How product management works remotely at Razorpay

Okay, I set out to write a guide to remote product management tips and tried doing some research. I quickly realized that most of the articles I found were too preachy and didn’t seem like they would work as-is in a remote setting for a chaotic startup.

So, I started thinking about how we have been doing remote work and what we do to make product management better at Team Razorpay. Here’s a gist:

While a Product manager works on various aspects and it is impossible to cover everything in a single post, I’ll try to divide this post into 3 main areas of improvement: Communication, Meetings, and Relationships.

A note before we get started, I use tool names like Zoom, Slack, Google drive, and Asana in the article. These are just the ones we use. Similar workflows can be achieved on any video conferencing, messaging, cloud storage, and project management tool that your organization might use.

Communication

1. Let everyone read your work

It’s impossible to have everyone in a meeting. Or to ensure that they retain everything discussed in a meeting. This is why we take a lot of pride in product documentation at Razorpay and ensure there is a document available for almost every decision we make.

Fun fact — We have a multi-page document on why a portion of the team decided to make all Wednesdays in a month No-meeting Wednesdays for them.

Also, we ensure that all documents unless confidential are shared with read and comment access on the organization’s Google drive. This is immensely helpful because I don’t have to worry about knowing the right person to ask a question. I can just search on Google Drive and get the relevant document and find out the owner.

These documents are tagged and pinned on slack channels and meeting invites to make them popular.

2. Avoid emails like a plague, use Public channels instead

Emails are essential for external communication. However, internally, emails are dreaded for two reasons: One, they are private by design and hamper others to be able to jump in on conversations unless explicitly invited, and two, they are completely non-actionable.

You can’t set deadlines on email. You can’t assign owners. And yes, there are tools that help with all of it but email is simply not designed to be effective at getting work done.

Instead, we use threads on public channels. Every project and team have their own channels and we use them extensively for conversations.

This creates transparency and accountability. But this could still be better. Slack threads aren’t inherently actionable. We are trying to move to Asana for a lot of our focused conversations.

Slack will still continue to be our source of truth and the place to create visibility for the larger organization.

3. Create FAQ channels on slack

When you launch a new product or feature in a remote environment, no matter how many FAQs you add to the release document, there will always be queries. There will be confusion and the need for bringing everyone back on the same page.

Going back to the document is a popular choice but it’s almost impossible to ensure everyone reads every update in a document.

Instead, we use a slack channel where only the product manager and the product marketer can post as an FAQ channel. It’s much easier to add responses to common queries here and ensure that the relevant teams are on the same page.

This has been a game-changer for zero-to-one products and feature releases.

4. Use Asana for discussions to become actionable

We have a love/hate relationship with Asana. Everyone agrees that the end state of all conversations being action items in Asana is great but the inertia of moving everyone and everything to Asana is huge.

I have at least 100 threads open at any point in time. How do you move all of it to Asana?

But newer discussions and cross-pod conversations are now moving to Asana and we can see the difference already.

Meetings

1. Switch to a phone call for casual 1:1s

This is a hack that I found by chance but has become an absolutely important part of my conversations.

Zoom is formal. Especially in 1:1s where it is almost rude to not turn on a video, it is very limiting.

Once in a while, I prefer moving 1:1s to a phone call. The first 5–10 minutes are to get the important stuff away but then it’s almost like talking to a friend. Catching up on the weekend, a game we both enjoy, or something happening outside of our immediate work that we are both interested in all becomes conversation points.

On Zoom, this feels like a waste of time. On a phone call, it seems natural.

2. Add detailed agenda items and use a pre-read format

Meetings can be taxing on people’s calendars and their minds. We ensure detailed agenda is added to meetings to ensure the outcomes of the meeting and the expectation from various stakeholders is clear.

I’ve regularly seen people decline meetings citing “No agenda added” and accept invites once this changes. This creates a culture of ownership and ensures no one in the meeting is wasting their time.

