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24.3 First Years

As you start your first job as a PM, you might be surprised at how little oversight you get in your work. PMs are often expected to be self-starters—meaning that you should be able to figure out what to do and how to do it by yourself, or by consulting your stakeholders. Even if your manager is lining up work and assigning it to you, you'll be expected to take the lead on determining how to spend your time and be successful in your responsibilities.

This checkpoint is dedicated to how you can accelerate your progress in a first PM role. You'll learn how you should spend your time at different points: when you start your job, after your first few weeks on the job, and after your first few months.

By the end of this checkpoint, you should be able to do the following:

  • Describe how you will spend the first days, weeks, and months in a new PM position



Your first days on the job​

Starting a new job can be stressful, especially if you're starting your first product management role. Having a plan will help manage that stress. In your first few days on the job, you should plan to do the following tasks:

Meet with your boss​

When you start in a new position, your boss is your most important resource to get started on the right track. Meet with your boss frequently to learn the ropes and confirm that you are setting your priorities in line with what they need from you. In particular, you should take the following actions:

  • Shadow your boss. By watching your boss work, you'll learn about your organization. Pay attention to the issues your boss is concerned about the most. Identify the stakeholders that are critical to moving things forward and get a feel for your boss's relationship with each one.
  • Learn how your team works. How are meetings run? How do they track progress? What tools are they using?
  • Use the time with your boss to find a quick win. You'll learn more about this in a moment.
  • Get invites to all the meetings you need to attend.

Meet with coworkers​

Introduce yourself to your stakeholders and other important people you'll be working with. Ask your boss for specific people that you should meet. See below for a list of the people who could be helpful.

  • Other PMs, designers, and tech leads on your team
  • Key PMs on related teams
  • Managers in the marketing, sales, and support teams for your product
  • Any legal or compliance managers you'll need to work with
  • C-suite people (company leadership)

Before you speak with any of these people, prepare a few questions to help guide the discussion. Here are some discussion ideas:

  • Get to know your coworkers as people! Discuss their hobbies, interests, families, career paths, etc.
  • Make sure this person understands the area of the product you'll be working on.
  • Discuss their current priorities (in this quarter) and priorities for the next year.
  • Talk about problems they're dealing with that you can help with.
  • Always ask for suggestions, such as what advice they would have for you to be successful in your role and other people at the company they suggest you meet with.

Start learning the product and process​

Get all the credentials you need to access the tools and systems used by your team. You should get a demo or testing account for your product. You'll want to play around with it and start learning how to use it. Spend time learning the product; go through all the training material, and play with your demo account. You should also start learning how your team manages their process. Learn all of the tools that your team uses for project management, and pay attention to details such as what documentation is included in a story, how designs are shared, how people give feedback, and other important information.

Find a quick win​

You'll want to identify a "win" as quickly as possible, whether that's shipping a new feature, creating essential reports, providing needed competitive analysis, or solving another immediate pain point for your team. Work with your boss to select the first project that you can complete in a timely manner. Remember, making the team look good will reflect well on you.

While ideally your first project will be a new feature, brand-new product managers might not be entrusted to lead the development of a new feature immediately. You might partner with another PM or your boss for your first feature development. Regardless of the shape it takes, the point of seeking out a quick win is to demonstrate that you can get things done. Show off the skills you bring to the table and put yourself in a position to be given more responsibility.

Your first weeks on the job​

As you get into the first several weeks of being a PM, set yourself up for success by focusing on the following tasks.

Lead your team​

Within the first few weeks, you should take the reins on guiding your team's work—write stories, prioritize the backlog, test features, etc. You and your team should be able to work together to create the features that make your product go.

This means that you need to master the tools that your team uses to manage projects. Learn the ins and outs of those tools; you'll be using them frequently. Spending time figuring out the keyboard shortcuts is worthwhile, as it will make you faster later on. Test yourself—if you can teach other people how your team manages their projects, you're on the right track.

Set your first goals​

Many companies have formal processes for setting goals like quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). If your company has such a process, then work with your manager to set your first goals. If your company doesn't have a formal process for setting goals, do it anyway! You'll be more focused and more likely to achieve success if you focus on specific, achievable goals instead of constantly being in flux responding to whatever seems most urgent at the moment.

