Tech product person in infosec. 10+ years in
#prodmgmt
. Tired but happy mom. Chicana in Chicago. Always building 🛠️ now➡️
@inthelabpm
. Tweets my own.
#prodmgmt
hiring managers! Send us your early career PM jobs! It's free to post and the candidates are amazing!!
I'm happy to do some personal matchmaking, we have a bunch of subject matter experts who are now picking up PM skills ✨
New feature alert! 🚨
📢HIRING MANAGERS AND RECRUITERS!
Do you have early career product manager roles you need filled? You can now ADD THEM TO OUR JOB BOARD! The roles will be added to our internal Slack for our very talented cohort. Add your roles here:
A few times in my career, I have found myself working with a dev team that is totally off-track.
They don't really know what they're building, have 200 top priorities, and are getting inundated with asks.
I usually find them stressed as hell. Here's what I do as a PM - 🧵
@Radthanael
I met an old man in a grocery store once who told me a story of how he was starving in the French countryside during WW2 and the 1st thing he found to eat was a stalk of raw brussels - he ate all of it and it was the best meal he had every had. Always think of him when I see them
One of the changes I made to my product team is all my PMs are responsible for planning and updating their own roadmaps. The change from "receiver of tasks/deadlines" to "planner" has had incredible impact. All I do now is give guidance and help communicate their work. 🥰
1. First, announce your intentions - "I'm here to help get you organized so you can get your work done easier."
Most people will appreciate this. If they are defensive, they are probably too stressed to process stuff - keep repeating intentions and provide a safe space to vent.
I graduated college 15 years ago (😱) and I've worked at 10 companies. Recently, a few people asked me about this "job hopping" and first off, obv, non-white dudes generally have a ROUGH time in tech, so it happens. But let's talk about why job hopping is actually helpful 🧵
If I could only PM one thing for the rest of my career, it would be internal tools, hands down. Creating products for customers is cool, but helping your coworkers get their work done is the best feeling. Plus, feedback is always available 😂
2. Document ALL THE THINGS.
These teams usually have at least 5 big efforts going all at once, which means nothing is being finished. I usually start by grouping tickets/requests into larger "buckets" of work (like "tech debt" or "strategic initiative x"). Write it all down.
I recommend that people trying to get into product management and early career PdMs invest time into making a portfolio.
It's a great way to stand out from the crowd and emphasizes your existing skills on your own terms.
Some tips on
#prodmgmt
portfolios:
3. Take your buckets and lay them out in a Now/Next/Later roadmap.
This will show how they have a ton in progress and no idea of the future. Now everyone will be paying attention - and most critics will shut up at this point.
7. Watch the team as they start to focus - the goal is to get ONE thing done and shipped.
Once the team gets a taste of shipping something people want, the flywheel starts to spin.
Some good notes for newer PMs - and a good reminder for seasoned PMs that making yourself indispensable is actually a not great thing. Don't get into this field for your ego.
Product people don't like to talk about building features and "it's about outcomes, not features", but every time I am buying a new SaaS tool, it's actually about the features 🤷🏽♀️
5. Now that everyone can see it, go back to your roadmap, and as a team/group (incl stakeholders!), decide which things "In progress" should be put down in the short term.
That convo could be spicy, but persevere through it. Only 1 or 2 efforts under "now". Those are priority!
Sometimes it feels like the product vision at some startups is "make a shit ton of money" and I get that but it is not super inspiring for me as a product manager 🤷🏽♀️
4. Start to organize the backlog using your bucketed work items.
Tag individual work efforts (tickets or not!) or link them to epics to create more visual awareness of how much stuff is going on, and to reveal that everything is going to take 10x longer than planned 😬
A 🧵 on the most popular advice in product
"We need to focus"
"Focus, focus, focus"
"We need to prioritize"
I hear these things daily in teams everywhere.
But I've come to realize something. Instead of focusing on WHAT to focus on, focus on focusing. Let me explain.
(1/9)
I thought I was going to have a date this weekend so I got a blowout but as it turns out I do not have a date, so please appreciate my hair, Twitter friends 😅
6. With this decision, go back and help your dev team reorganize their sprints/backlog/kanban board.
Top priorities go to the top, all others are out. Message to stakeholders for non-priorities that they will need to wait. (again - probably spicy)
10. Likely the team at this point has shipped at least part of their top priority - encourage, clap, boost, etc. And get the next efforts moving and update your roadmap with the changes!
Congrats, keep this up and they'll be a high performing team in no time 🎉
My first day at my new company - I've had such a warm welcome
@FiniteStateInc
! I'm the new Director of Product Mgmt, and we're focusing on building IoT security tools ✨
They SENT ME A MUG 🥰
PM'ing a technical product!
