I always thought OKR was a bit pointless. My first introduction to it was back in 2018 at Facebook. I already knew the projects I wanted to do that quarter. My manager reviewed the projects and said, “Can you frame the goals in an ‘OKR’ format?” I googled ‘OKR’, familiarised…

Congrats, you finally got your dream PM job! But… what now? Here are some pointers to plan your first few weeks — and beyond. — People come to product management from various career paths. It’s not an entry-level role, so you’ll typically have a few years of experience somewhere else, bump into product one way or another, and get hooked. Many PMs, including myself, have never gone through any formal training.

Product management is a mentally taxing job. Whilst software engineers can afford to put their heads down and focus on one task at a time, PMs have to juggle different things, maintain different points of view, and deal with many different functions. There are plenty of articles about being more…

tl;dr Stop falling in love with your problem, and definitely don’t fall in love with your solution. — If somebody had asked me years ago to distil product management in two words, I’d have answered: solving problems. Isn’t that our main job? Find out what the customer’s problems are and solve them. Bam, job done, give me the applause I deserve! Now, the problem with being passionate about…

Many years ago, I interviewed at a startup in Berlin. I still remembered how the hiring manager described what a PM’s job was: “You’re there to unblock the Engineers. So if they’re hungry, it’s your job to buy them pizza.” I was young and impressionable back then, so I only…

Product discovery is where PMs can bring their unique value. Let’s explore how you can codify it into your product development process. — A PM friend once said, “Being a PM is like committing to a constant identity crisis.” Designers create beautiful, usable prototypes. Software engineers code and turn those prototypes into a working product. Product managers, a cynical voice might say (i.e. usually their own voice), is just a glorified secretary that…

I’ve met many miserable PMs in my life. The misery is rarely around the compensation, work-life balance, or career opportunities. Their complaints usually revolve around extremely difficult stakeholders who insist on certain things to build. Whilst stakeholder management is a part of any PM job, some companies are set up…

Many companies now have diversity goals they need to achieve. Diversity can be easily measured with numbers — how many women/Black/Asian/LatinX/LGBTQ+ do we have in our candidate pipeline/team/leadership team? It’s objective, straightforward, and it’s easy to pat yourself in the back when you’ve finally hired that two female Software Engineers…

This might be painfully obvious for some people. For me, it didn’t come naturally. As a product manager, my calendar was full of meetings. A typical week looked like this: