A love letter to Product Management

11 years ago, in this exact same period of the year, I was unconsciously moving my first steps as Product Manager. At that time, we were testing several second screen products to better understand how to design ours.

That would have become TOK.tv, the voice-first social network for sports fans, that moved from 0 to 40 million users in few years, empowering the experience of clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Juventus and more.?

Fast forward to today, I work as Senior Product Manager in a multi-national company, working on enterprise software products, impacting thousands of customers and partners worldwide and working in very diverse teams on business-critical projects, especially in the digital and cloud transformation area, as well as supporting our GTM organisation.

So since that September 2011, I was so lucky to deliver several products with my teams, including a chatbot that could learn from data coming from users’ questions, an on-demand Netflix-like video platform, I launched an enterprise marketplace – the Automation Hub – allowing Workload Automation customers to orchestrate third party apps while keeping governance on their end-to-end automation process, and right now I am working on an enterprise observability solution for cloud native environments. I even founded a company - a Microsoft BizSpark startup - that leveraged Azure and PowerBI to provide actionable insights from data analysis.

I am thankful for these experiences. I learned a lot from each of them.

During all of this time I grew, wearing different hats from my Product Management wardrobe: I’ve been a scrum product owner for a long time, I work closely with consumers to better understand their experiences, I do lots of enablement to business partners and sales people, learning how to speak their language too, I nurture relationship with analysts, resulting in an the ability to better understand and even influence the market, and I found my spot in leading strategical cross-functional and cross-teams initiatives to boost and define go-to-market strategies.

I also learned how to turn the impostor syndrome into an ally, to never stop learning. Last year only I took eight certifications, the CSPO one plus several Microsoft certifications spanning from Power Platform to Azure Data and AI, because I wanted to master those topics since I’ve been in charge of cloud-centered projects.?

You will find yourself constantly asking: do I have what it takes to be a Product Manager?

I think that there are some skills – sure, you can refine them, but if you got them chances are that you’re going to rock this role – that I can see in the best product managers I know.

• You can see the big picture and show to the others: product managers have an incredible ability to connect the dots. They do not dig into details (if not needed), but they can see the big picture and make it clear to others. As product managers, we bring clarity out of apparent chaos and deal with changes and uncertainty. Plus, we want to onboard others on that vision (see next point).
• You are a servant leader: we lead by influence and we lead to serve. We want to really understand what our customers, partners, colleagues needs are to better understand what are the pain points we really want to solve with the products we deliver and who can help on that. For example, you do not waste your engineers’ time: you first understand what your customers want, what sales are talking about, what business partners are asking for, and only then you bring the right person (architect, developer…) in a 1:1 conversation with the customers. You value your colleagues’ time and protect it. Their feedback and contributions are the foundation to the product’s success.
• You are a moving bridge: when people ask me what I do daily, I usually joke saying “I’m a translator”. I take my stakeholders – both internal and external – feedback and translate them into consumable insights. It might be a Request for Product coming from a technical Advisor or a new enhancement required by a customer. How do I translate it into something useful for my engineering team? Vice versa, how do I give value to a new technology implementation running under the hood but having a great impact on performances? It's not a passive translation. It’s a pro-active one: both in terms of shaping the right messages for the market as well as in terms of getting the right feedback turning them into product requisites.
• You got a data-driven approach: even if listed as last point, this is the most important one to me, because data have always been my lighthouse. They can help you better understand how customers use your product and show the hidden path to what to do next. But beware: this is not just about math and models, it’s about asking the right questions. Please (please please) avoid the confirmation bias and be agnostic. Clear your mind about the questions that really matter and model data to find the answer. Plus, adopt a circular approach: define KPIs, gain insights, implement needed actions and re-measure. Also, avoid showing tons of data (aka multi-page Power Point decks) to your colleagues and executives. Be sure to select few relevant KPIs and represent them in a very clear way, leaving space for deep dives. For example, I love creating dashboards on PowerBI and leverage slicers to go in deep if someone asks for a specific question or focus. That way I ensure I’m creating something clear, useful and easy to understand, but I am also setting the ground to be ready in case of deeper questions.

“OK, but how do I get started?” you might say.

Courses and workshops are now multiplying, especially when it comes about product management in tech.

But let’s get practical and think about three things you can start doing right now:

1. Take part into product communities: if you want to deliver excellence to your future users you need to be one of them first. Participating to product communities, providing feedback, adopting a learn-by-experience approach can be a good start. Think simple, what are the products you heavily use? For example, I’m in the Xbox alpha-skip ahead ring and get the chance to test and give feedback on very early software releases for the console. Pick something you love: it’ll be easier to get started on giving feedback.
2. Learn about other products’ story: especially in tech, we got lots of example of successful as well as dead products. You can even find post-mortem blog posts telling about them. These reading are more valuable than any theory.
3. Look for insightful and valuable resources: Roman Pichler has a great blog, but take a look also at Product Coalition on Medium and ProductPlan’s company website. Finally, check out this visual roadmap of what books to read as a Product Manager as well as this list of 16 must-read books.

Bonus: if possible, pick very diverse teams. You have no idea of how rich diversity can make you. You will learn a lot.

Last but not least, remember the most important thing: your product is not yours; the best products are the result of a true team effort. Everybody should feel empowered to be part of it and with the right to provide feedback and contribution.

When everybody is onboard on a product vision magic happens.

And if this sounds like a love letter to Product Management, it’s because it is. If you ask me, I’ll say I do the best job in the world.

They tell we are “Jack of all trades, masters of none” but after all that’s what makes us unique. Do not complain to be the unsung heroes, you are the orchestra’s Maestro. There is no best reward than turn your stakeholders’ music and songs into an opera.

To all the Product Manager out there: never give up! What's your story? How did you become Product Managers and what are you working on?