As a Product Manager, you’re responsible for delivering products and features that both delight customers and move the company closer to its top-line metrics. However, how do you know whether the individual features you ship each sprint or each quarter are successful? So much about becoming a successful Product Manager is about leadership! And to be a leader you must learn how to be empathetic, a great communicator, and a decisive figure. Join us for this session to learn what other skills are required for bringing your team together and working towards success.

1. www.productschool.com
Remote Product Management
by Google PM

2. CERTIFICATES
Your Product Management Certificate Path
Product Leadership
Certificate™
Full Stack Product
Management Certificate™
Product Management
Certificate™
20 HOURS40 HOURS40 HOURS

3. Corporate
Training
Level up your team’s Product
Management skills

4. Free Product Management Resources
BOOKS
EVENTS
JOB PORTAL
COMMUNITIES
bit.ly/product_resources
COURSES

5. Remote Product Management
Ling Lin
email.linglin@gmail.com
Photo credit: Nelly Antoniadou, https://unsplash.com/photos/9X1P46Y2KJo

6. Disclaimer
Content of these slides,
presentation, and ideas are my own
and do not represent that of Google
or any of my previous employers.
Photo credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm, West Charleston Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV, USA, https://unsplash.com/photos/veNb0DDegzE

7. Context About Me
● Currently a Product
Manager at Google,
previously worked at
Amazon, Intuit
● Joined the Google
Education team in April
2020
● Google uses Google tools
so I won’t be
recommending
non-Google remote work
or collaboration tools

8. Key goal: Gain the team’s trust
Onboarding to a New Team (Not Specific to PMs)

9. What actions do you need to take to gain trust?
● Meet people
● Understand how things work
○ Team
○ Product
○ Technical architecture
○ Customer
○ Industry

10. ● Meet people → From spontaneous to proactive
○ Examples:
■ Getting to know each other 1:1’s
■ Virtual lunches
Meeting People

11. ● Understand how things work → From pushed to pulled
○ Team → Ask questions about the team history, how decisions are made, why it’s organized a
certain way
○ Product → Actively push yourself to use the product, find and file bugs
○ Technical architecture → Read, comment, read, comment
○ Customer → Watch any and all user research sessions
○ Industry → Listen to podcasts, read industry articles, follow team chats (or create one if it
doesn’t exist)
Figuring out how things work

12. What do PM’s do?
Drive vision and strategy
Align stakeholders
Prioritize
Communicate decisions
Write product requirements
Execute and deliver
Drive team morale
Photo credit: airfocus, https://unsplash.com/photos/f2C59x5uvn8

13. Drive vision and strategy, align stakeholders
In the office While remote [Hard]
Engaging in-person design sprints
A. Real-time feedback towards ideas (facial
expressions, vibe and energy)
Facetime with stakeholders upwards and
horizontally that allows for faster alignment
B. Understand and align everyone’s vision
more easily with impromptu and short
meetings (e.g. 2 minutes every week with a
Director)
Less engaged virtual design sprint
A. Pull for feedback on ideas (cameras on,
active chat during sprint), use mural.co
Limited face-to-face time with stakeholders
(access to management and team is harder)
B. Frequently communicate, check-in and be
direct with alignment discussions (actually
use the words: “Are you aligned on X?” to
make sure there is no ambiguity)

14. Prioritize and communicate decisions
In the office While remote [About the same]
Do quarterly planning and prioritization as a team
using tools like Kanban boards
Communicate the decisions via team meetings,
emails, and documents and outline why and who
made the decisions
Heavy reliance on digital tools and keeping any
planners up to date
Communicate the decisions via virtual team
meetings, review why decisions were made and
who made them, avoid one-on-one decisions

15. Write product requirements, do UXR, execute
In the office While remote [A little bit more difficult]
Get feedback via meetings, do external and
internal research (mostly done online,) write
documentation digitally and keep it up to date with
changing requirements
UXR can be done “in-person”
Product requirements and scoping is similar, make
sure documents are kept up to date and older
ones are clearly marked as deprecated
UXR is more challenging given technical
know-how of participants is necessary (but opens
more regionally diverse UXR participant pool)

16. Drive team morale
In the office While remote [Very hard]
Feeling of togetherness comes naturally (even if
you aren’t doing anything special; e.g. just going
to lunch together, complaining about a situation
together)
Virtual team events can be “fun” but still only allow
a small number of people to talk at once (e.g.
virtual lunch, virtual escape room, drop ship items)
Celebratory moments for the team (like parties)
with written congratulations or awards
Be crisp on the team’s mission

17. Photo credit: Jasper Boer, https://unsplash.com/photos/1fUu0dratoM
R Recognize the situation
I Innovate on ways to resolve while remote
S Speak out so people can get on the same page
E Embrace the situation

18. Don’t take things personally, assume best intent

19. Taking care of yourself
● Relaxation and decompressing means different things to everyone
● Free yoga class channels on YouTube: bendiyogi.com

20. When to be a remote
Product Manager?
● Entire team is remote
● Of all the functions, one of the
more difficult ones to be remote
○ Relationship building with a broad
swath of people is important
○ Lots of meetings
Photo credit: Chris Montgomery, https://unsplash.com/photos/smgTvepind4

21. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
Corporate Training