15 Signs you might be a Product Manager
1.) You have given up trying to explain your job to friends and family
2.) And you die a little inside when someone calls you a project manager 😖
Even though project management is an important part of your role, and sometimes you have to select Project Manager as your job title on forms because Product Manager isn’t in the list 😭.
3.) There have been times when a calendar like this is your idea of a ‘light schedule’
4.) In reality, you spend most of your day trying to find a time in everyone else’s calendar that works for an upcoming meeting
Ok, that’s an exaggeration! This Saturday at 4am works, right? 😇
5.) You have Googled this more than once…
With the number of post-it notes you’ve written, you’re probably down 20 IQ points, at least.
6.) You can name the authors of at least 3 of these classic books:
Answers at the end of the article!
7.) You genuinely use a Kanban board to organise your personal life 🤓
8.) You sometimes create fake tasks in Asana for the joy of seeing the unicorn when you complete them 🦄
Whoosh!! Never gets old! 😸
9.) When you forget to pick something up on the way home for your partner, you don’t apologise, you simply explain that it was de-prioritised…
…but they shouldn’t worry, it’s in the backlog and will be considered again for next quarter.
10.) You know at least 20 nice ways to say ‘No’ without saying ‘No’
Some examples for you:
- “Which OKR does it align with?” 🤔
- “Let’s take that offline.” 🚫
- “Can we get some more data around that proposal?” 🤓
- “What problem are we really trying to solve here?” 🕵️♀️
- “Is there a manual workaround?” 🔨
11.) You come with some other catchphrases
Forget Barbie and Action Man, Convertia is the action figure our kids need! 😊
12.) You just silently judged me for using Comic Sans MS above 😏
13.) Another day in the office is just another opportunity to AB test your outfit choices to optimise for compliments
Woohoo! That’s a statistically significant uplift in self esteem.
14.) You spend your life talking about goals and MVPs but you have zero interest in soccer
15.) You shamelessly overuse gifs and memes to spice up your slides and emails
Conclusion
So, product managers, how many of these signs did you tick off? And can you think of other tell-tale signs we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
Answers to question 6) The Lean Startup — Eric Ries, Inspired— Marty Cagan, Sprint — Jake Knapp, The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz, Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug.
