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Date: 10/10/2021

Two Months as a Product Manager...

...and both my excitement and anxiety are at an all time high! I’m here to share what I’ve learned so far.

My name is Kyle Lindley and I’m a learning product manager, mostly. I’ve learned a LOT in two months. A lot of the things I’ve learned are very unimaginative and honestly are not my proudest things to broadcast. But I do think they are worth writing about. It’s like discussing your losses on the stock market… it’s tough, but I think it is as valuable or more than only talking about your big wins.

For some background

I manage a sensor-based mobile and web application that allows users (baseball players and football quarterbacks) to manage their physical workload to improve performance and avoid injury.

I knew I was coming into this role for months. I had this perfect vision for how it was going to play out, what the team structure would look like, what and when the meetings would be, what KPIs I would use, how I would track progress, etc. I felt that as long as I did enough preparation it would be an easy transition and I would walk in, crush the first sprint, and continue to crush. Not so fast…

I don’t think the first couple of sprints went poorly, but I definitely don’t think they unfolded the way I’d imagined. I wish I could say in this essay that I’m much wiser after my first run at managing a product but in reality I think most of what I learned are less-than-groundbreaking realizations of how people and product development get managed. No big wins. No big losses… but no big wins. More like a collection of much smaller losses (some small wins too, I’m not all bad) that I hope will make me a better PM and leader down the road.

The purpose of writing this essay is to talk about some of the early things that I am learning as I grow into this product management role. Learning how to be a good leader is not easy, and I hope that sharing some of my own struggles and areas of improvement early-on can help other new leaders.

Here are six of my smaller, less flashy realizations that I’ve had throughout the first couple months of my journey to becoming an actual product manager

1. Less is more, say no

As a people pleaser, it’s really hard to say no when somebody comes in with a request that makes a good deal of sense. Often times my response (in my head) sounds something like, “yeah that should only take a couple hours, might as well throw it on the task board.” The problem is, too many of those that keep popping up, not only do they add up in total time but they also take the team’s attention away from the longer-term roadmap projects.

Example:

I know, being able to say no isn’t a novel idea and is something that many people talk about as an important skill when managing a product, a project, or a group’s time. The reason I’m still putting it on this list is because I was aware of its importance going into being a PM, but still fell in to the trap of trying to do too much.

Takeaway: Some things are urgent and can’t wait, but make sure you are prioritizing properly so that tasks can get shipped 100% instead of having a bunch of them at 90% completion

2. Ask the question

Multiple times during this first couple months, I was semi-reluctant to ask for something in the interest of not bugging a team member or potentially looking dumb if it wasn’t a good question. Whether it was a developer, a team member, or an outside collaborator I didn’t want to take away from somebody else’s workflow. These questions could be anything from vetting an idea I had, getting clarification on infrastructure, asking for a potential shortcut to something that was going to take me a while, etc.

Example:

I didn’t have a perfect picture of where all our server and database services were hosted and how they were integrated. I did my own digging for a few days to try and wrap my head around it, but then finally just asked the developer a question about the flow of data when a user is using the app. He smiled and asked me if I wanted him to draw a schematic, which he did, and I was able to put that into our documentation. The process of him drawing a schematic took 30 minutes… something that I spent multiple hours on trying to do the same without their help.

In almost all of the cases that I ended up deciding to ask the question, it was received with open arms and a helpful response. I do think it is important to know when not to ask a question and just use other resources available to you, but I think I was being too conservative when deciding to ask a question or not.

Takeaway: [obviously] be sensible, but as long as the communication is strong and respectful, asking a question that you’re contemplating can often be valuable. If you are going to ask the question, try to do it at a time where the person is not heads down on a task — you don’t want to shake their flow

3. I don’t know squat about product management

Here I am, learning how to manage a product just to realize… I need to learn a LOT more. I know some about the technical side of the product (I mean I am an engineer and sports scientist by training), but when it comes to talking about sales and customer retention and learning about how people actually use the product and what should be the focus of future development, I don’t know much at all.

Here is a slightly more complete list of things that I am learning about the non-technical part of the product:

Takeaway: think critically and don’t be shy about the things you need to learn, there’s no way you won’t have to learn new processes and skills along the way. If something isn’t working, first make sure you gave it a fair chance, but then open up to experimenting with new ideas.

4. My role is much different than the Silicon Valley PM’s you read about

I manage one remote developer who is the only person (outside of myself) who works full-time on the product. The rest of the team consists of people I asked to help improve the product on top of their primary role at the company. This brings a whole set of new challenges.

Takeaway: take experiences from other [insert your role here]’s with a grain of salt — there aren’t flawless instructions for how you make decisions in the context of YOUR role

5. A list of technical things I learned existed:

Takeaway: it takes quite a bit of range to be a PM. This is exciting but daunting, don’t get too frustrated with the amount you’ll need to learn (see #3)

6. One thing that is still true in my new role: It’s very hard to understand the market

I played some high school baseball. I know some people in professional baseball. I know some people in college baseball. I’ve worked with college and professional teams in a contracting capacity. Despite those experiences, I think I only know about 20% of what coaches, players, and other users in the market really need and would pay for. And on top of that, which of those user groups should be the priority.

What’s been the most helpful thing for learning the market? Thinking logically, reaching out to domain experts, and paying attention to what everybody is saying when they talk about the product or the problem it aims to solve. Not all of it is going to be valuable feedback, but after massaging the anecdotes and complaints and ideas of people who talk about the product and its use case, the information can be very valuable for prioritizing development and marketing.

Takeaway: knowing the market is not easy. Somebody who understands the [insert your market here] market 100% is a unicorn… reach out to people who have insight you’re looking for, then soak it up while also paying close attention to all the other passive data that is coming in

While writing this essay, it feels silly to share my experience. I’m writing about how to be a better PM when I’ve only been one (a very non-typical one, at that) for two and a half months. The purpose of this piece was to talk about some of the things that I am learning and reflecting on that can hopefully help other new leaders and even potentially myself as I look back on this.

If you want to learn more about the product I manage, feel free to follow myself on Twitter (@kylelindley_) or visit drivelinebaseball.com/pulse