I apologize in advance for the Buzzfeed-style title but I promise this is not clickbait. My last few posts have been long and ramble-y so I figured I’d make this one short and actionable. Five somewhat pragmatic product management (PM) tips
- Never go into a meeting without a shared page
- Put everything into JIRA
- Keep tangential stakeholders of your project in the loop from day 1
- Pick a method of prioritization and stick to it
- Always have a deck ready for the product features/areas you own
I go into a little more detail below.
Tip 1
Never go into a meeting without a shared page (we use Confluence) everyone can look at, especially if you’re trying to align on product decisions. This has been a huge time saver for me and makes me look more organized than I really am
- Before the meeting, seed the page with some content even if it is just an outline. This page serves as an agenda for the meeting and sets context, without having to do both of these separately
- During the meeting, share the page live and type up notes inline to fill out the skeletal outline. Capture action items in a section at the bottom of the page. Doing this ensures that everyone on the call is aligned and on the same page about what needs to be done
- After the meeting, send out the page again in lieu of meeting notes, maybe throw in the action items directly into the email along with next steps
Tip 2
Whenever anyone asks you for something in your product area or suggests a feature via email, Slack or word of mouth, put it in JIRA. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, you don’t even have to work on it, just put it in JIRA with what they said and who said it. This will help keep track of ideas, maintain a product backlog, and provide a reference point when they ask you about it three months later and you have no memory of the interaction.
Tip 3
Keep the secondary and tertiary stakeholders of your product feature/area involved and in the loop right from the beginning of a project. In my experience, these are usually people that aren’t directly involved in the project itself but wield significant power and can potentially derail your project, especially closer to the end (I learnt this the hard way).
This list of people can include senior engineers, designers and product leads of adjacent product areas. Practically it means inviting them to meetings, adding them as reviewers to documents and mockups, and actively seeking their feedback to make sure they stay in the loop as decisions are being made.
This is both a “cover your ass” move so that they can’t raise objections to your proposal after three months of work, and also good practice since they can have valuable feedback and insight to provide from a broader lens than your own.
Tip 4
Pick a method of prioritization and stick to it, whether it’s the RICE model or the Kano method (both of which I use and like) or another framework of choice. Don’t do it arbitrarily each time.
For one thing, you can clearly communicate with your team why you ranked things in a specific order. More importantly, by using the same framework consistently, you’re helping your team of engineers and designers become familiar with the method and creating a standard across multiple planning cycles.
Tip 5
Always have a deck ready for the product features/areas you own. People can and will ask you for an overview, and you want to have something ready you can whip up out any time. Obviously for projects that are underway, you need to update this deck frequently, but having one on hand that covers the rationale for investing in this product area, the competitive landscape, the items being worked on in the near-term, and the longer-term vision can help other people come onboard and understand your thought process very quickly.