Juggling on a Tight Rope
A day in the life of a product manager is much like juggling and walking on a tightrope while listening to the audience and keeping eyes on the target and beyond. That is a lot of work and product managers do just that every single day — all while having fun! But what is true success?
Juggling
The product manager is responsible for setting the vision, strategy and the roadmap for the product and this requires having the right domain knowledge, a deep understanding of customer needs and the competitive landscape. Typically, these are done in stages: discovery, planning and execution which requires working directly with customers and various internal departments such as user research, user experience, analytics, engineering, legal, and marketing to name a few.
On any given roadmap item, the number of departments you work with depends on the size of the company and on the size and complexity of the feature or enhancement being built. Therefore, skills such as communication, collaboration and time management become super critical to juggle the day-to-day activities. Most importantly, it is not what you have communicated but what the other person has understood which matters even more. Although the content of what you are trying to say may be the same, you may have to use different styles of communication to interact with the various stakeholders. For example — executives higher up in the ladder will require a succinct version focused on business outcomes but the engineering team may look for finer implementation requirements. Working with the various teams also requires soft skills and emotional intelligence while maintaining a positive and confident outlook.
In senior positions, a single product manager may be responsible for multiple products which are at different stages of the product lifecycle. For example: you could be in the execution phase of one product while leading discovery sessions on another product. This requires a lot of context switching and requires you to be super organized. Oh, and don’t forget the numerous feature requirements for which you have to simply say ‘no’ nicely.
Walking the tightrope
For a person walking the tightrope, there is a risk of falling and the height at which the rope is tied makes an important difference. The greater the height, the greater the risk of damage. But the question is: is there a safety net? The safety net is the strategy put in place to mitigate the risk. Larger profitable companies generally have a safety set from which the product can recover and cushion the loss incurred by the company. However, in smaller especially non-profitable companies there may be little room for blunders as this could jeopardize the future existence of the company.
As a product manager, you will make numerous decisions daily. Some may need to be made quickly and some may require careful consideration. Therefore, it is important to strike a balance and understand the trade-offs. For example: you may have to balance risks versus benefits, new features versus tech debt. Here is where experimentation and data-based decision making become very important. Innovative companies such as PayPal greatly encourage risk taking and experimentation. As a product manager, it is also your responsibility to own an experimentation roadmap with ways to collect feedback from your customers. The data you use can be qualitative or quantitative. If you are managing a legacy product which for some reason is not instrumented, also listen for feedback from the field — from pre-sales, sales or solutions engineering teams.
Defining Success
For a juggler walking the tight rope, success may be completing the length of the rope without falling or dropping any pins. That may be okay for a person starting out on the job but for a seasoned performer it is not fun if there is no audience! Similarly, the success criteria of a product launch or a feature will differ based on the goals and need to be defined on a case-by-case basis. As a product manager, it is your responsibility to define the success criteria. Success criteria needs to be defined at the product level, feature level and story level (if you are using agile methodologies). For example — customer satisfaction, customer acquisition, revenue, cost reduction, customer engagement may be metrics to track depending on the goals of the launch.
I’ve observed that in the overall project plan sometimes tracking becomes an after-thought and teams scramble thinking about this just before launch but that should not be the case. Tracking requirements with success criteria need to be baked into the project plan and post-launch metrics need to be monitored and communicated to the stakeholders. (Pro tip — Senior executives love it if these numbers are proactively communicated to them!) Once the post-launch numbers are available, iterate to improve results. Sometimes, your product or feature may not deliver the expected results even after multiple iterations. Always aim to fail fast so that you can pivot and cut your losses or entirely drop the idea. Especially while experimenting, go bold to fail fast. The sooner you receive signals on success or failure, the better it is!
But what is true success?
Since product management is a cross-functional role it is critically important that everyone is aligned on the product vision and roadmap. This only happens when there is trust, respect, collaboration and psychological safety between the people involved. Teams need to be motivated, inspired and need to have fun while doing so! Here are some pro tips: build strong relationships by having real conversations, recognize people for good work, when there are disagreements — disagree respectfully, ask for feedback, order lunch for planning meetings, plan a team outing and invite your key stakeholders to join, have impromptu “chai” get-togethers, laugh together! True success is only when everyone feels appreciated and feels that they have made meaningful contributions to the product.
Conclusion
Net-net, the product manager is responsible for the success or failure of a product. It requires passion and deep commitment to solve customer problems while offering a great user experience. Joy is when you see the customer’s eyes light up when you have the right design, when you see five-star reviews on the feedback survey, when a customer talks about how well your product works or, even better, refer your product to their friends, family and co-workers. In addition, if you have smashed your business targets as well, that feeling, my friends, is truly priceless! On the contrary, if you receive bad feedback, do not lose heart. In fact, you should be happy and grateful for the critical information which will help you improve your product in the next iteration. Thus, any feedback you get from your customer — good or bad is extremely valuable.
In conclusion, product management is undoubtedly a very demanding function, but it can also be extremely fulfilling. Are you considering a switch to product management? Get started and give it a go! Here are some things to try: shadow your product manager, spend a day in your product manager’s shoes by requesting to swap roles, start networking with other product managers, attend product management related events, read books and blogs. And don’t forget to enjoy the experience!
