Katherine Man

I’ve held roles as both platform and non-platform product managers and I’d say being a platform product manager is definitely the most challenging but rewarding. The most challenging part is your solutions are more abstract and less obvious. Instead of building solutions directly for customers, you’re buildings tools for customers to build the solutions themselves. Does your head hurt yet? Let me give an example.  Let’s say you’re trying to let customers customize the way their HubSpot UI looks. ...Read More

The ideal product manager to engineer ratio can vary from company to company and even team to team, but it usually depends on the company size, product complexity, the skill level of the engineers, and the role scope of the product manager. A general rule of thumb is 1 product manager for every 5-10 engineers. 1:5 - This is common in startups or small teams where the product manager may need to be in the details. 1:10 - As the team and company grows, a product manager may manage larger engineeri ...Read More

Platform metrics will vary depending on who your users are (internal vs. external) and the project specifically. They are different from normal product management in that the focus tends to be on scaling rather than generated revenue since it can be difficult to measure that direct impact. Here are some metrics that my teams focus on: Adoption/usage: Since customers are building with your tools, adoption/usage is usually the main metric you track. How many customers have built a solution? Are th ...Read More

It’s true that platform teams serve many different types of users. I like to define the platform mission as “building tools for customers, developers, and internal teams to extend the product in a self-service way.” While you do need to understand different personas, at the end of the day, all of your users are still united in trying to solve for the end customer. With that lens in mind, user feedback is still driving priorities. The only difference is it’s coming from multiple sources: Customer ...Read More

Alignment can be a challenge for platform product managers since you usually have more than the average number of internal stakeholders and increased cross-team dependencies to get your work done. At best you have the potential to have a large scale impact, at worst your projects get blocked by another team. That’s why it’s critical to gain alignment across the broader platform. When striving for cross-team alignment, I always tell my teams to think in ‘spheres of influence:’ Start with your imm ...Read More

Platform product management works with many of the same departments as other product teams along with a few additional stakeholders on the developer side: Product marketing: Helps with messaging new features to both internal teams and external customers. Often you collaborate on release notices together. Go-to-market: Collaborate on pricing and packaging of features, creating enablement materials for internal teams, understanding the broader market, and advising on how to position features in th ...Read More

Product managers should partner closely with engineers on building a product roadmap so that everyone is bought into the roadmap and avoids the need for slipping in rogue features. I would say this sounds like a lack of trust between product and engineering. Here are a few suggestions of how to rebuild trust: Collaborate early and often on a roadmap with engineers and UX to make sure the entire team is bought into the plan. Encourage suggestions from engineers so that they have a voice. Establis ...Read More

I would describe my product development philosophy as "agile lite," meaning there is some structure but the order of operations can change based on new learnings that arise. The entire product team (product manager, UX designer, and engineers) should be involved at every stage, but different roles will play a leading role depending on the stage. Here are the stages I go through: Identify the problem: Product manager identifies the top customer problems to solve. Conduct user research: Product ma ...Read More

When you lack resourcing whether it's engineering, design, or even product, it's critical to practice ruthless prioritization and managing expectations. Realistically there is only so much you can get done given the resources you have, so you need to work with your team to define what is within scope for a certain timeline. Once you have that, you need to align and set expectations with stakeholders and leadership. If they push you to do more, you can ask what they're willing to trade off to do ...Read More