What to Do in First 90 Days of Product Manager Job

Offset 30–60–90 Days in a New Production Director Job

It has been a rather long break since my previous postal service. A few things have happened in the final few months. I moved from Bombay to Bangalore in Feb 2020 to bring together ThoughtSpot. Amidst moving houses, setting into a new chore and dealing with the Covid normal, unfortunately the web log got ignored.

That said, allow's come back to this blog post.

This mail service is most what one should do in the first thirty–lx–ninety days of joining a new product management chore. It'due south mostly based on my learnings of settling into my role in ThoughtSpot. Prior to joining the company, I had made a checklist of things I should do to assistance me settle into the new function. The checklist I had created spanned a few areas such equally:

• Squad
• Managing director
• Customers
• Product
• Market & Competitors
• Production Management Process

I'll cover each of these areas in more particular below.

Squad

This aspect covers the immediate team members you will be working with as well as folks you might not interact with on a regular basis. Here's what has worked for me:

• Get to know the different members of the teams you'll be working with on a daily basis and what they practise. This would primarily include the product, pattern and engineering teams. You could, as an example, have meals with the folks you'll exist working with. This is a great style to build that initial rapport.
• Accept ane-on-1s with key members across different teams to help build a ameliorate agreement of the market place, the product, the company culture etc.
• Equally a product manager tends to interact with people beyond various functions, y'all should also aim to get to know folks beyond other functions such as back up, success, sales and marketing.

These interactions will also help you sympathise the team dynamics and cultural norms of the company. This includes things such as how decisions are made, how conflicts and disagreements are handled, the challenges that the company faces etc.

Manager

Edifice a salubrious professional person relationship with the manager is mayhap the near critical thing that one should focus on in a new task. This entails many different things:

• Get to know the director on a personal level — their groundwork, why they joined the company etc.
• Become an understanding of your role & responsibilities, goals, objectives and KPIs that will drive your success.
• Work with your manager to create a thirty–60–90 24-hour interval plan for your first 30, 60 and 90 days into your new job. This will ensure that the expectations are set and that y'all have a articulate path ahead of you. You would and so review this plan at the end of 30 days, and so 60 days then 90 days to ensure you're on track.
• Understand the manager's goals and priorities for their job. While information technology is of import to empathise one's ain goals, it is too important to get a perspective on the managing director's goals and what will make them successful.
• Know the org chart and ask the manager for a listing of fundamental people yous should become to know in the company. Perhaps even get the director to facilitate the introductions.
• Understand the squad dynamics and culture norms of the company from the manager'due south perspective. I had previously covered this point nether Team but information technology applies here as well.
• Empathise the challenges that the company faces from the manager's perspective. These challenges could be related to various aspects — the product, sales, marketing, back up etc.
• Familiarize yourself with the manager's working style — do they prefer daily or weekly check-ins, are they more easily-on or do they adopt autonomy etc.
• Ensure that your manager has gear up a proficient onboarding procedure for you: you've been added to the relevant Slack groups, JIRA etc., you accept a listing of documents you can go through to sympathize the product meliorate, you've been enrolled into a formal training workshop (if the company has i), you've been assigned an onboarding buddy to aid yous out etc.

Customers

Before you even get into the details of the production, it is important to empathise who the customers are and why they utilise the production. This doesn't necessarily mean you accept to encounter with your customers. You lot could ask your colleagues or your managing director the following:

• The segments and detailed user personas that the visitor sells the product to — where they are based, the size of the company, the industry they are in, the business functions and the title and roles of the people who use the production etc.
• The concern problems that the product is trying to solve and how that translates into the various features in the product. You could also shadow sales people on their calls with customers to become a better understanding of the business concern issues that the production aims to solve.
• What was the customer'southward setup prior to using your product and what are the challenges they faced with that setup?
• What is the bear upon of the product on your client's business?
• What other business issues do they confront that are not addressed by the production? What are the shortcomings of the product?

I tend to start interacting with customers directly only when I have the requisite knowledge of who the customers are, what the product does etc. This means that my interactions with customers would starting time probably the 2d month onwards.

Production

As a production manager, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the product. I suggest doing the following:

• Go through the product documentation, roadmap, product demo videos etc. to understand the production in item.
• If the visitor has a formal product preparation plan, ensure that you enroll in information technology. Or at to the lowest degree go through the production training videos to know the product meliorate.
• Sign up for an account and run into what the product onboarding process is like and think about how it can be improved.
• Ask engineers well-nigh the high-level technical compages of the product.
• Understand the product vision, the product strategy and how that translates into the brusk-term and long-term product roadmap.
• Understand the cardinal product metrics.
• Know the key differentiators of the production. Or in other words, the main value propositions of the product vis a vis the competitors.
• Build an understanding of the various challenges with the product — the weaknesses in the production, what exercise customers complain most about, why are sales deals lost from a production perspective etc. Sitting with the support team for a week to answer tickets is a great manner to get perspective.

Market place & Competitors

While you lot have a proficient understanding of the customers and the product, it is also good to know the market place in full general.

• Get through Gartner reports and articles that cover the space that your company is in.
• Who are the competitors? How does their product differ from yours? What are their core value propositions?
• Who are their customers?Is the competitors' client base the same every bit yours?
• Where does the competitors' production lack? You could get this data past going through product reviews on G2, Capterra etc.

Product Management Process

Different companies have different processes and frameworks they follow for building products. Some are more structured and some advert hoc. Therefore, in addition to agreement the product, it is equally of import to sympathise the process the visitor follows to build the products. Larn about the following:

• How are product roadmaps built and prioritized? What product roadmap frameworks does the organization employ? How is backlog managed? How practice they work on bugs and enhancements along with new features?
• What is the process of edifice products — how practice yous drive product ideation, how exercise product and pattern piece of work together, at what bespeak is QA involved in the product edifice stage, what are the sprint cycles similar, what is the sprint planning process etc.
• What does the product spec cover?
• Where are product ideas captured? Can you meet a list of customers that have requested a particular feature?
• What is the process of dealing with NPS and other product feedback?
• What issues does the team more often than not face up in building products? This also covers inter-personal issues such as those between production, design and engineering teams.

At ThoughtSpot, I concluded up doing most of the things to a higher place in my beginning 30–threescore–90 days in the company.

In the starting time 30 days, it was of import for me to know my goals and objectives, equally well every bit to build trust with my peers and director. I also ended upward writing a few PRDs in my first 60 days in the visitor. Having to write the PRDs necessitated a thorough understanding of the customers, the product, the competitive landscape etc. Working on the PRDs besides helped build a good rapport with my counterparts in the design and engineering science team. Afterward the first 30 days, I also started coming together with customers. This was critical in agreement and building empathy for them and their business bug. These discussions with customers too gave me insights into other business concern problems we could solve in the future.

One affair that I was not able to do in the first 90 days at ThoughtSpot was build a roadmap for the product I pb. In hindsight, I retrieve one should aim to build a product roadmap past the cease of those 90 days. A well-idea through roadmap would lay a solid foundation and enable you lot to succeed in your role.

That'southward all, folks. I hope this helps you lot effortlessly transition into your new PM job!

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Source: https://arpitrai.medium.com/first-30-60-90-days-in-a-new-product-manager-job-43d380b34f14

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