What's up, everybody?
So this is all about how to excel at the role once you've already got the product management job, and
because this is all about how to excel after you've already got the job,
I'm assuming you've got the job.
And in that case, congratulations.
I'm so happy for you, it brings a tear to my eye.
And if only there were a way that I could, through the screen, congratulate you or make you happy.
How about this bear suit?
I will teach the rest of this lecture in this bear suit, with these claws, because you make me so happy
to be a product management instructor - you've got the job!
So once you've got your first product management job, it can be a little bit daunting trying to figure
out what the first thing is that you should do.
But bear with me here, product management is notorious for having one of the longest ramp-up times for
a lot of jobs out there.
By that, I mean it's really, usually taking a lot of time to get completely comfortable with the role.
This is because the work you do involves so many different teams, and you need to understand the history
and goals of each one to do the best work.
What I'm going to do here is give you some tips on things to do as soon as you get the job and start work.
These tips will make you "beary" much more effective at your role.
All right, so tip number one: schedule one-on-ones with everyone in the team.
If you're at a large company, you don't have to meet with literally everybody, but be sure that you at least
meet with the leaders of each major team.
Ask them what their goals are and what challenges they have.
Take notes, so that you can refer back later.
All right.
Step two is arrange a meeting with the lead engineer on your team and talk about the technical stuff.
Have them explain to you how the architecture looks on the back-end in detail and what sorts of technologies
they use, like databases, and languages, and that sort of thing.
Also, ask them what the biggest technical challenges are, and make sure you understand the basics of how
data is stored, and, again, what languages they use, and where the sticking points are, what they're having trouble with.
This will just help you build a great relationship with the engineers, and it will make sure that you
know what you're getting yourself into, if you're going to try to change something major on the back-end with a feature.
All right, so the next tip is start talking to users.
When you join a lot of companies, it's going to appear as if they know exactly what users want, and
even show you user feedback that they've received in the past or over the last couple of years.
However, it's extremely important,
or should I say "beary" important, to talk to your users and get the best idea of what is important to them.
You want to see this yourself, because you may draw some different conclusions.
After all, you're a brilliant product thinker.
Some things you can do here are ask to join in on a sales call, go to sales meetings, spend some time
with the customer service team, helping them answer user questions and tickets that people send in for support.
Things of this nature is what you're going for.
I also like to do a quick Google search for things that people say about the company on the social web
sites, like the Twitter and the Reddit.
Number four.
My bear head is falling off, but read every internal document you can get your hands on.
I recommend you ask or find documentation for the epics and mobile releases that have been made in
the past, as well as things like sales decks and internal presentations.
All of these things are going to help you get a great historical view of the product and what has happened over time.
Tip number five: look at the data. As soon as you have the chance,
you should take a look at the existing metrics for the product.
If there's a data science team or any data analysts, ask to have a meeting with them where they describe
the types of data that are available in terms of metrics, and any plans they have around implementing more tracking.
Sometimes, you might not think there's enough tracking to make the best decisions, and you'll have to
make an effort with your team to track more.
Tip number six: meet with the boss.
You should make it a top priority to have a meeting with either the head of product or the CEO to ask
them about expectations for your role, but also to understand their goals.
Make sure what you talk about is related to what metrics they're trying to optimize for and what they'd
really like for you to do in this role.
What are their biggest problems? Like, what are they fearful of over the next year, in terms of stuff that's
going to be challenging or maybe what competitors are doing?
You can also ask them about things like process improvements internally that need to be made, or improving marketing.
These are all things that you can help out with as a product manager.
All right.
With those tips, you're going to be in a "beary" good position to do the best work as soon as possible in your new role.
Like my claws are sharp - and I do mean my claws because I am a bear -
your product management skillsets will be sharp, your knowledge will be sharp
starting this job, it's super important that you do this,
and I've done this in all the companies I've worked for. It's been really huge.
All right, everybody.
Hope you enjoyed that one.