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Question: I joined a new company as a sole Product Manager. What should I be doing in the first 30 days?
Here's a 4P checklist with some non-obvious pointers:
- Use the product yourself. Be insanely curious about things & don't be shy to ask questions. Take notes but don't advertise them yet.
- Read prior docs, business plans etc.
- Interview customers. Don't limit yourself to power users. Get a hold of someone who signed up yesterday as well.
- Identify doc gaps e.g. if vision, strategy etc. are missing, queue that up in your task log.
- Metrics! WAUs, Churn, NPS etc.
- Talk to everyone in your 360. Manager, devs, design, marketing etc.
- Listen actively to how they describe the product, their process, perspectives & priorities.
- Forge a bond. Get to know them personally. Hear their backstory & share yours. Develop an inside joke.
- Figure out communications. Frequency of meetings? Slack?
- What project management flavor do they use? Any rituals in play?
- Get access to the project tool & review the past 4 sprints. Gauge velocity.
- Enroll yourself on key email chains.
- Share a presentation with your findings to the team
- Sell a few project processes to add
- Collaborate on a 60-day roadmap
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In an attempt to make this footer a bit interesting, here's a little PM joke:
A Product Manager tried walking into a bar...but couldn't when he realized the doorknob user story was still in the backlog.
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