Rupali Jain

While there are different specific metrics that marketing and product teams track for product launches, what's critical is the alignment between the two and agreement on the metrics to track prior to the launch. Some examples of metrics tracked by each team: * Product team: Satisfaction, usage by users and individual accounts, full funnel from a user trying the feature to actually using it * Marketing team: % of reps enabled on the new product, leads generated, competitive win rate changes * Metrics that require deep partnership: Number of customer stories/references for the capability

I'm going to suggest a few processes, but please do scale each process to the size of the organization. Treat your processes like you treat your product - establish 2-3 internal customer problems that are actually worth solving, and solve them with an MVP of a process and iterate as you learn - don't try to introduce everything at once. * Quarterly priorities: Getting into the habit early of writing down the plan for the quarter is a good muscle to build early in establishing the PM discipline even with only a handful of PMs. Focus on articulating the big bets for that quarter and the value delivered, written in language that peers and leaders can understand. A key aspect of this is establishing OKRs each quarter to ensure alignment across the team, and cross functionally to drive product and business success. Incidentally WorkBoard is an awesome tool to enable this * Specs: Writing things down avoids late churn. It allows articulating the why and the what for a feature. Engineering can start work in parallel with some details getting ironed out (not a waterfall process), but the why and success metrics should be clear up front * Design / Experience walkthroughs: Notice I'm not calling these reviews. Reviews indicate a level of red-tape that is not necessary on smaller teams, but it's still critical to get feedback early from stakeholders, leaders and customers, so start doing design walkthroughs earlier rather than later, and you can avoid major churn later in the product development cycle Team meeting: Reserve some time each week (PM only or PM+Design depending on team size) to look at the tactical work happening, what's coming up, concerns/help needed as well as to celebrate small and large achievements. As PMs we often forget to celebrate the good, so make space for this.

The answer really depends on the size and scope of the idea. Making a case for a big idea is a mix of storytelling and hard facts. Here's my approach 1. Start with the Story: Describe the problem your breakthrough idea tackles. Paint a vivid picture of why it's a big deal—make it relatable, when possible tell it in the voice of a real customer. This step is key and often skipped, but it's the heart of your case. As you get further in the process, visualize this story with design mocks, trust me, this is time well spent 2. Size the problem: Use interviews, data, and market research to show how big the problem is. Highlight those pain points and how the idea uniquely addresses these needs 3. Value Proposition: Clearly outline the value the product will bring. How will it differentiate from existing solutions? How will it align with the company's strategic objectives? What unique benefits will it offer to customers? Quantify the benefit—more money, happy customers, or a bigger slice of the market.. 4. Executive Summary: Summarize the entire business case in a concise and compelling manner on one page. I cannot tell you how many times people skip this necessary step, don't be that person. After pulling the initial business case together, the work is still not done. As follow ups, you may ned financial projections, risk assessment, a prototype, a resource ask, project plan and more. Be prepared to put in the work.

The simple answer is to hire PMs :) . That said, I'm assuming you are asking more of how to structure the team to scale to the needs of the organization as you hire * Define the discipline: Hire PMs that align with your definition of product management. You'll also need to setup the discipline (see my answer on establishing the function) * Enable each PM to own their area of the product or business end to end as you set up the team. This is crucial. Often this means aligning PMs to specific personas or specific products that your company has. I personally tend to avoid aligning an organization to the technology pieces, instead focusing on the end to end experience across all layers of the stack, so the value delivered is clear. * Keep the team at an appropriate size: I like to see PM teams run lean. This forces good prioritization and focus and prevents slicing the areas too much. That said, lean does not mean stretching PMs so thin that they have no time to think ahead and become only reactive. * Don't forget about design: Also start investing in the design organization so you keep the PM and design teams in balance.

