What are the roles that PMM play during a launch at your organization?

Product marketers need to drive alignment across four key areas to ensure successful launches.

1. First, they must establish the right strategy - ensuring people understand why we're building and launching this product.

2. Second, they need to create the right structure with clear roles and responsibilities, determining who's driving and who's a passenger. I use the car analogy: many people can be in the car, but only one person has their hands on the wheel.

3. Third, they must implement the right process with regular check-ins and communication, emphasizing that misalignment is normal but needs to be quickly identified and addressed.

4. Finally, they need to foster the right culture of collaboration where people can openly discuss what's working and what isn't. When any of these elements is missing, launches become vulnerable to misalignment.

Product marketers at SurveyMonkey are some of our best cross-functional project managers, a skill learned by necessity.

The discipline of regular check-ins and keeping people aware of progress both asynchronously and in meetings is crucial. Our biggest challenges often come not from strategy or planning misalignment but from dealing with delays. When timelines shift, we have to determine if everything is delayed or just certain components, and whether we can still proceed with parts of the launch. To mitigate this, we've started tying bigger launches to major events or go-to-market moments, which forces alignment around timing. For example, if we're hosting a product keynote at an upcoming customer event, the product must be demo-ready by then. This creates rigor and a forcing function that helps ensure product teams prioritize accordingly, even if it means rearranging resources.

Product marketers must be strong project managers who bring everyone together and drive toward outcomes.

I always start with a kickoff meeting where everyone aligns on goals, dates, roles, responsibilities, and actions to be delivered. This prevents misalignment by getting everyone on the same page from the beginning. In today's environment where asynchronous communication is common, I insist on structured updates in project channels rather than just DMs. Walking through the project board regularly isn't about checking work but about problem-solving together. It's okay for team members to flag issues as yellow or red so we can address blockers. This discipline ensures effective collaboration. Much of my professional success comes from how I bring people together and drive outcomes - it's an underrated skill that junior team members should develop rather than trying to outsource.