It's been a while since we did a
#prodmgmt
Spaces 😅 I'm planning a small roundtable with some v talented folks who will talk about PM'ing a technical product - why it's great, why it's challenging, and what day to day is like. Date/time coming soon!
8. Pop in occasionally to help reprioritize, reassert boundaries ("no"), fill in context. Start talking to the manager/lead level folks about the "Next" column.
Don't rush the "Next" convo or they will fall back into panic mode.
Friday tech and product team hot tip - never use Jira comments to redesign a feature or leave critical feedback. Just go talk to your team members. Nobody wants a ticket with 45 comments and escalating emotions. 🙅🏽♀️
9. Get "Next" efforts organized (in the backlog or not!) and structured and begin having gradual meetings about it, positioned as "giving folks a heads up about upcoming work". Start putting efforts into a different roadmap format, if that's helpful for folks.
One thing I really like doing is giving a relatively new PM a super vague assignment and telling them they own it. "This workflow is messy and needs to be more elegant and robust". And just see what they do. I have been delighted more than disappointed when using this technique.
This Friday's
#prodmgmt
story is about the extremely fraught process of "doing a rebuild" 💀 and then moving customers over to your new app.
If you work in tech long enough, you'll find a CTO or VP of Eng who really would like to rebuild the app. New backend, new UI, whatever...
I think there's a real market need for a consulting firm that builds out product teams.
Find, interview, and hire Senior PMs down to APMs, under already chosen product leaders, based on any gaps and growth plans.
So many people are DIY'ing it and aren't doing a very good job.
All manager type folks, not just engineers, should give
@skamille
's book "The Managers Path" a read. Especially if you work with engineers, it's really insightful, and there is plenty of good new mgr advice! Helpful for navigating eng orgs, wish I'd had it years ago 😂
One of the reasons that B2B product managers burn out is that they have to be close to their job (product management) and also close to their industry (the job your customers have).
So you have at least 2 domains that you need to keep up with.
Also 2 sets of gatekeepers.
Personal newwwwws! It's my last day at my current employer! I am taking Monday off, attending Industry Virtual on Tuesday (holler if you see me there!), and then starting at my new place on Wednesday 🎉
Will share more on the new position next week ✨
Ok
#prodmgmt
folks, our chat about surviving and thriving in product management with anxiety/depression/other mental health conditions is MONDAY afternoon US time so maybe our UK/EU friends can join. Set a reminder! And will someone plz co-host 🥺??
There is a post going around from a product manager who encourages people to read a bunch of books so they can break into product management.
This is dishonest, misleading engagement bait. If you are not already a product manager, those books will not help you get a job.
If you're building B2B software, you're either building a workflow and/or you're building a dashboard.
If your B2B app isn't getting traction, it's because you're not doing that thing effectively.
Product management thought leaders, I see you compiling lists & best threads with all men (or 90% men). I see who likes them and who doesn't call it out. I'm judging you accordingly. Big hat tip to
@tobiasrogers
and
@onejasonknight
for NOT doing this and being more equitable.
does anybody have a good article that covers "what the hell is product management" that I can refer people to? something short-ish but lays out the job well?
there are a lot of these articles, looking for one that is higher quality...
#prodmgmt
Company email from HR: "It's world mental health day! In honor of this, we're going to..."
Me: "give us the day off????"
HR: "...send you resources."
😐😐😐
I hyperfocused tonight and wrote a 1200 word essay on applying the scientific method to product management - which I am sure has been written about before, but I'm going to publish it tomorrow anyway before I get into my own brain about it.
Recently talked to a few PMs who have been hired exclusively to execute for a founder/ceo - as much as the PM thought leader community wants everyone to believe that "Inspired" is the PM Bible, it is simply not reality for a lot of PMs.
Another quick survey! One
@IntheLabPM
team is looking to understand pain points around the process for black travellers moving abroad permanently. Is that you? Help us out!
Friends, all good things come to an end, so I sadly have to announce that my cofounder has pulled out of Numa and we'll likely be dissolving that product. I need a boatload of money to make the HIPAA compliant product that I want to, so it will go on the shelf for a bit 💔
@nurijanian
I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the past year or so. How many "practicing" product managers are actually on the list of great pms to follow? Everyone moves to coaching as soon as they can - maybe because our job sorta sucks, because coaching is easier? Idk.
Currently recruiting for a Sr PM role. Dudes with 2+ years of PM work style themselves "Product Leaders". Women with 10 years go with "Dedicated Team Members".
1. Quickly pattern match
Job hopping exposes you to a lot of different environments and you can start to rapidly pattern match when dysfunctions arise. A bully in tech? An indecisive CEO? A frustrated sales manager? Yep, seen it, handled it, learned from it.
