Aakash Pathak

7 things you should do in your first 60 to 90 days as a product manager

Photo by Hope House Press — Leather Diary Studio on Unsplash

Congratulations, so, you have landed the product manager job that you wanted. So, what happens now? Do you jump right into writing product specs? Do you start grooming the existing product backlog?

Well, none of that. The first and foremost priority for you should be to understand the product journey so far and understand the overall user sentiment around the product. The first 60 to 90 days of being a product manager could set you up for success if you are willing to put in the work and go the extra mile(s). Most of what is described below wouldn’t be asked of you to do but it’s important that you take initiative to build a solid platform for yourself.

Here are 7 steps that have worked for me in my career which you can apply to your new product management job.

1. Understand the business model and the market — People get into product from different backgrounds. But no matter if you are more tech or business aligned, you should spend time on consuming content on the company’s “WHY” and “HOW”. You need to make sure that you understand how your product/feature fits into the grander vision of the company. How well you do this will define how effective your product & strategy decisions would be later.

2. Learn about the existing product line — If you have joined a startup, chances are there will be only one core product but in case of large organizations, there would be many. You don’t want to go into a rabbit hole and try to learn everything about every product, but you want to make sure that you are up to date about the offerings within your vertical. All the product offerings such as apps, launchers, feeds, SDKs, APIs, Integrations etc. should all be on your radar. For example, if you join the AWS Cloudfront team, then you should make sure that you are aware of the all the offerings within that product line. This will enable you to manage your roadmap better and respond to feature requests well.

3. Understand the people — People and your relationships with them will be key to succeeding in your role as a product manager. Have a lot of “One on One”s with devs, designers, fellow PMs,++ and listen. You need to make sure how the organization is structured today and how things get done on top of understanding each team member’s vision of the product.

4. Understand your manager — Connect with your reporting manager which could be a Director, Product Management or even a CEO in case of startup and understand what they are focusing on. Document their goals and priorities and map out the current product roadmap with those goals and priorities.

5. Build a SWOT analysis of your product — It is imperative for you to understand the competitors in the space and their value proposition and differentiation. I highly recommend creating a feature by feature comparison matrix if competitors are very similar or it’s close to a commodity market. Make sure to analyze where your company/product is falling behind compared to the competitors.

6. Eat data, breathe data, sleep data — Make sure you collect all the available data and spend time meditating on it. Knowing your data and translating it into actionable insights is a PM skill that you would want to get strong at.

  • Total app installs
  • Uninstall Rate %
  • Cost per paid install
  • Cost per install (organic + paid)
  • User LTV
  • ARPU
  • DAUs (7-day avg)
  • DAUs/ MAUs
  • DAUs/ MAUs %
  • App ratings by version
  • # of bugs / feature requests / feedback / review submitted (7-day avg)
  • Sign-up via referral %
  • Most used features
  • 7. Customer, Customer, Customer — Last but not least, you would want to make sure that you understand the target customer completely. Make personas, understand the customer journey map, consume secondary research, get on customer meetings, assimilate feedback. This point can’t be stressed enough, you need to understand and build empathy for your customers. Be the customer’s voice in meetings and discussions and makes sure that the product roadmap, strategy, features, all work towards a common goal of making your customers win.

Remember, an outstanding product is the sum of an inordinate number of small, thoughtful decisions.

Comments? Want to add something? — I would love to hear your story and experience of being a product manager in comments below. Story cross-posted at my blog too. I engage in product management and tech banter on twitter and publish a product management insight every day, follow me @pathakaakash

https://productmanagementinsider.com/?utmsource=pmi&utmmedium=article

https://alphahq.com/?utmsource=pmi&utmmedium=article

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7 things you should do in your first 60 days as a product manager was originally published in Agile Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Originally published on wordpress.