Coffee with Amy, Product Manager
Amy Scott, Product Manager (PM) at Later, ended our call by stating her next task was the daily standup with her development team. What a Product thing to say. She was referring to the Agile software development practice of a daily standup meeting. Matt Lemay touches on this concept in his book, “Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century.” Described as a daily meeting where everyone on the team stands up and highlights their progress, current tasks, and any roadblocks. Learning more about Agile is already on my To-Do list since such concepts were deficient within the Oil and Gas industry.
I wanted to dig into some key Product Management concepts for new and prospective PM’s. Amy provided me with some guidelines to start. Obviously, take some Agile courses to learn how development teams operate. As the industry is evolving, she advised to stay up to date on the trends and ‘understand the lingo’. The most direct path is with Podcasts and articles, especially from helpful idols in the industry. Amy’s favourites are Gibson Biddle, April Dunford, and Naomi Gleit. She touched on many key elements I should get familiar with, including Scrum, Jira, API’s, SAFe Agile, A/B Testing, Multivariant Testing, and Figma. Siri, add these to my To-Do List.
We went back a forth on a few concepts and started to talk about the future of Product Management. Amy was optimistic about the growth potential and was delighted to share some highlights. Her belief is that there will be a strong pull towards Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These will allow for scalability beyond what is imaginable today. Product managers will become more specialized in developing these technologies, evolving from being a product generalist. A successful future will require companies to pursue Product Led Growth with platforms that can scale, leveraging micro-transactions to optimize the business model.
The day-to-day grind, what does this look like for Amy? At Later, every day is different. Their website states, “The world’s favorite Instagram marketing platform (and much more).” She works on development of a web-based platform for influencer marketing and social media scheduling. Some days are spent breaking down product strategy into feature sets and user stories. These will subsequently be refined into development tasks. Other times she may be reviewing usage analytics to review the success of the product. The revenue arrives from users attempting to amplify their brands. A freemium Saas (Software as a Service) model is utilized to drive upgrades to higher tier subscriptions. Users will pay a monthly fee to access upgraded sets of features.
Now time for a little fun, talking about some personal preferences of the job. In Amy’s opinion, the best part about the job is the ‘Sweet Spot’ right after a product launch. This is where your work shines by verifying your hypothesis. Watching user sessions allows additional insight into the minds of users and triggers a continuous improvement cycle. The worst part of the job? Getting conflicting stakeholder feedback. Some ideas may at odds with the user data. Some opinions may come at inopportune times. This can all add up to a large amount of time justifying the product direction.
How have Amy’s duties changed over time? Let’s isolate her pivot and go forward from there. Initially, she was brought into a tech company as a marketing specialist tasked with bringing in ‘more traffic’. She was immediately drawn to the work of the development teams. Her interests evolved from dealing with traffic to dealing with usage. This growing product interest sparked an ambition for her to switch into the Product Manager role. Thankful for her past opportunities, she was recently hired by Later as a Product Manager. In this new role, she initially worked to familiarize herself with the users, the ‘tech stack’, and the ‘dev teams’. With an increased level of responsibility, she now collaborates with stakeholders to execute product strategy. This includes developing roadmaps to align with the CEO’s 3-year plan. She is confident that the CEO has a strong vision that aligns with her beliefs on the challenges ahead.
There was still an elephant in the room. We had yet to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic. She admitted that there were both positive and negative impacts on the technology industry. Let’s discuss some of the negatives, which many workers had to endure during prolonged lockdowns. In addition to the stress and anxiety, working from home had its own set of challenges. While exclusively online, some group sessions would see largely silent avatars on the Zoom screen. Amy’s personality and working style would shine brightest during in-person interactions. Live, face-to-face, settings would have allowed for more immersive collaboration during whiteboard sessions. Stopping by a desk for a ‘micro-conversation’ to resolve a minor understanding was no longer possible. Everything was now a ‘formal meeting’ on Zoom, so organization skills were more critical than ever. Switching gears to the positive, technology adoption has accelerated through the pandemic. The value of the digital transformation is highlighted by all the organizations and people that had to pivot into digital life. This has led to a structural change in thinking by our population and our relationship with technology.
Amy works for Later in Vancouver, BC. I wondered if there were any Calgary companies that interested her. She highlighted two that stood out from the crowd. Orennia is a renewable power analytics company that piqued her interest. Their goal is to assist organizations “Make the most of your energy transition investments”. She also pointed to Absorb Software which is an “Award-Winning Learning Management System for Business”. I’ll be adding these to my company watch list. She commented that Calgary’s tech future was getting brighter, and I nodded in agreement.
We eventually came around to discuss the ambiguity of the Product Manager role. Different organizations and individuals have different interpretations of the job. With Amy’s previous role there was a Product Manager, Scrum Master, Program Manager, and Product Owner. Her current Product Manager role includes all of the things. The general idea is that the Product Manager’s goal is to successfully execute product strategy, regardless of the vague job description.
Before we ended our conversation, Amy wanted to add a quick note about design sprints. These start with a specific user problem which the team brainstorms, storyboards and sketches. A product prototype is created and tested with real life customers for fast feedback. Usually, this team includes a Product Manager, Front End Developer, Back End Developer, UX/UI (User Experience/User Interface) Designer, and sometimes a Marketer. This ‘light sprint’ is a key function to achieve a minimum viable product (MVP) and validate a hypothesis.
As I expressed my gratitude and we were waving goodbye, Amy said — “I have my standup next.” What a Product thing to say.
References
LeMay, M. (2018). Product management in practice: A real-world guide to the key connective role of the 21st Century. O’Reilly.
All-in-one Social Media Scheduler & Link in bio tool. Later. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://later.com/
Orennia. ORENNIA Inc. (2022, March 4). Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://orennia.com/
Award-winning Learning Management System for Business. Learning Management System — Learning Platform | Absorb LMS Software. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://www.absorblms.com/
