Product Management 101: A Day in the Life of a Product Manager
Here is a typical day, though this one was a little more meeting heavy than usual:
7:00 AM: I hit the snooze button because I stayed up too late playing Fortnite with my roommate. Lesson learned.
7:20 AM: Check my emails and Slack, make sure there aren’t any immediate fires to put out or low hanging fruit to clear.
7:35 AM: Get the courage to roll out of bed and shower.
8:26 AM: Pull into the parking lot at the same time the commuter train arrives. If I was sleepy before, I am fully awake now as I run to make it to the train. Catch up on more emails and Slack messages during my train commute.
9:05 AM: The train pulls up right outside my office, just in time for a weekly team meeting where we catch up on the performance of the company, initiatives in action, new hires, and other general news.
9:30 AM: Stand up with my engineering team, where we talk about who is blocked, any challenges they are facing, and if we are at risk of any delays. I spend the next half hour answering questions on designs they are working on implementing.
10 AM: There is a product management team meeting where I meet with all the other product managers at the company. We talk about best practices, get training, and review other teams initiatives. Sometimes follow up meetings are scheduled if teams are working on things that have potential overlap.
11 AM: There is a leadership meeting for my specific product where we review OKRs and other objectives, discuss team structures and potential changes, feature releases, or other upcoming or urgent events.
12 PM: Lunchtime. I read TechCrunch and get caught up on news. Some people are playing a round of Super Smash Bros. in one of the conference rooms, so I swing down there and teach them not to underestimate Ganandorf.
1 PM: I meet with the UX designer on my team to discuss upcoming design needs, review mockups, talk about timelines, and discuss how we feel about the state of the product and what we would like to see changed. During this time I also get a message on Slack about a bug in the product that is breaking a key feature. I assess which engineer is best suited to take it based on their current tasks and past experience with the feature. I slack them and kindly ask them to switch focus to fix the emergency issue.
2 PM: I have a user call. We are reviewing mockups for design changes to our document and template pages. I try to dive down and understand their Jobs to be Done for our product and make sure that aligns with the new mockups.
2:45 PM: I have fifteen minutes to kill before my next meeting, so I get outside to stretch my legs and see if the sun still exists.
3:00 PM: I am interviewing a potential new product manager. I’m on the design portion of the interview today, which is my favorite.
3:45 PM: Working time. Today I am reviewing the next sprint and feature stories we might take. I’m trying to decide what are the highest priorities and if we can cut anything out to hit our release deadline. Other days I might be doing some product brainstorming, trying to see where improvements need to happen, or where I would like to get a customers perspective. I’ll work with our customer success team to set up some user interviews. Or, I’ll be performing some analysis on the results of a recently released feature.
5:15 PM: Checking emails again. I’m also reviewing action items and adding to my checklist of things to do tomorrow.
5:30 PM: The train is pulling up outside the office. I’ll spend the remainder of the ride home writing this article.
7:38 PM: My manager messaged me on Slack and asked me to present something in an update meeting tomorrow. I respond with 👍
9:40 PM: My roommate asks me to play Fortnite again. He promises it will be just one match. I have completely forgotten my lesson learned from this morning.
Check out the next Product Management 101 entry to see what it’s like working with software engineers.
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