The First 90 Days as a New Product Manager
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You've worked so hard to learn all about the tools of the trade, acing the interview process, and mentally preparing yourself to jump into the world of product management, but what do you do on day 1, or day 7? How do you ensure you're set up for eventual success? Peter Lu from Planswell talked about how a new Product Manager will deal with organizational dynamics, decision debt, and common mistakes. This looked into the first 90 days as a new Product Manager.
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The First 90 Days as a New Product Manager
- 1. The First 90 Days as a New Product Manager by Planswell PM www.productschool.com
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 22,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Learn how to trade cryptocurrencies and build products using the blockchain
- 8. Onboarding as a PM Peter Lu
- 9. Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+ Onboarding as a PM
- 10. Initial impressions really do matter Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 11. 2 out of 253 videos Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 12. Let’s rewind to the last time you... Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 13. A set of activities Information Gathering Nudging Decision Making Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 14. Product A set of areas People Process Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 15. Information Gathering Nudging Decision Making Apply activities to areas Product People Process Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 16. Remember that feeling? Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 17. One Caveat Expectations Size Maturity Culture Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 18. First 30: Seek to Understand Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+ Information Gathering Product People
- 19. Be patient and don’t be a hero First 30: Common Mistake Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 20. Day 30 - 60: Synthesize & Mobilize Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+ Information Gathering Nudging Decision Making Product Process ● Success Metrics ● Roadmapping and execution ● Technology ● Journey Mapping ● How things get done
- 21. - Dealing with past decisions - Don’t forget about product launches Day 30 - 60: Common Mistakes Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+
- 22. Day 60+: Leading Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+ Launch/Measure - Low cost Discover - Low cost Develop - High cost ● Strategy ● Roadmap ● Processes ● Teaching
- 23. Intro Activites Areas First 30 30 - 60 60+ Seek to understand Synthesize & mobilize Leading 0 30 60
- 24. My Schedule Time Activity Type 8:30 am Read and answer messages Info gathering, nudging, and decision making 9:30 am Measure & analyze metrics Info gathering 10:00 am Daily standup Info gathering 10:30 am Review designs Info gathering & nudging 11:30 pm Meet with Sales Info gathering 1:00 pm Roadmapping Decision making & nudging 2:00 pm 1 on 1’s Info gathering, nudging, and decision making 3:00 pm Writing requirements Decision making 4:00 pm Customer development Info gathering
- 25. Part-time Product Management Courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, London, Toronto www.productschool.com
Editor's Notes
- Give examples what people, process, and products Set goals Give example of questions the areas and activities will answer Ie. how do we make money, why would someone use our product Ie. how do decisions get made, how does it get into dev Etc. Give examples of solutions Set expectations with your manager Make lives easier 1on1s
- Covering the topic of how to successfully onboard as a new PM Our aim is to get to breakeven point as soon as possible What we’ll cover is: Easy ways to think about the activities you’ll do in various areas of the business General areas of focus in your first 30 days, 60 days, and beyond Some common mistakes
- Is it really important? Reflecting back on the various stories i hear from friends in product Most of their pains with personnel have to do with new hires and them not focusing on the right things Realization that first few months set the foundations of success in a company
- Before we jump into it, I want to talk about why we’re discussing this for the next x minutes Let’s think about all the work you’ve done leading up to your first day Understanding what product management is How to get a PM gig How to be a kick ass PM But where are all of the resources to talk about this?
- **Show of hands**, who here remembers the last time you joined a new team or company? Now, let’s try to recall the feeling you had in your first few days, let alone your first day For me, it was kind of like the feeling of being the new kid in the class A little insecure A lot of nervousness And an abundance of cluelessness There’s a lot to process ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Not here to give a secret recipe but provide a useful framework to help deal with things that’s flying at you in all directions
- **Whose read a book called high output management before?** high output management by a legendary valley figure called andy grove, who was one of the founders and ceo of intel Without going too much into the book, it’s basically about achieving maximal output as a manager and organization, He defines a manager’s activity in three categories. As a PM, your activities are no different, if you think about all the slew of activities you could be doing, from writing requirements to building roadmaps - they can all be somewhat categorized in these three buckets. Information gathering: pretty much what it sounds like, it’s the activity of understanding something. Obviously, examples can range anywhere from why are we using this tech stack to why are customers paying for our product? The act of understanding the answer to these examples is defined as information gathering. Nudging: **What does this mean**? It’s essentially influencing without authority. This is especially important because the reality of it is that although you are the owner of the product, you have no direct authority over how it gets built (tech) or what it looks like (design). Great read on this is Martin Eriksons article on you are not the CEO of anything Decision making: making a decision on something. Quickly summed up: Info, Nudging, Decision
- The second piece is what are the areas you can apply the activities on? In general, there are three. People, process, and product. Product is: Domain Technology Customer Metrics Process Sprints Deploys QA’s Demos People Building relationships and ppl management
- Putting the two pieces together, you apply these activities onto these areas As an example, the process of understanding why customers pay for your product? Information gathering applied on product So why is it important to have these generalizations?