Doing some research into organizational trust and how to build it purposefully. My MBA texts are failing me. Anybody have any good resources?
@johncutlefish
you're always the first person I think of for this stuff 😀
I really hate the phrase "we need missionaries, not mercenaries". When have missionaries ever been a good thing? They show up uninvited and try to change people's core belief systems.
And if your tech company is like a religion, I'm guessing you have boundary issues.
Product leaders, it's August 1st, you should be starting your 2023 strategy conversations *as well as* helping your product managers get Q4 sketched.
If you don't start now, you'll get to January and your strategy will be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and nobody will like it.
@_celia_bedelia_
The cruelest twist here is the woman who tries to provide the proof and further traumatizes herself by wading back into the hell she just survived.
This article is a great example of how precarious the CPO (or any product leader) role can be when a company starts floundering or chooses to change direction. We don't talk about this enough, but PMs at every level don't have a lot of job security.
This is the thread equivalent of a "manel". There are so many insanely smart women in product management, I just don't understand why this keeps happening.
@sarahdoody
I honestly thought after enough years, people would believe that I'm competent and I wouldn't have to constantly prove myself or try to convince people that I'm good at my job.
Spotted on LinkedIn - this poor PM was working at 4am, doing exactly what the dumb CEO wanted by focusing on building, and they locked him out mid-ppt.
Why sacrifice your sleep for a company that is just going to pull this shit? Layoffs are one thing, but this is shameful.
Tl;dr - if you're early in your career and worried about "job hopping", here are 5 reasons why you shouldn't. And if you're a hiring manager or other leader, here's 5 reasons you should stop asking people "why do you change jobs so often" 😁 Just scoop us up and let us make you $
I have seen a lot of
#prodmgmt
'best of' lists and I don't think
@danolsen
gets a fair shake. His book 'Lean Product Playbook' is actionable and an excellent prep book to building solid products quickly.
So this is a Dan Olsen appreciation tweet. Read his book, add to your lists
And here are the books I read in 2019 that reinspired me in
#prodmgmt
after I definitely considered dropping out of tech.
"Ruined by Design" -
@monteiro
"Obviously Awesome" -
@aprildunford
"Escaping the Build Trap" -
@lissijean
"Loonshots" -
@SafiBahcall
4. Ability to give advice broadly
People who work in 1 or 2 co's can't really give advice that works for a lot of people, because they have a limited view of how teams work. They've only seen 1 system. I've seen so many variations of tech strategy &product, I can tune my advice.
@johncutlefish
I recently did this. I made a list of changes I wanted to make to my approach and made personal goals for interacting with the new team. I also did a *lot* of introspection/reflection to make sure I wasn't going to bring (much) baggage into the new place.
I think honestly the biggest challenge for product leaders is deciding which things to NOT get involved in.
And I wish more product leaders spent time thinking about it purposefully, instead of reactively.
What is it about people with "Agile enthusiast/coach/expert" people On Here that they end up sounding so judgy and condescending all the time?
Had planned my next story to be about Agile coaches, but unsure I can handle the drama 😕
I'm about 90 days into my new role, and we're about 3 weeks out from launching a rebuilt version of our app.
Nothing quite like that "oh shit" crunch before a launch, amirite 😅😅
I'm trying to not hate on this organization, because they got a round of funding and are doing what they do, but I feel so icky reading these announcements. I didn't talk to a single hiring manager who said a cert would distinguish a candidate. Does a test make it better?
@jeeyonshim
My mom was born in 1950 and refers to the years when she was growing up as "the bad old days". I have heard some stories. These women glamorizing that era probably need to do some reading. It wasn't pleasant.
Uhhh wow. Happy Monday to my 3000 internet friends 😳 if you've just started following me, I do a mix of product tweets, Chicago tweets, infosec tweets, and rants/witty observations. Happy you're here ❤️
I just want to scream THIS IS ACTUALLY WORKING whenever we do these presentations. I can't believe how much these folks are learning
@IntheLabPM
, it blows my socks off. The stuff they are learning in 12 weeks took me 3 years of learning on the job.
An explosion of 'break into product' and other product manager courses right now, mostly driven by Maven (I got asked & now noticing it everywhere). Make sure you're getting your $$ worth if you decide to take one!
Also PM isn't a bank, don't break in, just come in ☺️
@johncutlefish
My top tip is that if you find yourself giving advice and including the phrase "it's easy", just delete the whole thing. It might be easy for you, but if others are struggling, reading how easy it is will make it 10x worse.
Good gravy, I just saw that someone took that awful Director of Product role at Coinbase and said he's excited to work for a "mission driven company" 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️
Yep never logging into LinkedIn again.
