A Year in the Life of a PM

In a dauntless attempt to answer the near ubiquitous question, "What does a Product Manager do?", I decided to dedicate an entire year to recording and sharing my own journey down the product path.

The Product Decision: Contribute to the growing body of knowledge by sharing weekly accounts of my on-the-job product experiences as the Head of Product for a late stage startup.

In an attempt to summarize our collective accomplishments over the past 12 months, I decided to create a simple, 1-page chart that communicates the product advancements and highlights remaining product opportunities.

The Product Decision: Use the familiar customer process as a backdrop for reporting finer-grained enhancements across the entire product suite.

In a week that seemed to bring every form of product choice a PM can encounter, I decided to exhibit strong product leadership on every front.

The Product Decision: Use each and every opportunity to demonstrate solid product governance.

After a year's worth of lessons learned from all the good and bad product decisions I made as my company's Head of Products, I recognized that I would need even more help from the larger community of Product people in the months and years ahead.
The Product Decision: Advance my own professional product capabilities and better address the expanding needs of my company by tapping into the rich pool of talent and experience all around me.

In recognizing that many of the decisions we had made over this past year were not driven by or supported with real evidence, I decided it was time to change how the Product team gathered and used data in our processes.
The Product Decision: Confirm with the team exactly what data we were missing and what we would need to do to get our hands on it.

In recognizing that the Product team would not have the capacity to launch any new projects in the weeks ahead, I reassessed all the in-flight work to identify lower priority items that could be put on the back burner.

The Product Decision: Find good stopping points for some of the projects in motion to clear the path for new initiatives.

To do my part in helping promote the company with external stakeholders, I decided to tune up my product presentation to deliver a compelling blueprint for the future.

The Product Decision: Prepare and pitch a more strategic product roadmap that could accommodate a broader range of business conversations.

In recognizing that we were finally in a position to start gathering real requirements from a prime new customer, I decided to move forward with building a prototype for a new product offering.

The Product Decision: Complete a working prototype that we could use to drive productive conversations with customers around requirements.

As we head into the end-of-year home stretch and the inevitably slower holiday period, I decided to make some roadmap adjustments to ensure we would finish the year strong.

The Product Decision: Line up a collection of smaller stories, projects, and research to advance roadmap initiatives and to keep the teams productive.

In recognizing that the string of recent product successes had (perhaps!) inflated my ego and that that might likely affect my judgment, I decided to devote some time to more sobering aspects of being a Product Manager.

The Product Decision: Balance out all the congratulatory feedback and even my own eternal optimism by purposefully exploring activities that would knock me down a notch.

Over the past weeks, I had lost touch with my colleagues in Marketing, so I decided to take advantage of some mutual schedule alignment and catch up with our Product Marketing Manager.

The Product Decision: Regroup with my counterpart in Product Marketing to get our collective and connected plans in order.

In taking over as the Head of Products in an organization that had lost a great deal of its momentum, I determined that I desperately needed to rebuild trust in the product development function that is so crucial to the productivity of the teams and to the success of the business.

The Product Decision: Consistently make good on authentic product promises by delivering more regularly and more reliably.

In recognizing that my internal team members did not have the time and/or expertise to help with a few of our upcoming and impactful product initiatives, I decided to reach outside the company and use trusted resources to temporarily expand my team.

The Product Decision: Recruit available experts from the company's extended circle of trusted colleagues to help tackle a few pressing product engagements.

It's easy and obvious for everyone to come together and share in the company's larger victories like closing a big deal, but I decided to devote some time to acknowledge, if not revel in some of our minor triumphs too.

The Product Decision: Recognize and applaud the lesser product successes too.

After collecting far too many stories about how customers had resorted to stitching together different parts of our product to solve the same problem, I decided to regroup with the extended product team to revisit how we might address the actual needs of our users.

The Product Decision: Go back to the drawing (white-) board to review this prominent customer use case and find a more suitable way to solve this for our users.

After an exhausting week filled with a product release, an out of town trade show, and more than a dozen meetings with customers, partners and analysts, I decided to disappear into the woods for awhile. 

The Product Decision: Leave the office, the job, and all the people behind and soak up some solace in solitude.

As part of an effort to continuously hone my communication skills - an ability that is vital for all aspiring and incumbent Product Managers, I decided to seek out opportunities to deliver product messages to the outside world.

The Product Decision: Sign up for several public speaking engagements to resume exercising those stagnating muscles.

To accelerate the largest sales opportunity in our pipeline, I agreed to lead a spirited, product-oriented discussion with the prospect free from any heavy sales pressure.

The Product Decision: Demonstrate an impressive pace of innovation through a series of past accomplishments and future intentions and encourage the customer to weigh in on the ongoing roadmap priorities.  

To address one of the most critical problem areas for customers using our software platform, I decided to roll up my sleeves and conduct the fieldwork myself.

The Product Decision: Enlist the help of our User Research expert to coordinate formal interviews with a suitable group of administrators and end users from our active customer base.

To learn more about post-purchase sentiment, I decided to engage with our Customer Success team and become more aware of where our users were struggling.

The Product Decision: Carve out time to listen to and understand some of the problems customers were having with our product and to help identify ways to address each distinct concern.

Knowing that our most important industry trade show was barely a month away, I wanted to do my part to make sure we were adequately prepared and that our products were positioned to show well at the event.

The Product Decision: Kick off early planning for the show to synchronize all the product-related activities across departments.

After getting our major roadmap items underway and finding our rhythm with smaller bugs and enhancement requests, I decided it was time to launch a series of background research tasks.

The Product Decision: Recruit uniquely qualified resources to kick off independent, well-scoped initiatives with a high potential to excite both customers and stakeholders.

After many rounds of discouraging conversations with less experienced and struggling Product Managers both inside and outside my own company, I decided to assemble and share some helpful resources for advancing one's own PM career.

The Product Decision: Create simple orientation assignments for Product Managers who have a genuine appetite for advancing their careers. 

After being invited to participate in our mid-year, internal Sales team rally, I decided to deliver a rousing product presentation to get the troops pumped up.

The Product Decision: Weave together a powerful before/after story that relates the numerous product enhancements as well as our impressive rate of innovation to stir the team and inspire them to carry that message to our customers.

In recognizing that our pre-deployment testing had raised unexpected alarms with some customers and our own Support staff, I decided to straighten out the mess by creating a better feature migration path.

The Product Decision: Instead of forcing a more immediate upgrade on our users, I would stretch out the feature deprecation period and give customers more time and more autonomy to make the transition.

After disappointing results from my previous attempts to stall the momentum building around this "must-have" component, I decided it was time to break out the heavy artillery.

The Product Decision: Use Cagan's Opportunity Assessment to approach this product decision with more rigor and less bias.

After realizing that I had failed in my previous attempts to head off a questionable new product idea being advocated by our head of Sales, I decided to fabricate a bare bones working example to advance the conversation.

The Product Decision: Outsource a simple prototype to an overseas development partner to avoid disrupting the in-house Engineering team.

After realizing my goto resource would be on vacation during the next big deployment, I decided to step in and take the lead on producing the key product documentation.

The Product Decision: Roll up my sleeves, dust off the technical writing skills and crank out the next iteration of our product release notes.

In yet another attempt to get out of the building and sit face to face with my customers, I decided to grab a seat in the next customer training session.

The Product Decision: Spend most of the class in listen-only mode but also weave in more interactive, product-focused discussions. 

In recognizing the work that all the departmental teams had contributed to create this novel product, I decided to orchestrate a group presentation to roll out the new offering to the entire company.

The Product Decision: Preview the new product in a group setting where each department contributes to the larger story.