5 things I learned in 2 Months of product management

After working as a developer for 2 years, I switched to product management about 2 months ago and what lies ahead are some of my learnings (in no particular order)in the last 2 months. These, I believe, are the fundamentals of product management —

1. Ideas can come from anybody: We, as product managers are under the assumption that only we should come up with the best ideas. While figuring out solutions to problems is our job, it’s not always necessary that only we will have the best of the ideas. Many times the best ideas will be coming from designers, engineers, QA or any teammate for that matter, so we should keep our mind open and embrace the best solutions to the problems. All in all, don’t overlook someone’s brilliant idea just to fan your ego.
2. Data should guide us, not lead: Well, we can’t hear of this enough. Data is important but using this the right way is much more important. Using data crunching, we can know WHAT our users are doing on our platform, how they are behaving on our platform but to figure out WHY they are behaving the way they are behaving is really tricky. Data will not give us all the answers. Data will help us figure out the problem but not the solution. And that’s where the product managers come in picture. Use data very optimally, extract the right insights, build hypothesis by integrating the insights and our understanding of the user behaviour, and conceptualise experiments around it.
3. Measuring results in the right way: Shipping things is a very important part of a PM’s job but what’s equally (if not more) important is measuring the results. Have an expected output of the experiment in your mind far before it is built, it will help you in deciding the success or failure of that particular experiment. Measuring results consists of the change in CTR, impact on other CTAs and deep analysis of all the other factors which might have correlation with the CTR. Make sure you’re not comparing apples against oranges.
4. Staying user centric: Know your users otherwise you’ll be shooting in the dark. The most insightful activity you can be involved in as a PM is user research. Talk to users, go through user feedback on play store, handle user queries, see how users are responding on your social media pages, or be in constant touch with the people in your company who do all of these things on a daily basis. Put this insightful information into a vision for your product and then you’ll be building the right things. Know the people you’re building products for.
5. Balance: Being a product manager, your usual day will lack a structure. Generally your day will consist of a.) Coordinating with engineers, designers, and QA for the ongoing tasks b.) Measuring the results of the previous experiments/features c.) Data crunching and inferring insights from data d.) Talking to users. All these tasks require completely different states of minds and switching context is harder than it seems. Give yourselves some time and figure out what routine (order of tasks) works best for you. However, be prepared for any situations which might need your immediate attention so schedule your tasks accordingly. Unfortunately many times you will have to skip your “thinking time” to handle the day-to-day tasks so be prepared with a back-up-schedule for at least that particular task. All in all, product management is more of a lifestyle rather than a job profile so balance your lifestyle and don’t forget to have fun in the meantime.

To sum it up, these 5 things are the essentials for being on a right track of product management and will help anyone who is starting his/her career in product management.

Originally published at medium.com on September 1, 2018.