Product Hero #8 — Marcell Almeida

Hello Product Lovers!

Lets start without blablabla. The Product Hero from this week is…

Marcell Almeida!

"I think there is no PM with morning routine"

Is curious because I met Marcell in person just a few weeks ago, at the Product Meetup. But we already talk a lot about the product, product and… the product on our Product Group. He worked in a lot of digital companies, like Globo.com, EasyTaxi, Co-founded one fintech, grana.me and now he works as Product Manager at VivaReal. Marcell is super involved with the Product community and spoken in a lot of events, always with good points and analysis. Ok, let's start.

How do you explain your job to ‘normal’ people (like grandparents…)

In short: I don’t manage anyone. Instead of that, I manage the success of the product by managing the vision and how we get there. I help software engineers to develop the right features to delivery business value.
Product management is defining the strategy and roadmap of a product or feature. It is a cross-functional discipline, and to do it well, I need to understand every aspect of the business. Everyday I need to be strategic and tactical, creative and technical, utopian and pragmatic.

What’s your morning routine at work as a Product Manager?

I would be lying if I said I have a routine. I think there is no PM with morning routine. But the closest to a morning routine is when I get ready for the rest of the day by

i) checking and answering e-mails

ii) checking new bugs and deciding about prioritizing them or not

iii) check current sprint

iv) check KPIs

Where do you get your inspiration? (links, books, activities…)

• Blogs
  Intercom’s Blog (https://blog.intercom.io/)
  Ellen’s Blog (https://blog.ellenchisa.com/)
  Ken Norton (https://www.kennorton.com/)
  The Information (https://www.theinformation.com/)
• Books
  Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics (Pretty basic but it’s a must read if you don’t have much experience being data-driven);
  Hard things about hard things (The best book i’ve read in my entire life);
  Running Lean (Great book to open your mind about being lean. Much more specific and detailed when compared with Lean Startup).

What’s your type of Product Manager?

I like to build new products that can impact the company on mid-term and sometimes long-term. I don’t like doing things that move 1% or 2% of some “important” metric. There is a lot of PMs who focus on that and I think it’s fine. It isn’t my style.

What was your biggest mistake/fail? And what you learned?

While I was working on Easy Taxi Corporate we recreated our tax request screen but instead of doing it on small iterations I was dumb to prioritize something huge and it took us about 2 months. It was completely the opposite of lean and we got stuck doing a huge refactoring to delivery that. It was stupid but a huge lesson.

Your tips to anyone who wants to be a Product Manager

Go to every event about product that you can find. Meet people. Ask questions (even dumb ones!) Put yourself out there! Without doing that, your career will not improve.
In SP there is a lot of product meetups, and I organize one of them along with other PMs. São Paulo Product Meetup (https://www.meetup.com/SP-Product-Meetup/) happens every month, and we have great discussions about product management. Anyone is welcome — even if you don’t work with product.

Who is your favorite superhero?

Rocky Balboa (for me he is a superhero, ok?)

Tell something about you that you like to share (or not)

I like to invest in the stock market. In the past I lost a lot of money — an amount equivalent to a brand new car. But hey, that’s just life isn’t? Some days you win and some days you lose. Nowadays I keep investing but with much more caution and making thoughtful decisions.

What is your super power? (besides being a product manager)

I can get anything done even if I don’t know how — in those cases I usually find the right people to help me.

Your final considerations…

Focus on the right things! I know we want to build the best things with the latest technologies. We always try to cover all user cases to provide incredible experiences for our users. But that’s not possible! We need to create features that matter for most of our users. We will never satisfy 100% of them.
- Don’t delay a great thing to be delivered to most users because a few of them are going to be pissed.
- Don’t celebrate when your delivery a new feature. Delivering a feature has no value. Start celebrating when you see your clients using your feature. Celebrate more when you see your clients being delighted by this new feature. Never celebrate deliveries!
- Building a product is collaborative. Communication and relationships are key.

Thank you bro!

If you want check other #ProductHeroes, take a look below:

#0 — @arthurklose: https://goo.gl/SjSr88 |

#1 — Thiago Diniz: https://goo.gl/xfSSmA

#2 — Filipi Neves: https://goo.gl/PqTHDt |

#3 — Demian Borba: https://goo.gl/r5ZTDA

#4 — Alex Ivonika: https://goo.gl/jYv5gU |

#5 — Liza Marques de Mello: https://goo.gl/5vyCIS

#6 — Raphael Farinazzo: https://goo.gl/3Qs1Ah

#7- Victor Lima: goo.gl/xHNM3s