- Remember that feeling of being the new kid on the block? Things being thrown at you from all directions? Having these generalizations is meant to help you calibrate whether or not you are focusing on the right things, at the right time.
- I’m not a big fan of highlighting caveats because there will always be one but there’s one that’s very important The activities and areas of focus will always depend on expectations Not only your manager but the rest of the organization I’ve found that these expectations generally differ depending size, maturity, and culture As an example: Established company like microsoft vs. 10 person start up Asking people: “What can I do to make your life easier?” will help two things, show people you are there to help rather than do decision making/nudging and also gauge their expectation of the PM role in their eyes.
- So what’s your goal in your first 30 days on the job? Stay patient and seek to understand, meaning focus on information gathering as the activity and focus on the product and people part. Why the focus on product and people rather than process? As a new PM, those are the two areas that you would usually have the least amount of context. What do i mean by product context? 1) The customer and understanding what their pains are and why they are there 2) Having a profitable P&L Often times, there’s such a knowledge gap of the market and your customers when you first start that the most essential activity is go out there and talk to your customers, talk to people across the company on what they think of the customers. Understand the market, the competitors, the trends. This is where you will begin to build your credibility and be able to do nudging in the future successfully. The second point is information gathering on your business model, how do you make money, what are our KPIs, how is it performing right now, etc. People context is the understanding of people dynamics, what makes people on your team tick, how they like to work. As a PM, your reliance on these individuals to ship products is not debatable. What are some examples of things you could be doing? Use the product Sit with your customer facing teams Sit with customers Dive into analytics (amplitude, mixpanel, hotjar) Meet with your team, load up on that starbucks card and go on coffee dates
- Starting first time at Wave and i was speaking to a mentor who was a VC at microsoft Asking for advice SMIM: be patient. Human nature to go in, kick some ass, and look like a hero or said less dramatically, proving their worth I probably didn’t internalize this advice that well until i was having lunch with another friend who just hired a PM on his team. He was telling about his struggles with this individual because, although very experienced, they came in wanting to change this process, build this new feature, etc etc. Whether or not it was a good idea is irrelevant because they did not go through the motions of understanding. What these two stories highlight is the common mistake of not being patient and applying decision making/nudging activities Often times it’s processes because like i said before, you don’t have the knowledge on the product space but processes on the surface is very transferrable across organizations. Why is this so common? Shared
- As you gain more and more understanding of your product and work environment, your time should start to see a mix shift in type of activities and areas. Recall, our major focus for the first 30 days was on information gathering within the product and people areas. When you start to reach your 1st or 2nd month in, our goal should be to synthesize learnings and begin the steps to mobilize those learnings into value creating activities - shipping something. Even though you all will subconsciously be synthesizing information on a daily basis. I’ve always found setting time aside to consciously do it helped me connect the dots on everything i’ve learnt more effectively. Some key things you should be covering off during this time: What are the metrics of success for your product and how does it relate to the performance of the company? What your team is currently measuring (if anything) and whether or not they are vanity metrics Establish metrics in the absence of them and use it as a guiding light in decisions Executing on your current roadmap, getting features out, and measuring it’s impact with success metrics Learning more about the technology behind your product, understanding more on the customer journey, and processes. Again, these information gathering activities are building a strong foundation of setting yourself up for success in the long term.
- You’re likely going to run into a situation in which someone prior to you made a decision to launch a feature that you disagree with. What do you do?