Hi xxx,

I am about to head out in PTO for the next 2 weeks and I wanted to reach out to you before I go offline.

As you know, I will be transitioning to a new role in the next weeks, and I am super happy to have you take over xxxx. I feel also very confident that you will be a great PM driving the effort.

We did not work a lot together but I wanted to send you a few things that I hope will be helpful to you as a new PM learning a lot of new things:

• Don’t be afraid to say: I don’t know.
• This is one thing I was scared of when I started. Be in a meeting and tell the team “I don’t know” when they would expect me to say something helpful.
• What I learnt is that saying “I don’t know, but we are going to figure it out”, makes you more real, human, and less of a “sales person”. Engineers will appreciate that and at the end of the day, yes you will figure it out.
• Create the best relationship with your engineering manager
• They are a mix of you and the team and will help you get your message/vision across. They will also surface issues and let you know what the team really feel and thinks, basically the team thermometer.
• Being a PM is not one job, it is multiple ones
• We sometimes read that the PM of a product is like the CEO, it is true in a certain way. It is actually a mix of many things, I would say, marketing, sales, and engineering.
• Marketing, cause you need to make the product look great and let people know about it, not only externally but also internally, never underestimate that.
• Talk about your product on internal mailing lists when appropriate, schedule meetings with people who may be interested, let the world know you are building something great.
• Sales, because you need to sell and demonstrate the value of what you are building and the value to the company. Don’t focus too much on how we cook the soup, but focus on what soup should we cook, its price and value.
• With an engineering background, it will be tempting to spend more time thinking about the recipe rather than the goal and value to the company. I did that mistake.
• And finally, engineering, because having a technical background will allow you to bring up new ideas and understand how things work, again, engineers will truly respect that.
• Always remember that engineers will try to sell you their shit, and you will try to sell yours. That’s part of the game.
• With your engineering background, you automatically earn trust and respect from the team, but as a PM the team will also expect from you to be the voice of customers.
• Spend as much time as possible immersing yourself into the customers world, their problems, build empathy and represent them, the team will love this and that customers knowledge will be your best ammunition to win the battles you care about.
• I know you are already doing this and scheduling customer discovery interviews, this is great. I recommend you creating connections also deeper connection with the community and customers to consult them from time to time when you have doubts/questions (oh yes, you will have a lot of these).
• Connecting the engineers with the reality of customers needs is one of the best gift you can give them.
• Be proactive
• Communicate your vision internally. Don’t be a person that needs to be queried constantly, provide updates to people around you. It can be some thoughts in an email, a deck, don’t be invisible.
• Pick your battles
• There will be times when you feel very strongly about something and you may not win the debate, but it is important to pick your battles and not fight like crazy for everything. Fight for the things that really will make a difference, otherwise you will end exhausted and frustrated.

And last but not least, be focused. With all the noise around that we can find in big companies, don’t be distracted. Start small, focused and iterate and grow your ideas as get respect and trust from your team and the company.

Again, enjoy the ride xxx. I am sure you’ll do great.

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Thibault Imbert, Principal Product Manager, Design & Web, Adobe