A Day in the Life of a Product Manager
TechTogether Boston 2019 was my first hackathon and in many ways, a way for me to explore the world of technology. Having majored in finance and entrepreneurship, I had no exposure to computer science nor did I know where to start. All I knew was that I liked building products and solving problems.
After experiencing TTB as a hacker and later as the Co-Director of Operations, I learned to become comfortable with the development process even as a non-programmer. This has helped me a lot post-graduation in my full-time role as an associate product manager for consumer revenue at Boston Globe Media. At the Globe, my responsibilities primarily involve building products to promote the acquisition and retention of our digital subscription business.
While a product manager’s role and responsibilities vary at every company, here is a look into what my days look like. Every day is a bit different and I have a lot of flexibility and control over organizing my schedule. PMs are thought of as mini CEOs without any authority and my role somewhat mirrors that idea, in the sense that I’m given a goal or an idea and have to work on it from the very beginning to implementation and even maintenance post-release. How I go about the product development process is completely up to me and that makes it super challenging and fun.
Without further ado, here is how my days pan out:
Morning
I like to wake up by 7–7:30 am and start my day off slowly with some freshly brewed coffee and by getting up to date on what’s happening in the world.
Usually, I’m at my desk by 8 am and start checking my email, calendar and to-do list. I find the hour before everyone logs on to be very tranquil and it helps me organize my day. I use that time to also prepare for that day’s meetings and start chipping away at the ever-so-long To-Do list. Nothing more satisfying than crossing something off as ‘Done’.
Once every week starting at 9:30 am, the product and the design teams have a check-in where we share project updates, discuss cross-team efforts and allocate design resources.
Next up I have 2 stand-ups every morning. One is a regular team huddle about sprint progress, where we address any blockers and discuss release logistics. The other one has the same function but is focused on a special project.
After standup, I usually work on any action items that come out of the morning meetings such as creating tickets, getting priority on projects, investigating a bug, etc.
Afternoon
Usually, 40–60% of my day consists of meetings and the bulk of those meetings take place post-lunch. Also when I need a large coffee refill!
The substance of the meetings depends on which stage of product development and scrum process the team is at.
Scrum Meetings:
Our sprints are 2 weeks long, hence some recurring meetings happen before, during, and after a sprint.
One-on-Ones:
One of the main responsibilities of a PM is managing stakeholder expectations and delivering products that can help the business achieve certain goals. I have found that having 1–1s with key stakeholders helps me connect with my colleagues (especially now that everyone is working remotely) and also understand their goals and motivations better.
I meet with PMs from other teams once a week too. It’s great to vent about similar problems and share best practices to solve them. We also coordinate cross-team efforts and sometimes just talk about books and wanting to vacation on an island somewhere, because what else are we dreaming about during this pandemic.
New Idea Exploration:
This is the part of the job that I live for — Ideating and constructing the user experience.
Sometimes I get specific project requirements from stakeholders, sometimes I’ll only have a vague goal or sometimes I push for ideas of my own. Either way, I meet with people on multiple teams to piece everything together before it is ready for the developers to chip away at.
There is a lot of back and forth that happens before we land at the stage where we can finalize the MVP (minimum viable product). When I first started my job (~7 months ago), this process was very overwhelming and I felt a strong wave of imposter syndrome. Now I am learning to be more comfortable with not knowing everything and pushing myself to work harder without the negative self-talk. Harder said than done though! It definitely gets easier when you have great colleagues that are super supportive. I learn so much from them every single day and can’t wait to see all the cool projects we work on together in the future!
Evening
I try to wrap up any leftover urgent tasks for the day by 4:30 pm and use the last half hour to plan for the next day. To keep work-life balance, the goal is to get off work by 5 or latest by 5:30 pm and spend the rest of the day for myself. I’ve found that going outdoors (for boba or groceries or just a walk) helps me reset and feel like the workday has ended.
Thanks for reading about my day as a product manager, I hope it was insightful. If you are a fellow PM, feel free to connect and we can geek out about PM-ing, or if you are looking to become a PM or just want to chat, please feel free to reach out as well!
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