12 Product Leaders’ Advice on The First Three Months As A Product Manager.
Product Management is one of the several non-technical roles/skills in tech.
Atlassian Agile Coach defines Product Management as an organizational function that guides every step of a product’s lifecycle — from development to positioning and pricing — by focusing on the product and its customers first and foremost.
While Product Management is an act or a skill, a Product Manager (also called a PM) is a person that possesses this skill or is saddled with this responsibility.
The first three months of a product manager’s job can shape their performance for the rest of the year, or even longer. Some of them would even say the first three months are “the make-or-break period” where you have to show your worth as a PM.
I had the opportunity to interview 12 Product Leaders and Senior Product Managers from different companies — people that have experienced the role in their unique way. All with different backgrounds, skills and experience under their belt. I asked them to give their best advice on what they believe is the most important thing any product manager should ensure they do in their first three months on the job.
Trust me, this is quite a lengthy read, but it’s going to be worth it!
1. Babatunde Vaughan — Program Manager, Ecosystem Development at Microsoft.
New into Product or Program Management in a new organisation? I would say you should:
- Clearly define Success and Milestones: This is needed for setting strategy. Be clear on what the long-term aims/goals and quick wins are. Confirm an alignment with the business. Set aspirational but realistic objectives.
- Have a Strategy: Whether the tactic is differentiation or ecosystem penetration, having a logical framework is very helpful in connecting the dots. Since you’ve established what success is, go on to: identify assumptions, state dependencies, list activities and do an inventory of resources available to support execution. Focus on ‘To-be’ and less on ‘To-do’.
From “Execution” to “win”, have the mindset of failing fast, failing early, and failing softly. However, if your strategy is thoroughly thought-out, every failure would be a win.
- Practice People Alignment: Cross-team collaboration is not negotiable. Build relationships early and genuinely. You will need to work across teams. Think win-win and act with empathy when asking for support, then, communicate expressively what intervention you are asking for — first to yourself; sometimes it is selfish, sometimes it is infeasible. Offer help when you can. Treat everyone rightly. Don’t set up a meeting without an agenda and let no one leave your discussions thinking it wasn’t a good use of their time.
2. Foluwa Akinsemoyin — Senior Product Manager at TELUS
It’s all about people and projects.
Know the people you’ll be working with, know your stakeholders and key decision makers in your organisation. Knowing is not enough, work to build meaningful relationships with these stakeholders as much as you can.
Know the projects you’ll be working on and other related projects in & out of your organisation. By keeping tabs on related internal projects, you are likely to discover areas for collaboration to create even more value.
Knowing related external projects will give you a deeper understanding of your market, and will help you build a truly differentiated offering.
3. Temitope Oladeji — NetApp Product Manager (Anglophone Africa Countries) at Hiperdist.
- The PM should ensure the product he/she manages becomes the toast of everyone, especially the sales team.
- The PM should organize and execute at least two product enablement sessions within 3 months for the sales and technical team
- The PM should facilitate incentives for both the sales team and the end customer to generate tractions for the product.
4. Maryjane Eze— Lead Product Manager, UnbugQA.
As a Product Manager starting a new role in the tech space, here are the things you should do in the first 1- 2 months, I think three (3) months is a lot. By your second month your employer would expect you to start delivering. Everyone knows the pressure that comes with starting a new role as a PM. You are allowed to make mistakes, in your first month and learn from them.
There is no need to put so much on yourself or try to be perfect in your first month, just take your time, I also think the following would help.
1. Learn the product: This involves doing the following
- Use the product end to end
- Ask about the back-end portals, (that support the product) and all other things there is to know about the product.
2. Set up one-on-one meetings with these people:
- Developers
- Designers
- Customer success
- Management
- Marketing
- Sales
- Customer support
3. Familiarize with the company strategy and also the product strategy:
- Understand goals
- Understand product roadmap
4. Competitive landscape: Check what the competitors are doing (similar product to the one you will be managing). list them somewhere and compare them with yours, you could do features, pricing, etc., and see how you can improve yours.
