8 important learnings as a Product Manager

I’ve worked for years in the software world and most of that time spent as a product manager and a manager for product management teams. Now that I’ve moved away from the hands-on day-to-day role, I thought it would be important to get some of my learnings and thoughts down and out before they get fuzzy. Here are my top 8 important areas to be mindful of with no area ever as straightforward as it seems.  

1. A product manager is not an island
   We like nothing more than to put our head down and think about strategy, researching the industry, competitors, generating ideas, creating requirements and refining a roadmap and backlog for the benefit of customers and the company. We like to make the decisions, in fact in a lot of cases product managers feel compelled with a deep penchant for decision making.
   However, as any good product manager knows it’s important to facilitate bringing everyone into the process, whether that be idea generating, research, facilitating and proposing decision making, over communicating and involving folks in the plan and the vision etc. More heads are always better than one and it will only help others feel ownership for the product versus a specific task. 

2. Passion X 3
   Passion for the product – constantly diving deep into the potential and direction of the product and how it works with a view to making it work better for the customer. Life as a product manager can be tough but if you feel a purpose and passion for the product it will continue to motivate you through the difficult times. 
   Passion to use and test the product – Testing the product and not just during test passes but before code is released so what is being built is matching what was agreed, if it still makes sense with potential to tweak things early on. Regular testing live in the field as a real user following real scenarios is so important and is often left to customers. Not always practical if you have a global product but there needs to be a deliberate approach to engage with field testing so it's not a random thing.
   Passion to talk about the product – Constantly and to your team, with the wider company, customers and potential customers too. Basically talk to the world in general, as a product manager can also be a great marketing advocate too and bring more credentials to the table.
   Passion for the product comes naturally for product folks, followed by testing the product. I would say product managers could always test more on pre-live and live customer scenarios in the field even with their never-ending list of work items. Lastly, we spend less time talking about the product, blogging, giving updates on Linkedin, company websites etc. But keeping these 3 p’s close to your heart and doing some of each constantly every week, won’t have you going too far wrong. 

3. The scourge that is BAU (business as usual work)
   As product managers it's so easy to get bogged down in the multitude of events and issues that come up every day especially if you have a young product and are in constant learning what works mode. But some BAU stuff just has to be done I.e., backlog refining, bug follow up, live site and customer support, meetings, creating and monitoring process and keeping documentation up to date for internal and external use. It’s not sexy work but has to be done and in conjunction with other product owners, and a wider sprint/agile team. The trick is to be organised so you are in and out and you find time for the important and not urgent stuff too. 

4. We cannot predict the future
   We don’t know if a feature will work! We don’t know what the best strategy is! The best feature, product or strategy is the one that works or wins. You can never know that upfront so accept this and life will be a lot less stressful. What you will do is talk to customers and experienced people in your team, look at the data and build up your decision making ability with facts/ROI. But at some stage you will need to make a decision or at least strongly propose. What helps is releasing features or products often, including A/B testing and ensuring there is a process to do this within the boundaries of your customer world, which I’ve found is never easy and even harder if you are a B2B business with quality SLAs for all live site releases. But there is always a way and it starts with prioritizing a discussion on “How?” and valuing learning.

5. Some things are important to do every day and every week
   Some tasks need to be done every day/week no matter how busy you think you are. Such as reviewing the data constantly, building up a story about the outcomes and having discussions about it with your team. This work can get lost in the sprint rhythm and not given the time it needs. There has to be live site alerts and notifications on products and features in place so you know the issue before the customer does. These have to be monitored with a rigorous process of action. Bug lists, and constantly filtering backlogs so that work does not build up and get out of hand is important. It can so easily happen where you end up fixing debt versus new work that customers want and for it to extend over long periods of time. Constant planning and being hooked into the sprint or your SDLC milestones is important and should never be taken for granted.

6. Regular reviews with stakeholders
   From the outside it can be hard to know what is going on with the product and progress being made. Our communication might not be as frequent as we think and involve all the required people and we’ve codified terms, phrases, processes and tech that we take for granted but others don’t understand. Having formal stakeholder's touch points is important even though it adds more to your workload. For example, a regular email, video or a monthly meeting outlining what will be released, what has just been released, the results of previous releases, proposed strategy and next direction, potential ideas, ideation sessions etc. The goal is to have everyone moving together as a team with the same information knowing what we’re trying to do and supporting it. Once you start you need to keep to a routine and build the habit of deliberate communication or stakeholders will lose interest and question your command of the situation. 

7. The Customer is your Beacon
   Everyone should know who the customer is, what are the top customer scenarios, who are the customer persona's etc. This information is always changing and should be kept up to date via constant interaction with internal teams and the customer. So product managers along with UX research etc. need to be communicating this often. It’s not just a product manager's responsibility but a team-wide facilitation to care for the customer and keep top of mind in all decisions across all teams and functions.  

8. Try to avoid having to call it quits on the product
   You’ve spent years guiding the product to where it is now, it's your baby and want it to live but you’ve a responsibility to always be mapping ROI and strategy with the ever-changing environment and company vision/direction. If you don’t, someone else will and you don’t want to be in this hard trade-off position. Senior management always looks for what great new feature or addition is in the pipeline that will wow customers and they will ask and expect this at stakeholder reviews. If you don’t deliberately think about this and keep time to manage and action this type of work, there won’t be a healthy flow of new strategic 10X growth potentials and possibilities. You could be moving closer to calling it quits than you know without this mindset.