I wrote this a week before starting a new job as a Product Manager at Lyft. Every new job is an opportunity to do things better. This is a reminder to myself on what it means to be a good product manager. It boils down to three main things:
1. Product Strategy: Bring clarity to what your team is working towards, how and why
What success looks like: All members of your team and the exec team can articulate, defend and feel confident and excited about what your team is doing and why.
Key deliverables: Team mission and vision, key metrics, goals and OKRs over different timeframes, roadmap over different timeframes, current metric values and dashboards, user feedback/insights/journey, project or feature specs.
You can do this well by:
- Deeply understanding users, market, competitors, business, current product performance and concerns
- Collaborating closely with stakeholders to jointly come up with the mission, metrics, goals, ideas, roadmaps, and specs.
- Developing a clear understanding and measures of what success looks like.
- Simplifying and prioritizing a few goals, themes, and projects.
- Frequently consolidating, documenting and sharing to drive towards an actionable plan.
- Sharing a succinct, clear and inspiring what and why with stakeholders often to drive clarity, alignment, and excitement.
- Maintaining a rolling 4 quarter roadmap
2. Product Execution: Turn plans into reality and results
What success looks like: Your team is making measurable and visible progress, your team and stakeholders are aware of what's happening across functions and continue to be excited.
Key deliverables: Project plans and updates, specs and user stories, establishing a process and check-in meetings, facilitate x-functional collaboration.
You can do this well by:
- Working backward from outcomes and launch date, and collaboratively come up with practical project plans. Think broadly across different product aspects - engineering, UX, go to market, legal, analytics, trust and safety etc.
- Focusing on a few things and doing them well. Deliver in small, complete and testable chunks
- Getting regular feedback from real users
- Having recurring planning hygiene where you set clear milestones, set ownership, track tasks and look back
- Investing in tools, process and technical infrastructure to keep your team's velocity high.
- Repeatedly asking yourself what can be done to double the impact and half the effort/complexity.
- Retrospecting regularly with the team on the process - what's going well and what isn't. Don't try to change too many things too quickly unless things are really not working.
- Understanding and improving how your team is approaching the problem; ask the right questions to pressure test and improve solutions, spot gaps and inconsistencies.
- Being organized and consistent - maintain project plans and documents, follow up on things and remind others too.
- Protecting yourself and the team from distractions.
- Checking in 1:1 with team members to share updates and how things are going.
- Celebrating wins as a team and take breaks.
- Sharing regular updates, resolve any misunderstandings or open questions quickly.
3. Leadership: Keep the team happy, motivated, and empowered.
What success looks like: Team members want to continue staying on the team, actively engage in team discussions and events, and build close, long-term relationships.
Key deliverables: Inclusive and collaborative culture and processes, effective team retrospectives, fun traditions, regular team bonding events and offsites, jokes and light-heartedness, daily greetings and bright smiles.
You can do this well by:
- Being optimistic, cheerful and jovial.
- Genuinely caring for and respecting everyone on the team
- Helping the team and every one succeed
- Getting to know people beyond just their job
- Being transparent, thoughtful, and high integrity person.
- Putting team and company success before personal success.
- Actively soliciting and acting on everyone's feedback and opinions
- Recognizing, appreciating and rewarding ideas and efforts.
- Helping out and being supportive when someone's having a hard time.
- Focusing everyone's effort on meaningful and thoughtful work.
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