5. Talk to your customers:
- Understand your customers
- Set up customer call
- Shadow customer success/ support calls
- Shadow sales calls
Lastly shadow a fellow PM in that same company to learn how things are done, if you happen to be the only PM in the company you may need to ask a lot of questions to understand how things are done.
5. Ayodele Ogundele — Cofounder at Urbanlet (Ex. Senior Product Manager, Wakanow)
Being a product manager is about building relations. It’s key to meet everyone and find out who does what at the organisation. This is key to have chats, ask questions and get an overall view of how things work.
You will need to understand the workflow; product managers typically handle complex work process as they deal with multiple teams. It’s important to quickly understand the business processes and workflow.
Document all your observations as this well help you when you go back to review your daily task and daily accomplishments to set the tone for the next day. Also, take advantage of being the “new kid” on the block as you will see things form a different perspective from everyone else.
Other things you can do include talking to customers and reviewing surveys to get customer insight. Get clarity on strategic goals, how they are measured and how KPIs tie to these goals.
Finally, set some goals. Get to know everything about your product, the processes surrounding its development and launch, the customers, your team and the business.
6. Atinuke Jones — Senior Product Manager at Terragon
Try to understand your roles and responsibilities.
Understand the product you are going to be working on and ask a lot of questions.
Understand the Company vision and goal for the product.
Speak to existing staff to get to know how the work style and culture is.
Keep learning on how you can improve your product.
7. Tobi Adesanya — Senior Product Manager at JetStream Africa
First, keep your head low and LEARN.
Even if you have been a PM forever or been a PM at a similar company, there’s always a different context to each new role/company.
Take some time to learn and not try to be the solution provider from day 1. This will set you up to stakeholders as someone who is willing to listen to them and will not be set in their ways.
It also allows you to see the gaps to build for, without adding the bias you came in with.
8. Bobby Nwokonneya — Program Manager at Microsoft
- Understand the company objectives and what success means in your role: It is important to always align these objectives with your activities/thinking/planning. You can find out about these objectives from the product owners — founders, executives, product leads, etc
- Establish relationships: It is important to get to know the team members, stakeholders and partners and understand dependencies. You can do this by setting 1 on 1s with key members of your team, your product team lead, design team, dev partners, marketing team, etc.
- Understand the customers pain points: It is important to quickly understand who your target customers are, and find out their pain points and motivations. Having customer empathy and being user centric in your product design thinking will delight customers and grow customer adoption.
9. Bisola Jolaoso — Senior PM at Babban Gona
In my opinion, the first set of things to get done at a new PM job are the following:
- Breathe: ignore the personal pressure you have put yourself under and get rid of the resulting tension so your brain can be open to all the new information (most likely) about to overwhelm it.
- Soak up all the information you can get about the organization. Understand their business (mega important), goals, and vision. Doing this will help you know what you need to align your product(s) to. You can do this by talking to people in different units and then connecting the puzzle of how they all fit into the whole.
- Seek knowledge and understand the product(s) in the organization’s portfolio (at least the major ones on a high level).
- Learn the product culture and try not to textbook them. Product management is handled differently at different organizations. Therefore, you need to go there with an open mind and not a rigid idea of how product management should be done.
- If you are not assigned a buddy on the team, you should select one yourself to shadow for a little while. You will probably learn faster this way.
- If you are inheriting an existing product, familiarize yourself with its history, such as data, what worked, what did not, etc.
- Go forth and thrive.
PS: Notice I have not put timelines to any bullet points? That is because I believe there is no one size fits all. The time available to you may differ based on where you work.
10. Ndukwe Igbokwe — Senior Product Manager at MAX
For the first week, work with HR to understand the JD, as well as with your team to understand your KPI and OKR. Think less about the work, and think more about your team to understand your KPI, OKR and your job description in-depth.
You should be able to know what the market wants or what the current market trend is.
Understand the model of the business, and know their want. Ensure you are in tune with the customers.
