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Jacqueline Porter

Director of Product Management, GitLab

About

Strategic product management professional with eight years of product development leadership experience. Offers outstanding talents in SaaS lifecycle processes, change management, risk mitigation, cost modeling including sensitivity analysis by ap......more

Content

What are good OKRs for product management?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • July 26

Objectives and Key Results are meant to encourage cross-functional alignment and collaboration. In product management, it is essential to think of OKRs as a method for prioritizing scope that will help drive the top business KPIs, so that your product roadmap has a built-in mechanism for consider......Read More

1402 Views

How does the importance of a product vision change from 0-1 products to a growing product to a very mature product?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • May 17

Both product lifecycles require a strong long-term vision in order to effectively motivate the team and attract users. Without a strong vision, the 0 to 1 product would not be able to focus on goals/exit criteria for launch while the mature product would get stuck in a routine problem-solving app......Read More

818 Views

How do you think about communicating your roadmap to other teams? What level of detail do people need?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • April 13

I love this question - the audience is everything! I typically have 3 pre-prepared altitudes for my product roadmap which correspond to a specific persona and time horizon 1. Annual Thematic Roadmap with Big Boulder Features - Executives and Buyers of Product: This roadmap has a conceptual, i......Read More

724 Views

What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Manager at a company establishing the function?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • December 7

This is a great question about how to pave the way for two things: product strategy and product management execution. I can see this being applicable to not only first Product hires at start-ups, but new product areas a company has never pursued before. There are a few mechanisms/processes I woul......Read More

691 Views

If you were starting out in a rapidly growing company would you start by embedding some best practice and then start to build out a team or start by building a small but mighty team and tackle it as a group?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • December 7

I am a firm believer that what you need to grow and what you need to scale are two different things - including leadership, team processes, and strategy. This means that I have found it easier to start with a small seed group to build your framework for operating. This has a couple of advantages,......Read More

651 Views

How do you approach building a well rounded product team?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • December 7

A well-rounded product team requires three main features: * Diverse composition * Top talent in the domain * Rigorous product management processes Diverse talent can be accomplished by hiring with a specific schedule of product manager you want to hire. This can mean location diversity gende......Read More

569 Views

How do you determine how much of your roadmap should be focused on existing customers vs prospects?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • April 13

I typically start from what are the annual business targets set by the company to answer this question. Oftentimes, the sales organization, CEO, and professional services organizations have targets around expansion, new logo acquisition, and win rate which will help portion out what the backlog n......Read More

552 Views

When creating a product vision how far in advance do you plan?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • May 17

Love this question! Planning for product vision is usually done in 3 horizons: 10 years, 3 years, and 1 year. The 10-year vision is your guiding, north-star approach that will help guide all other investments overtime. The 3-year vision is a little more actionable and will help shape what the ......Read More

540 Views

When does it make sense to make your roadmap publically available, and what do you include (vs your internal roadmap)

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • April 13

Since I have joined GitLab, where our product roadmaps are publicly accessible (https://about.gitlab.com/direction/), I don't think I will ever go back to internal roadmaps. A public roadmap as a number of benefits: 1. You keep everyone internal to the company aligned and up to date on what t......Read More

532 Views

How do you get autonomy for prioritizing your roadmap when your sales process is very sales heavy, and sales leadership wants to dictate priorities?

Jacqueline Porter

GitLab Director of Product Management • April 13

Well, I often incorporate multiple sensing mechanisms into the roadmap - the field and sales team are definitely an important lever to drive revenue, which really is why product managers exist. So, a tactic I use is to show how much of my engineering capacity is dedicated to enabling revenue,......Read More

516 Views

Credentials & Highlights

Director of Product Management at GitLab