AMA: Facebook Former Product Marketing Lead, Measurement, Alex Lobert on Influencing the Product Roadmap

During roadmapping, each product team articulates the "understand needs" for their product area and what we will do with the information to improve the product. This process is often led by the PMM.  From there, we work with the product team to document hypothesis to test based on information we need to know and detail the best approach to prove of disprove those hypothesis.  At that point, it's all about execution and pulling together what we learn in a compelling way.   With regard to systemat ...Read More

The first piece of research is typically WITH the product team - aligning on the key things that we don't know, but need to know to make better product or feature decisions.   Upfront you should lay out that we will try to learn X in order for us to decide whether or not to do Y.  If you do this upfront work, you will have such a better chance of making an impact with your research.  From there, it is all about determining the techniques that will allow you to leran the requisite piece of inform ...Read More

Two mistakes I've seen are: (1) Not getting on the same page as to the goals for the product. If you don't have a shared undersatnding with your PM / your product team as to what you are building and who you are buidling for you are likely going to provide insights that miss the mark. More hurtful than not providing persuasive insights is the risk that the PM / product team will not perceive you as an invested member of the product team. This doesn't mean you have to agree with everything, you m ...Read More

I suggest that you start by taking a step back to really diagnose the problem. Why is it that the team wants to ship so many features?  I try to always assume good intent. With that in mind, the team's actions are probably logical, but there is either mis-alignment on the goal they are optimizing for or the process that will best get to the goal.  Start by getting on the same page about the goal. Do you have the same undersatnding of vision for the future of the product? Are you focused on the s ...Read More

I find it both tricky and exciting to share your product roadmap with customers. I agree it's hard to strike the right balance of specific yet not tie your hands. But also, it's so much fun to show people the exciting ways you plan to help people. Some considerations:  (1) Share the overarching themes as to where you are going. These are typically pretty static and there is little risk to explaining the big things you want to accomplish. Also, these are aspirational and typically fun to talk abo ...Read More

I find diverse experiences to be valuable to product marketing. When I think about research and influencing the roadmap, what is most important to me is: Can this person create a data-driven argument for change? That could be getting a client to adopt a product or changing an internal process.  Are they a strong project leader and can they organize diverse teams to get stuff done? This is a universal skill. Product Marketers often have to tackle ambigious problems and do so with a diverse, cross ...Read More

I find that the key difference between influencing a 3 year product vision vs. features for the next quarter are about the precision / availability of information. The next quarter can typically be assessed pretty clearly. You can talk to customers / do research into what their needs are now and you can often make some predictions about what the benefit will be addressing that need.  When influencing a long-term product strategy, you often have to identify static needs / jobs to be done for a cl ...Read More