Among several skills, it is important that product managers learn how to document effectively, manage stakeholders, lead effectively and be able to influence without authority.
A product manager should work on his/her personality and anxiety level. It is important they overcome their imposter syndrome, as you can’t and don’t know everything.
Collect feedback, conduct research, and understand the market. When you have a full grasp of the market, it gives you confidence. It helps you to know you are solving a problem people have and understand the problem you are solving, the people you are solving for and how to solve it for them.
11. Adaobi Igwe-Okerekeocha — Senior Program Manager at Microsoft
Settling into a new role can be ‘unsettling’. There is typically a lot of pressure (usually self-generated) to create value immediately and show that you are a good hire. Relax…
A good framework or plan can help set you on the right path. Here is what I typically do but remember, this (like any framework) can be tweaked and tailored to fit your unique situation and environment.
Month 1 — Get Context
- Map out Key Stakeholders within and outside your team.
- Network with them; announce yourself.
- Understand what they do and how they interact with the Product Team.
- Identify SME; who knows what?
- Understand the Business, Business Model, Organizational processes and flow of work.
- Understand the product line in general not just your focus area. Again, context is key.
- Define expectations with your line manager. Get clarity, but don’t be afraid to explore opportunity areas eventually.
- Make a Draft Goal list.Month 2 — Get Knowledge
- Check in on your goal list to be sure you are on track.
- Schedule check-ins to get feedback from your line manager and key stakeholders.
- Hack the learning curve. Ask a loooot of questions. Save time trying to figure out stuff all on your own.
- Read up materials and ORGANIZE sessions with SMEs to share their knowledge and build relationships organically.
- Ramp up on your Product Focus area.
- Start to identify low-hanging fruit areas. Generate ideas. Share those ideas.
- Get external context: Industry, competition
- Talk to customers directly, and get product data touch points.
- Track and refine your goals.Month 3 — Get Work Done
- Implement your ideas or initiatives.
- Keep ramping up learning in your focus area.
- Schedule check in’s to get feedback from the line manager and key stakeholders.
- Check-in your Goal List to be sure you are on track.
12. Toyin Olasehinde — Cofounder at Woodcore & Treford (Ex. Product Manager, Interswitch)
First thing is to get familiar with the people you will work with. Familiarize yourself with the team including your main team, cross-functional teams, and heads of different departments…all key stakeholders.
Understand the product itself — watch video demos, product documentations and any key resources on the product.
Understand what stage the product is at, as this helps you to understand what approach you need to take to ace the job.
Ask questions, be open to learning.
Conclusion
In the end, being a product manager is about leading a group of people to create products and services that customers love. Product management is a cross-discipline role that blurs the lines between various departments (engineering, design, QA, marketing etc.).
As a Product Manager, you should keep an eye on where the market is going and the problem areas it may have. Listen and develop empathy for engineers, designers, and customers. Try to identify the key product success factors from each group and acknowledge what their role is in that group. Be open to feedback; enable and improve team collaboration. Be humble too.
Read: What to do in your first two months as a Product Manager by Goodluck Raphael.
As a new PM, be ready to get your hands dirty regardless of your experience.
A Product Manager’s career is measured by the number of their launches. Product launch is important for your career and relationships with your partners, teams, and leadership. It is OK to fail, as long as you and the team learn from the experience.
I hope you have found value in these insights, and have something to carry forward into your roles as leaders, mentors, and managers of Product Managers. The aim of taking the stress to churn out this blog is to help curious product managers learn from top leaders how to be in advance of the market and think like an entrepreneur.
Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section and also tell us how you think Product Managers can ramp up faster in their first 3 months!
About the Author
Goodluck Raphael is the Co-founder of Seams, an online marketplace for custom-designed African fashion. He is a Product Manager with years of progressive experience and has built products that span across the fintech, cryptocurrency, B2B, e-commerce, and logistics industries.
He enjoys meeting people, geeking out on tech and business stuff, and producting. He’s also the biggest Pro-BangaSoup advocate there is 😉.
Connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Just say “Hi” and you just got a new best friend.
