How I’ve Grown as a Product Manager within 3 Months
Here’s the story of my journey as a PM for the last three months and some quick tips on how to survive in this role!
When you read this article, most probably I already passed my 3 months probation period as a Product Manager in Blibli. It is not a long period to gain skills and learn to be a good Product Manager. Nonetheless, the role is something new after my five years of working experience. This post is a summary of everything I’ve learned and done on making this transition.
Lesson 1: Know your product and customer
Treat your product as your child! I think that’s what you should believe when you become a Product Manager. Your product is your responsibility, so it is a must to understand the product and everything around it. But it doesn’t stop at knowing your product, we also need to know the profile of our customer or user. In my case, my customers are not only the people who connect with the application and buy something from the cart, but also the back-end people and the company who give 24 hours support to run the business. They are the ones to ensure the end-to-end business running smoothly and be able to produce a reliable financial records to the stakeholders. It would bring satisfaction to see the business team using our product and organizing other people who contribute positively to deliver the product.
Lesson 2: Open discussion
In my previous job, I did a lot of projects related to finance product but more specifically into inventory and procurement area. Starting this new role by getting assigned to fully support the whole finance team is definitely a big jump to cover the whole area within finance team. In order to catch up with the team, I did many open discussions with the user, business analyst, tech team, and cross-squad team to understand the requirement and logic about my products. Somehow, I felt they were not enough and I still want to know more. So I also arranged some offline discussions during lunch or tea-break to get more insights.
Lesson 3: Start to make a prioritization
You know it is necessary to make a prioritization when you already have a hundred plus request tickets on hand. It is not easy to list them down. Especially when you’re a newly joined and don’t know much about what your users are requesting at all. By being involved on the discussion with the user and IT, it will lead us to understand the urgency of the tickets and how we translate them into the real action. So far, I tried to list down the tickets and split them into several sprints so it would be easier to deliver them. Before that, you can also bring the tech guys to comment and give effort estimation because at the end they are the one to execute on delivering the product.
As a new person in the company, it is always good to hear what they say about the people, culture, environment, and what have been done before about the company. Once you get the sense, then everything will lead you to the right thing as a Product Manager. I know my journey is still a long way to go, and many things are not precisely correct, or even missed out during my first three months. But it is a learning process and practice will make it perfect.
If you’re interested in applying for a full-time position or intern, Blibli is currently hiring! Send your resume to recruitment@blibli.com and get the chance to work with our PM and UX team and our own unique stories.
