A year as a Product Manager
This month marks a year of being a full-time product manager and I’m not going to mince my words. Towards the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, I wanted a career change.
Prior to Product Management
I worked as a Product Support staff for about 2 years+ and I enjoyed what I did. It was nice speaking, listening to feedback, solving problems, and also giving feedback to other teams.
Just as everything in life changes, it was time for something different. I spoke to lots of people, read tons of articles, attended every meetup, and watched lots of videos. I wanted to be ready for the next step.
Product not Project Management (the difference)
Speaking to different people and one thing stood out product management. I was curious. At the early stages, I was unable to differentiate between Product and Project Management. Some people used the terms interchangeably. With this in mind, I thought it was the same and I took a project management course and wrote the PMP exam.
Further down the line, I discovered it was different but what I had learnt from project management would become useful. There was an opening for a project manager and a friend informed me. I was excited but it was not what I wanted.
Then Product came along
After several months of speaking to different people, attending several meetups, reading tons of articles and books, I got the opportunity of a lifetime and it meant everything in the world. I took the opportunity and yes I am still here.
Lessons a year in
To say the journey has been a smooth ride would be a big lie but here are a few things I have learnt.
- Technical or Non-Technical: There is a constant debate on whether or not a product manager should be technical or non-technical. Although it is not important, having technical skills as a PM is a great plus for you, your career and your team. It is easy for you to understand concepts and have a great exchange. It also makes it easy for you to estimate product delivery timelines.
In my opinion, I would advise you to have an understanding of the basics of how the internet works, APIs and documentation just to mention a few.
- Things won’t always go your way: As a PM you would have this great picture of what you want your product to achieve, how it should look, how long it takes to be fully implemented. But I am here to tell you, things would not always go your way and that is completely fine. As a PM, you are constantly interfacing with different people and different teams who work on different things. It would take time and effort to get things done. As a team you’re constantly interfacing different teams, understanding key stakeholders would help you understand when things are beyond your control. You should understand that you need to apply a bit of pressure.
- Take it easy, a step at a time: After my transition, there were lots I wanted to know and do at the same time. Things that took people 2–3 years to figure out I wanted to know it in less than a month. Take things easy and one step at a time. As my manager and ProductDive tutors would say, fail forward but fail fast.
- Learn to say NO: I can't say this enough, you should learn to say NO. As a product manager who interfaces with different teams, different people would want your product to do and be different things. You should learn to say NO (in a polite manner). Your product cannot cater to everyone and you cannot have all the features, that is why you have a target market and a USP. Focus on it. if the feature request doesn’t align with your product, decline or say you would speak to your team and revert. If it is not in the roadmap, it is a NO. But you should be open to feedback and sift what is relevant and what is not
Hope you were able to learn from this. Until next time, stay focused!