We are also trying to move from presentations to documents for discussions. Making presentations is time-consuming and difficult to consume without context.

So we write a document with all the relevant information and list open questions that we are trying to address in the meeting. We spend the first few minutes silently reading the document and adding comments. Once this is done, we go over the comments one-by-one. Moderators also try to respond to simpler questions on the comments themselves to focus on the more important questions.

This makes meetings 10x productive in my opinion.

3. Don’t just show up, show your face

We push people to keep their videos on at least for some part of the meeting if not all through a call. Especially when someone asks a question or their question is being answered.

The non-verbal cues are a godsend and make virtual conversations effective.

Personally, I tend to keep my video on for most of the conversation as it helps me focus and not be lost in one of those 100 threads on slack.

4. Use meetings for walkthroughs and not just decisions

Meetings are a great tool for making decisions and are horrible to give updates. All of us have been a part of several meetings that could have been an email or a slack thread.

However, in the world that we live in now, it’s important to get to consensus quickly. A meeting where I go over a product requirement in detail and bring all my stakeholders on the same page is what I call a walkthrough meeting.

I have heard innumerable times that this is the most productive form of meeting that my stakeholders have to attend.

Relationships

1. Set up bakar time on calendar

Cigarette and lunch breaks are important because it is a product manager’s job to maintain relationships outside of work. It’s important to create a rapport with the team and understand the team’s dynamic.

We manage this by setting up bakar time on the calendar once a week. We usually end up playing games or talking to new joiners. At times we talk to someone who is just back from a trip and understand their experiences.

Not everyone attends all bakar sessions but that is okay. It’s supposed to be serendipitous and not a chore.

Note- I use the term ‘bakar’ here as a catch-all. It’s difficult to define the boundaries of what constitutes such conversations but consider it a combination of watercooler, rants, off-topic debates along with other informal forms of conversation.

2. Alignment over OKRs

My ex-manager taught me an amazing lesson in my last meeting with him.

I was pushing him to add guard rail OKRs to opposing teams (growth<>risk, sales<>marketing) to ensure collaboration. This is pretty common in other companies I have worked at and ensures enablement of each other’s goals. Or so I thought.

He said that no matter how many OKRs you create for every team, true success cannot be found until alignment on vision is achieved. Every metric you try to track will get fudged and gamed. The only way to guarantee success is to align on vision.

I’ll carry his words through fondly for the rest of my career. (Thanks Pradeep.)

3. Discuss more than work on social media

I obsessively follow as many of my colleagues as I can on LinkedIn and Twitter. The close ones are even on my Instagram. Of course, everyone is different in this regard and should follow what comes naturally to them.

It’s amazing to get an insight into who they are outside of work and engage with them on common topics that make us all human.

I learn so much from their experiences and opinions. I’ve also seen people discuss roadmap items on Twitter. :)

4. Create channels to discuss domain knowledge

If you have been working in the same company or domain for several years, it’s easy to assume that everyone understands the industry and the customer’s thought process. In no way are we trying to undermine those who don’t know enough or that we don’t want to help them learn more.

However, this hampers a newbie’s confidence in being able to ask basic questions.

At Razorpay, we set up customer-connect and competition-news channels for all our products. These channels help people talk about what’s happening in the world, what do customers think, and how we can bring about a change in the way things are being done right now.

These channels also become the starting point for new joiners to ask questions and identify who to reach out to when they are stuck with something.

That’s it for today. There are so many things that I had been doing at Razorpay just because everyone did it. But while writing this article, I was able to reflect on these activities in detail and understand the importance and nuances behind each of the points mentioned above.

Please let me know if any of these ideas are interesting for you and if you want me to detail out anything further. Also, what does your company do to make product work better while we work from home?

PS — If you are interested in joining Razorpay or just want to understand Razorpay’s product culture better, please drop me a line at hi@mittuled.com (or DM me on Twitter) and I’d love to talk to you.

This is also the second post in my 7-day challenge of publishing every day.