Starting a new PM job

There you are… the product expert in the room.

The only problem is, you don’t really know what the product does or who is using it. Even the sales guy that was hired two months ago has a better understanding of who your customer is.

For product managers, starting at a new company can be very difficult. After all, you’re supposed to be the expert; on the product, the customer, the market and the industry. Stakeholders and engineers look to you to rationalize a product vision. How are you supposed to do that when you’re the newbie?

There is no silver bullet. You have to learn - and quickly!

You can’t delegate the learning and you can’t artificially accelerate it either. You simply have to put in the hours. However, with some planning, you can minimize distractions and ultimately feel a little less lost in those early months.

Table-stakes

There are five areas you have to focus on in order to be an effective product manager. I believe this list is universal across industries and products.

1. Learn the product

You can’t improve a product unless you understand how it currently works. That means learning the features, user flows, high & low-value engagements, tech-stack and 3rd party integrations. Other than using the product — which is a must — I’ve found several tools helpful.

• Feature maps: I love mind maps. One of the first things I’ll do when learning a product is to construct a mind map of the functionality. It’s an easy way to document what you find as you’re using the product. It helps you organize the functionality and will also be a valuable tool as you evolve the product later.
• Analytics: This is a no-brainer. Hopefully, you’re familiar enough with the analytics platform to dive right in. If not, spend time learning the tool. Having quick, self-service access to data is a must. You can use the analytics to see what people are doing in the product. You can even overlay this data on the mind-map (i.e. 10% usage on Feature A, etc)