Top 10 Activities to start the job on the right foot

How you spend the first 90 days on the job as product manager can set the tone for the remainder of your tenure. There is an urge to demonstrate value by making changes too quickly.

Resist the urge, listen first and be pragmatic!

1. Meet with everyone on the team.

Preferably one-on-one. Find out what’s important to them, and how you can make their lives easier. The answers will reveal their understanding of the product management function as well as their communication style.

2. Arrange a technical deep dive with the product architect.

Don’t hesitate to ask about what doesn’t make sense to you.

3. Set up meetings with end-users.

Nothing replaces or compares with the value provided from direct feedback given by actual users. This should be ongoing forever, but customer feedback should be a firehose in the beginning.

4. Familiarize yourself with how the company works.

How are decisions made? What development/customer service/sales pipeline processes are in use? It will help you tremendously in communicating with the product team.

5. Read all product materials.

Vision and mission statements, strategy documents, MRDs, KPIs, OKRs, specs, roadmaps, measurement metrics, etc. This may push out beyond 30 days. Try not to get lost in piles of obsolete, half-baked documents, but do focus on the key set that is currently guiding development.

6. Assess assumptions.

Try to see through the fog and determine what assumptions have been made in the product strategy and go-to-market strategy. Start validating these as early as you can.

7. Create a list of info sources that you will regularly check.

News sites, technology sites, LinkedIn groups, peer reviewed publications, etc.

8. Demo it.

Become sufficiently proficient to conduct a basic product demo. This will force you to see the product from the user’s perspective. There is a big difference to know theoretically what the product does, and to actually experience firsthand how it does it.

9. Create your roadmap.

Categorize projects as offense and defense, and analyze the balance. Investments should be made in both, growing the business (features, enhancements, etc.) and ensuring sustainability (bug fixes, refactoring, platform upgrades, etc.)

10. Understand and set expectations.

By the end of the first three months you should be able to describe where things stand, what will have to change and what can be achieved.