Make sure these goals are well-thought-out. For example, set a couple of KPIs that you'd like to improve and include how much you'd like to improve them by. Make your goals achievable and measurable by asking yourself how you'd track success. Talk with your manager about professional or personal goals that will help you grow and put you on track to succeed at this company. Check out the items below for other ideas on good goals to set.

Learn your product from top to bottom​

After your first few weeks, you should be able to answer any question about your product—how to use it, tips and tricks for using it better, the pain points users are most likely to bring up, what's coming up on the roadmap, and why those enhancements were prioritized. You'll know you've achieved this when colleagues come to you for answers to their questions. Become the expert on your product that others look to for guidance.

You will know that you've hit the right level of product knowledge when you're able to give product demos to people who are unfamiliar with your product. Doing so might seem like a sales task, but the point is for you to know your product so well that you can communicate its value to people who aren't familiar with it.

Learn your tech and stack​

Spend time with your development team. You want to develop trust and learn from them. You should understand how your tech stack works and how the tech team works. Know enough that you can explain the technical issues impeding your roadmap to nontechnical people.

You should be able to draw a diagram of how your product works from a technical perspective—the apps, servers, databases, and other services that make it work. This includes any third-party systems like analytics and cloud services, too. In addition to the architecture, you should understand how all the data on the interface is processed. You'll know you've gotten there when you see a bug or bad data on the user interface and can immediately get into the details and discuss what might be the cause with your development team.

Get to know your users and data​

Spend lots of time with your sales team, support team, and, if possible, the actual customers of your product. One of the benchmarks of your expertise is that you really understand the people who are using your product—who they are, their biggest problems, and what they think about the product.

This also means that you should become an expert at your product's analytics and data. Familiarize yourself with your database, your analytics, and all the tools at your disposal for understanding your users. You should be able to paint a vivid picture of what's happening with your product by combining the analytics data with the anecdotal info you get from your coworkers and users.

Pace yourself​

Even though you want to get wins, hit your OKRs, and achieve lots of success early, it's just as important to keep a steady pace. You might start feeling the pressure to get lots done, work tons of hours, and learn everything you can about your product and company immediately. But nobody is expecting you to know everything yet, and nobody is expecting you to achieve total success right from the start.

Focus on your top priorities first. Work to avoid spending time or effort on things that are not your priorities. Learn about your product, but know that you don't have to learn absolutely everything in your first month. Manage your stress levels. Don't let stress win.




Your first few months on the job​

By the time you've hit three to six months on the job, you should be fully able to fulfill the tasks of your role with little to no oversight from your manager. You and your team should now be running at full speed. It's time to set your goals higher.

Create your first roadmap​

This is the point where you should take your accumulated product knowledge, knowledge of your company, and understanding of users to create a roadmap of where you're taking your product. Establish a vision of where you want your product to go and a roadmap that helps you achieve that.

You might be pressured to create a roadmap earlier. If so, create a draft plan with caveats identifying the research and analysis needed to implement the vision. Don't skip the critical step of understanding how your product works and the enhancements that will be most valuable.

Working with other teams​

Now that you've mastered leading your team, you can show your growth by working with other teams around the company to achieve your goals. Start having regular meetings with the sales or account management teams. Build a relationship with these teams so that they are comfortable talking with you about their problems. And make sure that they trust your vision for the product and will convey that vision in their communication with clients.

Find ways that you can help other teams. For example, talk with the marketing team about ways to promote the new features launching next month. They might need help getting information about users to target in their new email campaigns, for example, and you can share your user knowledge and analytics reporting so they can effectively target the optimal audience.

Dashboards and metrics tracking​

Master using your analytics tools to be more effective in your job. Create dashboards, alerts, and other notifications that support the management of your product. Use these reports in your presentations and updates with others around the company. And if people ask, share the data with them! Your job will be made easier if others understand the way you see your product.

Your first year in any role can be challenging. There will be difficult moments, but don't forget the passion and dedication that got you to where you are. You will learn and grow, and discover new heights as you progress through your PM career.

Practice ✍️​

Imagine that you're interviewing for a job at a company that you'd really like to work for. If you are already preparing for interviews or sending in applications (as you should be!), try to choose an actual company and keep it in mind as you complete this assignment.

Record yourself giving short, interview-appropriate answers to the following questions:

  • How would you spend your first few weeks on the job?
  • How would you learn the product?