How directive are you with setting timelines?

When it comes to setting timelines, I try to be as directive as possible—while still leaving space for adjustments and alternative proposals. It’s a bit like a negotiation.  ;-) You need to put a stake in the ground, but stay open to input. Starting with a clear stake in the ground is important because, as the GTM lead, you often have the broadest view of cross-team dependencies. For example, you might know that a product milestone or campaign deliverable has to align with a customer event or la ...Read More

I like to be specific, but reasonable when setting timelines. This is true for cross functional stakeholders as well as my own team. I find that everything tends to work more smoothly when folks understand both the context of the ask as well as the expectations from each individual or team. Specific ensures that everyone is clear on the ask and understands the expectation. You don't want to have ambiguity when there are dependencies involved. And when is there ever a project that doesn't have de ...Read More

In my experience, you have to be very direct in setting timelines (with specificity in terms of exact day of the week) and also open to understanding constraints that might exist, so you can set the right expectations with the appropriate stakeholders. This, of course, also depends on the situation. Product launches when are 6+months away may have a more nuanced date such as "second week in June" but the closer you get, the more precise you have to be (e.g. June 15) and in many cases when there ...Read More

Very. I work with my executives to identify when we think it's reasonable to launch (whatever it is—a product, content, a new positioning narrative, etc), and when that date is set, it's PMM's job to set the waterfall of activities before that. We can't control whether things slip but it's out job to identify the dependencies, and keep reminding folks of the goal. In some organizations you might be #blessed with a project manager. That person can help you keep meeting cadence, push on deliverabl ...Read More

I am very directive in clearly setting a deliverable date. This is because there are often clear expectations that has been set with management or are part of the broader business goals. Once that is clearly established, I ask teams to come up with their work back plan on how they're going to deliver their part of the overall program. In fact, it's a bit of an inside joke that I'm always asking, what's your work back plan? A work back plan, in my mind, is really important because it's the planni ...Read More

Generally speaking, when I was first starting out within Product Marketing, I found it difficult to be overly focused on timelines. In many cases, PMM isn't like Growth Marketing. PMM has no set programs, field events etc. that have stark deadlines. But there are Product Launches... Now, I feel very different about this. Timelines are important because they drive focus and prioritization. They drive accountability. One way to improve PMM operationalization is to introduce what I call PMM content ...Read More