Tom Alterman

The question I love asking every candidate is "tell me the story of the most impactful thing you’ve ever worked on." I like this question for several reasons: It works for every level of experience. For experienced PMs, I’m expecting to hear about a very important product they worked on. For someone with little to no experience, they can tell me a story about something they worked on that was incredibly hard, impactful and meaningful to them without it needing to be related to product work. It a ...Read More

At Asana, we don't use leveled job titles to indicate seniority (e.g. Product Manager III or Senior Director of Marketing), but that doesn't mean that we don't have management structures in place. Instead, we use Success Guides for every team that help employees understand what success looks like for each role level at Asana. Another way we demonstrate ownership and growth in role is Areas of Responsibility, key areas of the business that have one designated owner who is responsible. AoRs act as ...Read More

My general rule is that you should only share projects with customers that you're at least 80% confident you're going to deliver in the timeframe you indicate. This could be even higher in an B2B SaaS company where customers might buy your product based on that roadmap. I'd therefore be very conservative on what you share publicly. You can share goals or strategies which are higher level that don't promise particular features but indicate the direction that you're going in. I find that usually d ...Read More

When prioritizing your roadmap, focus on the initiatives that will have the biggest impact on your strategy and goals. If you have a retention problem, focus on improving that before worrying about new prospects. And if there is a lot of opportunity to expand with your current customers, focus on that as well. It's generally easier to expand existing accounts than land new ones. It's usually a warning sign if you need to build a very different set of features to meet the needs of prospects vs ex ...Read More

The simple answer here is prove that you're approach will make them more money. Here are some more tactical suggestions: Build trust and credibility with sales leadership. This means showing them that you understand their business goals and priorities, and that you are committed to helping them achieve them. If they see that you're opinions make it easier for them to hit their quotas, they'll trust your judgement. Frame the conversation in terms of business outcomes. Sales leadership is ultimate ...Read More

We often say that growth at Asana is more like a climbing wall than a ladder—you can choose different paths, get stronger with each foothold, and truly enjoy your journey along the way. That is doubly true for product roles. You get exposure to so many parts of the business that you may realize you want to go explore next. It is also great training for anyone who aspires to be an entrepreneur or CEO of a large company. Andew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, advises all aspiring executives at his compa ...Read More

It really depends on what the problem statement is and the hypothesis is. If it's about learning from existing needs and behaviors I conduct interviews, surveys, and sometimes observational studies to see firsthand how users experience the problem. This helps confirm whether the problem statement reflects real user challenges. Once your trying to understand if your solution hypothesis is valid, it's then time to figure out the cheapest thing you can build (maybe even just use humans) to validate ...Read More