Whether you are the first hire or an early leadership hire that is trying to establish the product management function, the most important aspect is to show value. Beyond that, there are a few critical aspects of setting up the function * Align with the CEO/Leadership team: You hopefully established with the leadership team/CEO how they define the role and what they wanted from you as the first PM hire before you took the job. If you didn’t, its still not too late. Do have a conversation around this quickly so you can get aligned. This is a necessary prerequisite to some of the other activities that you will do * Define the function and its role: Explicitly define what the PM role does and does not cover. Having a definition in place will prevent the role from turning into a "glue" function i.e. pick up the slack that is not covered by other roles. Establish that the role of the PM is to define the why and the what, and the how will be in collaboration with engineering. * Create the criteria for product success: This may often be defined as the northstar metric. Also show progress towards this and clearly show the correlation between the criteria and the overall business. * Establish a clear connection to the customer: As you define the role, establish a way to talk with customers to start getting signal. Nothing gives you and other PMs on the team more credibility than using examples of customers that would use your features or are requesting them (this applies primarily in B2B) * Use Wins to establish value of the role with stakeholders and peers: Don't underestimate that establishing the role will take time. Ensure you spend time with stakeholders, your peers and the broader organization. Instead of just focusing on defining the role with them, use every "win" that you have to establish the value the role creates. And finally, build out your team ensuring that you focus on hiring PMs that excel at the role as you have defined it and enable them to succeed!

There are different types of updates that need to be communicated to the rest of the company and how those get communicated is different * Vision/Roadmap: At least annually, live at the annual kickoff to the company. A recording should be available at all times, as well as part of the sales enablement and onboarding materials. A vision is high level and helps internal teams get excited about our direction and share that excitement with prospects and customers * Major launches: Major launches typically are for a new product launch or new category of capabilities. These involve the most work to communicate across the company and to customers including press releases, blog posts, analyst updates, demos at conferences, webinars, internal enablement, customer references and more. * Minor launches / Features: These should be grouped into coherent themes or focus areas to ensure the value of each feature is amplified. A mistake that a lot of product teams make is to trickle out each feature individually without articulating a larger value proposition, which makes it difficult for the rest of the company, especially customer facing teams, to see the forest from the trees. The onus is on the PM + PMM to articulate the value in a way that everyone in the company understands and can convey to customers and prospects. These may not include all the activities listed for major launches but a subset * Customer asks: In B2B companies, this is an important aspect of what customer facing teams look for from the PM. The number of these tend to grow non linearly with the size of the PM team, and hence hard to stay on top of. A good way is to set expectations for what set of these will get updated and at what frequency (e.g. top 50 updated every month etc..). And it's also important to avoid focusing only on a small handful of the largest customers, but balance with the needs common across a larger base of customers.

Balancing big bets and incremental improvements on a product roadmap is essential for long-term success. I believe in a strategic blend that aligns with the company vision, market demands and lifecycle of the product By definition "Big Bets" are are game-changers, high-impact initiatives that could reshape the market and/or your company's position. They're risky but offer huge rewards. Then there are the "Small Wins"—those little tweaks that make the product smoother, fix annoyances, and keep users happy. They're the glue that keeps customers coming back. These are game-changers, the wildcards that could reshape everything. They're risky but offer huge rewards. Then there are the small wins—those little tweaks that make the product smoother, fix annoyances, and keep users happy. They're the glue that keeps customers coming back Most times, it's a balancing act. Sometimes, though, you might lean more toward one or the other. When to pick what: * Early stages of product | New product launch: In the early stages or during major product overhauls, big bets might dominate the roadmap to establish a competitive edge or enter new markets. As the product matures, you might pivot toward incremental improvements to solidify market position. * High Churn: If your churn rate is high, there is often no silver lining. Buckling down and listening to user feedback and analyzing data drives product investments i.e. more emphasis on incremental changes. * Typical: I tend to think about a portfolio of investments that include 2-3 big rocks, 3-5 medium rocks and several small rocks. The allocation of these might differ and the payoff duration for the bets also differs - smaller rocks tend to pay off small in the short term where as bigger bets pay off bigger but over a longer period of time - not that different from a financial portfolio. The company's risk appetite affects this balance as well. Ultimately, achieving the right balance is about maximizing the long-term vision while addressing immediate needs. It's a moving target that needs tweaking. It's worth revisiting this mix every quarter, to keep your product investments aligned with the needs of the business