At some point overnight, I tipped over 2000 followers! Hi everyone! 👋 I'm not organized enough to follow everyone back, but if anybody wants to talk, my dms are pretty open, and I'm usually able to help review resumes etc (as my schedule allows!) for PM folks 😊
Everyone praises Google as a great tech product company to work for, but half of their product offerings are garbage. There are 2 GPay (aka Google Pay or maybe just Pay??) apps now - and helpfully one of those apps prefilled an address from 7 years ago into an order I placed 😑
This is a great example of a simple but effective Product Management Portfolio (by a guy who is trying to land a new PM role, FYI hiring managers 👀)
#prodmgmt
2. Fast to onboard
Job hopping also means that you become very good at onboarding and jumping into the work. I don't need a lot of guidance - I can look at the Jira board, have a few 1x1s, talk to a few customers, read the research and get started. I need ~2 weeks max.
After last week's thread about interview questions for engineers, I decided (with a nudge from Hans!) to compile them and sort them a bit and publish them. So if you're a PM who is interviewing engineers, check it out!
Hot
#prodmgmt
tip - If you work on a mobile app, you need to read & act on app store reviews.
But what if you're not a mobile app?? You've got Twitter and Reddit! People post feedback (esp frustration) all the time. Look @ your co's mentions and search for your product name ✨
Just finished "Ruined by Design" by
@monteiro
and while it's billed and directed at a designer audience, it's super applicable to
#prodmgmt
readers. Arguably, we are more gatekeepers than designers when it comes to ethical product decisions. Def recommend.
#productmanagement
Passed 5k followers today! 🎉🎉 In celebration I will write up a maybe hopefully useful thread this week, and I publicly want to thank
@johncutlefish
@RichMironov
@onejasonknight
for boosting me up so much! It's been so great making so many friends and connections here ❤️
#prodmgmt
friends, I've been working on this idea for a week and it's starting to feel more solid.
1. Any friendly senior and up PMs who can listen to the idea and see if it makes sense/be helpful?
2. Any hopeful PMs who need hands on experience who might want to try a beta?
@TimothyAlvis
@saeedwkhan
@ganders2112
@itslucindarella
@imshaughnessyok
I've been work shopping an idea to have aspiring PMs do this exact thing on a "closed course" as a way of getting hands on experience without a PM job. Just a really nice thing to see my perspective on the job validated. Thanks so much for laying it out ❤️
3. Resilient in the face of change
Because I've been plunged between companies often, I have built up a lot of callouses to change - I've seen internal re-orgs, layoffs, exec exits, etc and I can provide the rest of the team with stability and guidance when it happens.
I finally got my security for
#prodmgmt
blog published! If you're a product manager who doesn't know anything about product security, now is a great time to learn ✨
I'm going to write a book called "Agile for Product Teams" and at the end of each chapter I'm going to put in 72 pt bold font "IF THIS IDEA DOESN'T WORK FOR YOUR TEAM, DISCARD IT"
Seriously, you have permission to use or not use whatever tool makes sense 🤷🏽♀️
hmu
@OReillyMedia
😘
Saw a resume that claims the PM increased team productivity by 350% as measured by story points and that is so fundamentally wrong that I stopped reading.
#prodmgmt
metrics gone bad right there.
One of the reasons I really love product management is that I get to dig in deeply on interesting spaces that I know nothing about. It's so fun, and now I have a little niche on my resume that is super appealing to certain companies. 🥰
Don't sleep on 'boring' B2B domains!
A week ago, one of the cohort members of In the Lab told me about the Google PM interview she did, where they asked her to do a case study for an autonomous bus
And I know for a fact I would never fit in at Google because I am still wondering WHY WOULD YOU WANT AN AUTONOMOUS BUS
We like to talk about Go To Market a lot in product, but I'm not sure people grok how big that process is.
It's huge! You need help. Marketing, prod marketing, & sales folks can/should help you on GTM.
PMs should own the rollout plan, get help from other teams for the rest!
@ianharveyOT
I keep reminding myself to stay in my lane. It's so tempting to jump in and help solve other people's problems (I love being helpful) but it's just an awful habit and saps your energy for *your* problems.
Hello
#prodmgmt
friends! I am once again looking for help
@IntheLabPM
. We've got a really solid cohort of people trying to transition into product mgmt & I'm looking for help w/ talks and reviews with the group. Are you a PM expert and want to give back? Details & link 👇🏽
@shreyas
One of my favorite frameworks for product strategy is
@gibsonbiddle
GLEe model - just referenced it a few days ago, infinitly helpful to prompt long term thinking, which I find tricky