13 lesson I learned as a beginner Product Manager
— Product-Management — 2 min read
May '21-'22 has been a big year for me - I graduated from college amid the peak second wave of the pandemic and transitioned to a product role from a dev background. While I’m constantly learning and have a long way to go, I want to share a list of 13 things that I’ve learned in the last year:
Ask WHY?: Before moving on building anything, always:
Have a strong WHY do you want to build it?
Back your answers with quantitative and qualitative data.
Define the success metrics.
Doing this exercise would clarify a lot of doubts that you might have.
Write clearly: PMs work with people across teams, and therefore having strong writing skills helps a lot. It reduces the scope of miscommunication and enables you to think clearly. These documents can be PRDs, RFCs, or one-pagers meant just for you.
Focus on success metric: New shiny features are good to look at, but they do not necessarily mean that you brought value to the table. Therefore, if the new feature or the copy change is not moving the success metric, probably you should give a second thought to whether to build it or not.
80:20 rule: Small things done right will lead to massive improvement of your app over time. You don’t have to always focus on the next big app update - fix the minor bugs first. Focus on user experience.
Don’t build until you’ve thought through: While it is tempting to get the project moving, don’t consider allocating implementation bandwidth until you have carved out all the details. Do your homework and align all your stakeholders before writing the first line of code - it will eliminate last-minute surprises and save the team from unnecessary rework.
Align stakeholders: Align senior stakeholders and your manager before making any move. Anything you do should not be a surprise for them.
Avoid inertia: Law of inertia states that an object at rest will stay at rest unless it is acted on by an external force. Often we keep avoiding tasks that might not appear important at present but skipping them altogether can have major consequences.
Be trustable: To work efficiently as a PM, your team must trust you. Trust can be established by having an impact and being someone who gets shit done. Part of your job as a PM is to remove roadblocks and help people do their job well. Doing these things and gaining your team's trust will make your job much easier.
Experiment with the process: Find the sweet spot which works for you & your team to get the work done efficiently(in case there is no process set already). Taking feedback from stakeholders like devs, designers, doc writers, etc. and incorporating them in the process can help you eliminate friction and deliver projects on time.
Learn time management: Since PMs work cross-functionally, there are a lot of meetings to attend, which leaves less time to do the focused work. Hence, it is crucial to manage time efficiently to keep everything moving.
Conduct meetings the right way: Being in meetings doesn’t necessarily mean it is productive - something which I should’ve learnt earlier. Some pointers which I follow to make sure that I’m productive:
Create an agenda for the meeting and share it with the meeting invite.
Keep asking yourself if you are going on the right track to meet your agenda.
Communicate to the MOM verbally before ending the meeting. Everyone should leave the meeting with the same takeaways as you. Action items should be clear.
Take feedback regularly: It helps you to course-correct before things go south. Asking the correct questions and converting feedback into actionable are equally important.
Know your merits: Working in a high-performance team with many people daily might result in you doubting your capabilities. Knowing your metrics and achievements during this time can help you recover from such a phase.