Staying updated on emerging trends and technologies is important for ensuring that products remain competitive and relevant in the market. A caution however is to ensure that I spend more time understanding customer needs than simply focusing on the broad market trends. i.e. in a hypothetical world if I could only choose one, I would choose to focus on understanding customer needs. In reality its a 70/30 split on customer needs vs. market focus. A simple trick that I use to do this is to have each leader on my team share a sentence or two on what is happening externally within their space - this information from my teams as part of our weekly leadership meeting allows us all to collectively get smarter about trends than we would individually. A few different sources of information that feed the continuous learning cycle for product leaders can include 1. Market Research and Broader Tech Trends: This can include analyzing competitor products, market reports, industry publications, blogs, and customer feedback. 2. Collaboration with R&D and Innovation Teams: A lot of the best ideas often come from smart people in the organization and keeping an eye out for those and making space to be able to listen for those is important to see potential breakthroughs that could impact our products. 3. Experimentation and Piloting: I encourage a culture of experimentation within the company, allowing us to pilot new technologies or features to gauge their potential impact on our products. It helps that I now work at a company where our products themselves drive to a test and learn approach (https://www.optimizely.com/). Learn from both successes and failures. 4. Networking: Earlier in my career, I underutilized networking as a source of information to stay up to date on emerging trends. I try to connect with other product leaders and executives at our customers to understand how they run their business and what trends they are seeing. This exchange of information offers diverse perspectives and invaluable early insights into emerging trends.

To generate new product ideas, get a cross functional mix of folks who know their stuff about your business and customers. Then, dive in to a brainstorm using Jobs-to-Be-Done or Design Thinking—these methods are top-notch for brainstorming. There are different flavors to this, but I'm not prescriptive on how exactly to run the brainstorm, as most approaches I’ve seen in the product world tend to result in similar outcomes. Now, when it comes to picking winners, I’ve got a clear framework Opportunity: Check out the TAM (that's total addressable market) and what customers really want and have asked you for i.e. customer demand signal. Ability to Execute: This is our secret sauce. What makes us stand out? Our assets, tech skills—our special edge. Think talent, tech, and how close we are to our existing users. Its always easier to sell new product to existing users than creating a new product and finding new users for it. Even if both Opportunity and Ability look promising, ask the big question: "Why now?" making sure that you are making the best use of your available resources to take advantage of opportunities ahead of you. And don't forget you can go organic (build in house) or inorganic (acquisition) to address the opportunity.

I firmly believe that companies need to democratize sourcing of breakthrough ideas across the organization. No single "innovation" team/squad should be designated to create the ideas. Fostering an environment conducive to creativity, exploration, and risk-taking is critical to democratize innovation. 1. Company Culture: A culture that encourages and rewards experimentation, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking is vital. When employees feel empowered to take risks and explore new ideas without fear of failure, it fuels innovation. Risk taking can and must exist in combination with commitments to achieve set goals and the two don't have to be at odds with each other. 2. User centric approach with collaboration: Innovation often emerges at the intersections of different disciplines coming together to ideate on customer problems. Prioritizing the understanding of user needs and pain points drives innovation. Companies that deeply empathize with their users and involve them in the development process tend to create products that resonate more effectively. Collaboration between teams from diverse backgrounds—engineering, design, product, marketing, etc.—can spark innovative solutions. 3. Leadership Support: Strong leadership that prioritizes and champions innovation sets the tone for the entire company. When leaders actively support and allocate resources to innovative initiatives or celebrate grass roots innovation, it encourages employees to think creatively and take calculated risks.