Introducing Pull Request
Building intuition, one product at a time.
There’s a common question used to assess product managers that tends to go something like this:
If you were a PM at Company X tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d build?
As a product manager, designer, or engineer, chances are you have heard some variation of this question. It hits at the very core of what is expected of successful product teams: assessing, designing, building, and constantly improving.
As a young PM padawan (shoutout Brandon Chu), I am constantly seeking new ways to learn and grow. Scouring blogs, listening to podcasts, and of course, building new things. Still, time and time again I find myself coming back to this classic question. It gets to the heart of what I love about product work: balancing equal parts strategy, creative, and execution to understand what makes something truly great.
In an effort to more deliberately grow as a PM, I am returning to this question and launching Pull Request. To start, I will pick a company every two weeks — something I love and use on a frequent basis. I’ll move through a uniform process to assess the product, evaluate strengths & weaknesses, and ultimately, make a recommendation for maximum impact. As we go, that process will evolve and improve (as will, hopefully, my recommendations), which leads to my goals in this experiment:
- Refine my own process around product development
- Further deepen my product intuition
- Become a more well-rounded PM
- Improve my writing and communication skills
- Connect with other inquisitive people in our product sphere
Though embarking on this journey alone, I hope it grows to include others in our community — be it through feedback, requests, or even direct contribution. Ultimately, I hope we can reimagine the tools we know and love together. And who knows, some of our ideas may actually be worth paying attention to 😉.
Know a product that I should be considering? Leave it in the comments!
