Gauging the breadth of a product

A year and a half ago, I joined ThoughtWorks Products as product manager of Mingle, a project and program management tool for Agile teams. It was the first time I was playing this role, and I was taking over when the product was already a few years old. This post is about my first month, when I struggled to make sense of the role and the ecosystem.

ThoughtWorks Products is great — it’s practically like an independent startup within the comforts of ThoughtWorks. Mingle is great — I am a power user and understand it well. I figured my ramp-up time would be short.

However, I grossly underestimated how much there was to learn before I could get started. To be onboarded, I had about ten days with folks from various functions, a few developers, and a former business analyst. There was a lot to take in. In a couple of days of arriving, I started to draw up a diagram to help myself understand the ecosystem.

I’d scrawl out questions on these Post-Its whenever I thought of any. This helped me remember what to ask when I was speaking to a person in that function. It constantly reminded me of the wide scope of the role, and how each function flowed into others. It helped me use those ten days well.

Through my first month, I learnt more about each of the boxes, and refined it as follows:

This now serves as a nice little cheatsheet the next time I have to be onboarded, to understand the whole landscape and ask the right questions.

Of course, I’m not responsible for every single thing in this ecosystem. There are excellent folks in Sales, Support, Marketing and the other operations. But a product manager has the best view from end to end, and should be able to step back and see how to optimize this cycle in the product’s best interests. In that vein, there are some things I’m responsible for, some I’m accountable for, some aspects I’m consulted about, and some others that I’m informed about. My level of participation in each of these areas differs.

From the first month on, I challenged myself to make time to think about each of these aspects every week, and make a more deliberate decision on where I should focus and channel effort. I learnt about each area in little increments, and felt much less overwhelmed at how much there was to take in.