Oct 18, 2022
5 lessons learned in Product Management
Product Management is hard.
在管理产品和管理产品的人员时，我犯了更多的错误。
If I’d have known these 5 lessons, countless hours of frustration, stress and poor results would have been saved.
The importance of focus
On more than one occasion I’ve operated as a PM covering multiple areas, all of which deserved dedicated focus in their own right.
One specific example jumps to mind.
I looked back after 6 months of Product enhancements and although I had internal recognition for delivering features (and results) that were ok individually, when zooming out at the business level I’d achievednothing.
It looked like this
If I’d been bolder and more experienced, it would have looked like this:
最好focusand step change than to spread thin, keep people happy and appear “pragmatic” but achieve nothing at the macro level.
与小型团队覆盖广泛的产品套件时，一千次削减的死亡不会适用。足够大胆地说“不现在”，几乎（几乎）在最关键的领域产生重大影响。
明确产品策略的重要性
Once, the first question an interviewer asked me was “talk me through your product strategy”.
He stared down at his notepad and took notes as I blustered my way through the question. I just about had the information, but it was an exercise in thinking on my feet as opposed to a convincing display of subject area knowledge.
从那以后我学到的就是为什么我没有足够的专注。我花了太多时间思考路线图，而在策略上还远远不够。
Your product strategy should massively reduce the stress of prioritisation and create a natural focus. If you have:
- A product vision to work back from
- A deep understanding of the most important customer problems to solve
- A strong understanding of the market and what future success looks like
- A proper understanding of the business and commercial landscape
Then prioritisation becomes much easier, usually in the form of“什么不重要”。
您能否表达您的产品在1 - 5年内如何在市场上取得成功？您将不确定，但是如果您可以自信地阐明您打算如何找出答案，那么您可以清楚地做出重要的决定。
The importance of the craft
不幸的是，我找不到信用的报价，但这是这样的：
“You can’t out-experience somebody without being in the right place, but you can out-learn and out-study almost anyone”
Your job becomes so much easier if you become genuinely interested in the craft of building great products. There are more resources than you could ever consume across Audible, Twitter, Substack, Medium and YouTube.
Product Management is messy, complicated and difficult but it’s your job to bring clarity to the chaos. I spent so much time thinking I understood Product Management well, but in reality, only had a surface-level understanding.
我的同龄人最终首当其冲。
A perfect example of theDunning-Kruger effect.
Having a wide range of insights to fall back on from different people and industries will make your life infinitely easier and your product more successful. It’s truly worth the time.
Twitter是一个不错的起点，有很多很棒的教训，您可以在滚动浏览通常的内容时以280个字符吸收。努力的回报是巨大的。
适当交付期望管理的重要性
I’ve got numerous examples of meetings with senior stakeholders in which the product/feature you’re working on gets great feedback and there is a genuine appetite to launch.
Ultimately the question will come “when can we have it?”
“We’re aiming for
- How critical stakeholder management is
- How estimates are wrong pretty much all the time, especially on large features
I’ve dropped the ball and harmed my credibility in this space multiple times. You have little control over the “when” outside of reducing scope and often it’s your reputation on the line when delivering the estimate.
There’s enough to think about and own in the strategy space without building unnecessary ownership of delivery. Be prepared to either add significant time onto the “when” or defer to Engineering and focus on what’s directly in your control. The “What” and the “why”.
The importance of starting well in a new role
It’s easy to drown in a new role as a PM.
Some roles are “task” driven in which you can add value quickly, to be an effective PM you need tounderstand在您产生影响之前，有大量信息。
This includes evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of how it approaches product today.
就像您的新部门是产品一样，您不会集中精力改善已经出色的领域。在以前的角色中，我直接跳跃着试图导入最后一个地方做得很好的一切，而没有正确理解需要做的事情。
My solution to this is a “State of the nation scorecard” which looks like this:
If you want to make changes, it’s critical that you’re on the same page as those impacted. Building a shared understanding of the significance of the problem is hugely important in framing the need for a solution, or a better way.
