screen for. They don’t need to be a rocket scientist (top 0.5% of populati......Read More

3496 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?

4 Answers

Rosa Villegas

Zynga Senior Director of Product, Central Technology • August 2

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

440 Views

How do you coordinate and work cross functionally with the product marketing team to create commonly shared KPIs?

2 Answers

Becky Trevino

Snow Software Executive Vice President Products • October 26

Great question. To create a powerful partnership between Product Marketing (PMM) and Product Management (PM) it's essential for you to have a common set of KPIs that help you understand whether your work is generating the intended results. Warning: For this to work best, it's great for th......Read More

557 Views

How do you retain good talent, especially when PM roles are in such high demand across the industry?

3 Answers

Adrianne Wang Martinson

Airbnb Head of Product, China Platform • May 12

There is no doubt that retaining top talent is critical to any organization not only because of the value top talent brings, but also because it takes time to find and ramp up a new hire. While establishing a new team, hiring the right person who is a good fit for the team and the company contrib......Read More

559 Views

What are the challenges you have encountered establishing the product management function in product areas that do not have it？

4 Answers

Adrianne Wang Martinson

Airbnb Head of Product, China Platform • May 12

One challenge I encountered as the product lead for a platform team was to identify the product management needs for some of the relatively technical product areas, such as Machine Learning and APIs. I had to justify these needs as many leaders and stakeholders felt that an eng manager or technic......Read More

462 Views

How do you think about your first 30/60/90 day goals when coming in as the Head of Product Management in a startup that didn't have product management before?

3 Answers

Adrianne Wang Martinson

Airbnb Head of Product, China Platform • May 12

The first product manager of a startup plays a crucial role as one of the foundational members. S/he not only needs to quickly lay the product strategy, create short and long term roadmaps, and build development processes, but also potentially extend responsibilities wherever help is needed, incl......Read More

521 Views

Our engineering team has been building features based on ideas, and I’m the first PM. How do I change the culture and help them buy into being customer focused?

3 Answers

Clara Lee

Automattic VP, Product & Operations (WooCommerce) • March 24

One way to get Engineering excited about customer focus is to invite them to listen in on interviews. We post all customer interviews on a shared calendar and use webinar settings that ensure observers hopping on / off are not disruptive to the participant or moderator. We also run an internal ba......Read More

296 Views

How do you make design more strategic so they are not just making what engineers build look good, but are more involve up front in the product development process?

1 Answer

Rosa Villegas

Zynga Senior Director of Product, Central Technology • August 2

This is a really interesting question! I think one really great way of doing this is to engage design in understanding the problem you are trying to solve, not just the solution. Oftentimes, we jump straight to execution without always understanding the full customer journey or the vision for the......Read More

411 Views

Question about org structures - what does your product team org structure look like?

4 Answers

Clara Lee

Automattic VP, Product & Operations (WooCommerce) • March 24

The product organization at WooCommerce is organized by merchant needs: * Start: Merchant onboarding, from the moment they click the CTA on WooCommerce.com to when their store is ready to sell. * Manage: Back-end and admin tasks including product catalog, order management, and settings. ......Read More

267 Views