PM Journey: Reflections on Building Digital Products
Learning the art of what it takes to get digital products up, running and in use.
It’s been over a year since I started out in product management as a real job. Well more like two years but in the first year, I didn’t actually know that product management was a thing. All I knew is that I enjoy creating, knowing how the web works, translating technology to the user and overall being on the online digital space. Having a technical and business background made this an easy move.
I happened to work closely with different startups and observe them build products from the ground up and I knew I wanted to be part of this. Right from the ideation stage, validation, developing MVPs and taking these products to market. All this while being a software entrepreneur at MEST where we were required to validate and iterate on different business ideas for a period of one year. I had earlier on joined the program wanting to focus on the product development side (only)but working with a small team, the business and technical roles kept intersecting, hence the realization that a product alone without a business model or customers is of no use (well, in most cases)
I recently worked as an associate product manager at Lynk Kenya, where I got to learn more about the field and the processes of bringing several products to market. I was tasked with managing several mobile and web consumer apps, an e-commerce platform, and several other internal operation products.
While I’m still young in the field, I now know a thing or two about digital products management and would like to share some of the key things I have picked up along the way.
Ask questions especially when you are new to the product team. You need to be clear on what was done before your time and why the team did it so that you can know where to contribute in the future. Ask as many specific questions as you can to learn and be able to navigate the product. One great way I handled this when I was new to the team was setting up 1:1 meetings with several team members spanning the design team, engineers, stakeholders to the marketing team. This helped me connect with the team members on a personal level over time, know what they are working on and where I can come in.
Be curious about the industry and technology that the product is in. This revolves around matters business, design, and technology wise. You want to be in a position where you contribute to the market research and the trends in the industry discussions in the team. This will also help you in creating the product vision so that the product is relevant to the customers and you build something that the customers will love.
To be able to work well with the engineers, it is great to understand the technology stack the products are built in. From this, you will find out that sometimes, rather than needing to create and assign a task for an engineer to correct a small typo, you can easily fix the issue when you have some time.
Retrospect frequently to understand where the team stands compared to the target. Retrospection can be in many forms. Depending on what works best for you and the team. It can be a monthly team retrospection or you can do it on your own or with your manager. I mostly took the retrospection time to groom the backlog, create new upcoming milestones from the product roadmap or get clarity on some pending issues from different stakeholders.
Define processes that work best for you and the team. There are different processes defined and written about how to manage different agile teams but there is never a right one way to do it. You can try different processes and mix some up until you find one that works well with the team. This could be Scrum, or Kanban or just set your own process and borrow something from the best processes.
One of the key things about processes is that everyone knows what they need to do and how to do it. This can be done by defining how features are requested, how bugs are reported, how new products are launched and communicated to the different stakeholders. If one process doesn’t work out, don’t be too stuck up, you can easily agree with the team to switch things up and try another one.
Over-communicate both to emphasize important points and inform the team about the state of the product. This will help in keeping different teams at par so that there are no expectations for something that is currently not being worked on. Communicate to the developers on what features are a high priority and what is expected of those features. Let the different teams know how their feature requests are performing and when to expect them. This will help reduce friction between the teams.
Keeping a regular feedback loop is one way to handle this where you update different stakeholders on the status of the product, collect feedback from the customers and translate this into tasks for the engineers.
Create excitement around product launches and learn to celebrate small wins with the team. Sometimes, everyone is too busy creating that the team forgets to celebrate the small wins. It is the work of the product manager to create excitement around a new feature to the extended teams so that before this is launched, the internal team has tested it out and ensured it works well before the changes are pushed to the customers. As a PM, you are basically the product hype king or queen!
Document everything for future use. This is most important when in meetings and there are defined action points that need to be taken. When something is well documented, it is easy to compare notes at a future date and remember what was agreed on. When it comes to internal operation products, it is great to create and update documentation of how the system is used both for the existing teams and for new hires. This aids in speeding up product onboarding and making sure everyone is on the same page.
Take ownership of the products and the specific features and tasks that you have handed over to either the design or the engineering team. In small companies, you will find that the PM role is also the QA role. Ensure that a feature implementation was done as per the feature request through thorough testing and working with the stakeholders involved up until when the feature is launched and ready for use. You can also monitor the performance of the feature while in use to make sure the expected outcomes are being achieved.
Protect your time to take ownership of your day. PM roles revolved around different tasks and working with almost all teams in the company. You might end up having meeting invites all day and a lot of unread messages. It is okay to turn down a meeting invite if you feel that your contribution will not be key. This also helps you to prioritize tasks both for yourself and for the team that you are managing. It is okay to push discussions for some feature requests that are not a priority to a later date.
Take action and speak up when you have an opinion about something. The main role for a product manager besides setting processes for the product is ensuring actions are taken as planned. Motivate the team to deliver. Collaborate with the team proactively and organize the team such that you are creating value for the business and the customers at large.
I’m lucky to have worked with a startup where I was required to manage more than one product which equals more learning. While working as an associate product manager, I had no idea that I was about to embark on one of the most challenging, mind-blowing, inspiring and enriching experience of my career.
For anyone starting out in product management in the early career stage, its normally hard as most product managers are known to transition from other roles but if you have a skill set to offer, most other things are learnings on the job. It is also a role where you have to wear so many hats from business, technical, design, research and user experience and sometimes it is hard to keep up. It is, therefore, necessary to be adaptive and ready to learn and pick up tasks as they come.
Product management is an enlightening experience as you get to learn how products work end to end (business and tech inclusive). It also opens you up to collaborative work, empathy and immense personal growth. It has been a rewarding experience and I can’t wait to learn and do more.
