How does your product marketing team work with the product/engineering team to best understand the pipeline of product releases?

Great question!

First off, it's mostly with the PM team, less so with Eng.

The PM<>PMM relationship has to be symbotic. I typically like mapping a PMM to a Group PM (managing several individual PMs), and these "pods" then have a weekly cadence and do a global readout of activities, metrics, impact, lookback and lookahead each month.

At Clari, we defined a pretty robust "13-week cadence" for the PM<>PMM interlock, made of recurring meetings like

• PM<>PMM 1:1 (weekly)

• Metrics read out (monthly)

• External roadmap work (monthly) & refresh (quarterly)

• Voice of the Market (monthly)

• etc.

Think about YOUR cadence. It works!

When it comes to understanding product pipeline, the most effective thing I've done as a PMM leader is to nurture great relationships with our Product Management leads. We have a ratio of 1 PMM to every 3-4 PMs, with varying levels of experience in these functions collaborating, so at the leadership level we need to be able to partner well and have open conversations about what's working and what's not so that we can consolidate product schedules and remove roadblocks that might prevent us from having visibility into what's coming and when. If my team isn't getting what they need from their product-side contacts (or vice versa), we need to work together to resolve it and be above a lot of the product/marketing animosity that can develop in other organizations.

At a tactical level, my team manages both our customer-facing roadmap assets and an internal go-to-market calendar that we update in line with our twice-yearly planning cycles, and maintain in-between as things change through the course of development. These are great resources that enable our Sales and Marketing teams, respectively, but also provide a good forcing function for regular roadmap-related collaboration between Product and PMM teams to ensure accuracy of our plans. I’ll typically collaborate directly with Product Management leadership on these deliverables, and let them bring in their team members as necessary to keep us accurate. We also maintain a partner map of the PMs, PMMs, Engineers, and Designers that typically work together (based on feature areas) that helps define the executional teams meeting on a regular basis.

On the Product side, the PM team has started doing a quarterly internal "roadmap roadshow" that highlights recent releases and previews what's coming, which is yet another opportunity to provide full-company visibility into our product plans.

That’s not to say that we’re perfect: product plans and timelines change, people come and go, and new ideas or priorities come up between planning cycles. One of the ways I’m working to improve things is through more formal alignment of our product development and GTM processes with ideas like assigning PMMs as soon as roadmap tickets are created, joint acknowledgement at key development milestones (i.e. everyone has seen and agrees to final product requirements), and ensuring experimentation timelines are fully estimated and baked into delivery timelines. I'm convinced that steps like this can go a long way toward creating a more visible and accurate pipeline into PMM without adding a lot of red tape.

It's all about strong, ongoing relationships with our product managers. I make it a point to meet weekly with my product partner to discuss the latest updates from both the product and GTM perspectives. Then, we hold bi-weekly meetings with the larger PMM and PM teams to review the roadmap. These lead up to a comprehensive monthly roadmap review, ensuring we're all on the same page and that our sales team is informed about any changes.

We follow a cadence of reviewing releases for the upcoming quarter at midpoint of the current quarter. Additionally, for all releases identified by product marketing as Tier 1 and Tier 2, a comprehensive NPI process kicks in to ensure cross functional alignment.

Product marketers, PMs, and Engineering are like the three legs of a stool—each playing a crucial role in keeping business and product stable. Here’s how we stay in sync:

• Bi-annual Roadmap Planning: PMMs act as key contributors and influencers in shaping the roadmap.

• Monthly PM/PMM Syncs: We align on upcoming innovations, target audiences, and the pain points these capabilities will address.

• Weekly Leadership Syncs: These meetings focus on aligning strategic product priorities.

• Monthly Cross-functional Syncs: Regular touchpoints across PM, PMM, and Engineering teams ensure we’re all on the same page.