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Like any other job, product management can oftentimes be a very overwhelming experience for any individual joining a new company. When I first transitioned into my first product role, I was completely lost and found myself scrambling to different meetings without proper context of what was going on. As I’ve watched and helped new product managers ramp up in our company, I’ve found that it’s important to take the following 5 steps as a new product manager:

1) Meet Everyone on the Team

Some of the most successful PMs we’ve onboarded have immediately taken the time to introduce themselves and schedule 1 on 1 chats with every member of the team. It’s important not to be over-intrusive here, look for times when team members aren’t swamped to schedule chats and get to know everyone on a personal level. Continue Reading

There are quite a few agile development methodologies that lean companies use today. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) is a popular one that I’ve had the most experience in, so I’d like to give a quick primer to what ATDD is, some of its benefits and drawbacks, and a simple test example.

What is ATDD?

ATDD is an agile development methodology that emphasizes close discussion and agreement among developers, product managers, and QA testers about the end product’s specifications, before any coding takes place.

Typically when a product manager presents requirements for a product the developers ask clarifying questions to make sure they understand what is being requested. However it’s quite common that misunderstandings still happen –  depending on how the developers interpreted the requirements and clarifications, the actual end product could turn out very differently from what the PM originally had in mind. Continue Reading

The role of a product manager is multi-faceted and product managers often work with many different groups of people in a company. Of course, the extent to which product managers work with other groups depends on individual companies, taking into account factors such as the size of the company or the company’s focus.

In this post I hope to provide an overview of the groups I’ve personally worked with in my projects, based on the UX-Technology-Business organizational framework. I’m a PM at a large e-commerce company, so you’ll see a much more nuanced breakdown of groups compared to smaller companies, as well as e-commerce-specific groups such as site merchandising. Continue Reading

What’s the difference between product manager vs. project manager? It certainly doesn’t help that both are named so similarly, and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been incorrectly labeled as a project manager.

To start, the two disciplines have fundamentally different purposes.

The goal of product management is to maximize return on investment, and that means that product managers are making bold bets. As a product manager, you’ll focus on your product vision, and a successful product will unlock exponential value that didn’t exist within your company before.

On the other hand, the goal of project management is to minimize downside risk. The focus of the project manager is to ensure that initiatives complete on scope, on time, and on budget. Therefore, a successful project is defined by how well-scoped it was, and whether resources were used efficiently or not. The project team is pre-assigned with duties at the very start of the project, and each team member knows exactly what their deliverables are, months in advance. Continue Reading

When I first started in product management, I had no idea what I was doing. I had just barely managed to land the job and now that I had gotten my foot in the door, I wasn’t sure what product manager skills I needed to contribute tangible value to the team.

Through the past few years, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve synthesized the top 3 skills you should develop to be a great product manager.

The top three skills are:

1. Empathy
2. Organization, Prioritization, Communication
3. Driving Analysis and Insight

I’ll dive into each below.

1) Empathy

I’m a firm believer that you cannot succeed in this field and be a successful product manager if you do not have the capacity to understand the emotions of others around you. As a product manager, you simply deal with too many different stakeholders and having the empathy to understand everyone’s motives will allow you to cut through the noise, make the right trade-offs, and set a clear vision for your product. Continue Reading