I’m a Product Manager and here’s what that means
‘What exactly do you do?’, asked one of our interns. I had recently been made a Product Manager at BlueJeans, and the first one at our Bangalore office. A little perplexed of how to answer without rambling, I just said I make sure that we build the right things. Not satisfied with this, more questions followed and I did my best to answer them.
Later, I thought to myself about how the following few months would go in this new role. I was super excited and read up as much as I could. Medium.com writers combine so many different helpful perspectives, and my course at the Institute of Product Leadership was beneficial. I met and tried to learn from as many coworkers as I could too.
Reflecting back on the past year, here are a few observations that have helped me get better at my role.
Prioritisation: In the beginning, I found it hard to wrap my head around the list of hundreds of customer asks, internal interpretations of customer needs, backlog items, quality issues and so on. The system that worked for me was to group these into such buckets to begin organising my thoughts around it. I asked for help by talking to as many people as possible internally — customer success managers, sales reps, customer support members, engineering and marketing.
Talking to users: After getting somewhat of a handle on things, I began speaking with customers directly. Being remote and talking to customers in the US can be challenging. But it makes a huge difference. And with BlueJeans Meetings, one can do it seamlessly. The quality of insights you gather from direct discussions cannot match what anybody else can tell you second-hand. Of course, the questions you ask need to be good as well, which takes a while to assimilate and is a continuously improving task.
Prototype, test iterate: This principle has served me well. Instead of drawing up one’s own final version of a product feature, breaking it down into chunks, building prototypes — either using mocks using Invision or backend APIs that can be invoked manually, trying out new ideas and gathering real feedback from willing customers has been very fruitful. Whenever I failed to do this, it proved very expensive. This process may take time, but it will ensure that one builds the right features.
Over-communicate: I cannot overstate the importance of this! Whether it is during a requirements review with design and engineering, or sending out notes after a meeting, or clarifying points over a bug tracking system or explaining to support teams on what features will be delivered by when, ensure that everybody involved understands what you are trying to say. Little misunderstandings or misinterpretations can cause a lot of harm later, and can be hard to recover from.
Introspection and retrospectives: Take time out of your schedule to think and assess how the last few weeks have been for you and your teams. Am I doing enough for them? Am I too busy dealing with the day to day and losing track of the what needs to be done 6 months from now? Am I ensuring the team is happy and clear on its direction? Am I talking to enough customers and often? Are cross functional teams working well with each other? Am I seeking feedback early and often? Answering such questions helped me.
Making things happen: This is probably my biggest lesson over the last year. As a PM, one has to constantly keep seeking out others to get things done, encourage yourself and others to think of new ways to solve problems, and be proactive in everything you do by staying one step ahead of the game. At times, you will fail to do so, but continue to learn and keep moving ahead. That is key.
And last week, during a beer bash at work, another intern asked me something. Guess what the question was? Thankfully, I was a bit better prepared to answer this time.
