Milena Krasteva

Even when feedback seems completely unfair, there may be some small nugget to pay attention to. So, in general don't dismiss the feedback without some introspection. Giving objective feedback is actually hard to do; most people can't distinguish between whether it is their own pet peeves that are...more

The two disciplines are very different, despite some intersections on go-to-market, outbound communications, and occasional blurred lines between the roles in some companies regarding strategy and customer requirements. Early on in my career I had the opportunity to simultaneously work in both fu...more

It seems all too easy to NOT get roadmap buy-in. Sometimes, it can feel like the default answer is always "No" at first, and despite all the work you have done, you are getting sent back to the drawing board. Some things that help, not in any particular order: * Go as wide as possible early ...more

I'd love to answer this in a slightly different way: The single most important skill, that cannot be rated highly enough is Communication. Many other soft skills are fundamentally still rooted in or are dependent on communication.  Nuanced aspects of communication also matter: * adapting com...more

Fairly easily potentially, compared to transitioning from other less-related fields. Product Management is as much art as it is discipline or science. Leveraging technical expertise related to the same or adjacent PM area helps. Some job descriptions will even require engineering experience or ar...more

This reminds me of an interview question I got a very long time ago: "Is it better to have a bad team or a bad manager". In both cases, you'd rather not find yourself in either extreme. In both cases, there is no right or wrong answer and a lot depends on additional circumstances and assumptions....more

Many common mistakes stem from haste without deep knowledge and mindless GSDing. * Not thinking through the problem statement fully or not knowing enough about the domain and becoming married to 1 solution - often yours. * Taking it personally when told that something is missing from your s...more

1:10 is what has been used as a rule of thumb in my experience. A PM wears many hats. If you don't have a program manager (pgm/tpm) 30% - 40% of the PM's time may be going into project management activities and you may need an extra PM (or your first TPM) You may be supplementing other functions ...more

If your exec team has not articulated a credible product strategy it could be that they don't know how or they feel that they cannot invest at this time due to much bigger near term issues or constraints. Consider what that might be saying about the viability of the company either way, and a pote...more

While it may be tempting to get sucked into feature by feature wars and spar through marketing communications it will not yield much for whoever (you or the competito) lacks sources of Sustainable Competitive Advantage. see related answer on what those are, not to be confused with Competitive Adv...more