My Product Journey
I recently started a new role…and it’s my best one yet. My job is to evaluate existing processes, make recommendations for improvement, and then implement those recommendations. I couldn’t dream up a better functional role if I tried. The role combines my love of project management with my aptitude for strategy with my affinity for tech products with my passion for productivity. Like most people when they are starting a new role, it took me a while to understand what they were asking me to do. Then, I stumbled upon this piece and realized that my current role is best described as “product operations.” I am project managing product managers.
Similarities Between Project Management and Product Management
Seasoned product managers may dispute me, but most project managers I know, particularly those that have been working in the consulting space or on a smaller team, also have product management chops. Senior project management roles often involve developing a strategy or vision, engaging with your stakeholders to ground truth it, designing a solution that codifies that vision, tactically implementing the solution, and then using metrics you’ve designed to measure success.
Product management requires you to do the same thing—but for a product, rather than a program. Similar skillsets apply—among them leadership, communication, and the ability to understand the big picture in addition to managing the tactical details.
I found myself in the position of knowing that I could do a product manager job but having to prove it. As a strategy consultant, I had even served as a product manager in prior engagements. I still loved project management, but I wanted to diversify my skills to better position myself in a changing market.
Shifting from Project or Program Management to Product Management
Deepening my product management skills required a lengthy process of discovery and a fair amount of hard work. Below are the steps I followed:
Invested in a coach. I began working with a coach in 2019, with the initial goal of improving my leadership skills. For those who have the means, I cannot recommend coaching enough. Although costly, I was able to use company money to pay for this personalized attention to help achieve my professional goals. Let me stress that coaching is NOT easy! For the investment to be worthwhile, you must be willing to spend the time to adequately reflect and prepare for each session. Sometimes, I would leave sessions in tears, frustrated with my professional blockers or seemingly slow progress. But, ultimately, the process was rewarding. I learned a lot about myself, including my own personal blinders, and became a better leader as a result. As part of my journey of professional discovery, I recognized that my product management skills were not as sharp as they could be. I used the time with the coach to craft a plan for addressing that gap.
Conducted a skills gap analysis. Once I had identified through discovery that product management was something I wanted to learn more about, I researched the skills that were required for the role. Then, I identified which of these skills were transferable based on my prior experiences in product and as a program manager. I realized that I possessed a lot of these skills already. For the ones that could be improved, I devised a plan to fill those gaps.
Learned the vocabulary. One of the transferable skills I possessed was the ability to quickly get up to speed on a topic that may initially be unfamiliar. I had extensive experience with onboarding to new projects and not knowing what the hell was going on. I approached learning product management in the same way. I researched and subscribed to 24 product management blogs and read this content voraciously. When I came across a term that I didn’t recognize, I Googled it and added to a running list of definitions that I maintained in a Google Doc. Over time, it became easier to read the articles. I retired the Google Doc. I had officially absorbed the lingo.
Created a training curriculum. I completed an introduction to product management course on Udemy to learn the bread and butter of what the role entailed. As I listened to the course, I created a running research notes file and identified and prioritized a list of tools that I wanted to add to my technology stack. Over the course of 2020, I took courses on UX Strategy, Jira, Confluence, Sketch, and MySQL. When the opportunity for my current product ops role appeared, I didn’t have practical experience with Jira—but my training credentials helped me land the position.
Retooled my resume and LinkedIn profile. In addition to reframing my prior work experience in the language of product, I tapped into those parts of my resume that showed the entrepreneur in me. The initiative I had taken to hire a coach and quantify improvements in my leadership abilities, the extensive productivity research and talks I had given, and the website I had launched demonstrated that I knew how to lead as well as how to design and scale products. My website grew out of a desire to scale one-on-one coffee chats into a format that was palatable for a broader audience. In essence, I had launched a product. Now, I just needed to show it.
Refreshed my portfolio. I redesigned and modernized my website in 2020 to make it more accessible to my readers’ diverse interests in product management and productivity as well as project management. I mapped out a launch plan that included quantitative and qualitative data gathering efforts. I created user personas to imagine what my readers would want to see and used that information to target opportunities for improvement. The research I had done on product management helped prepare me for taking this exciting step to revamp my product offerings.
Pursued opportunities for on-the-job training. I expressed my interest in working on business development efforts related to digital offerings to continue to expand my product vocabulary. I had started setting personal OKRs with the help of my coach and talked about it so much at work that it garnered the attention of my VP, who enlisted me to help him with a similar effort.
Landing the Role
When my most recent project unexpectedly ended over the summer, I was ready. The combination of on-the-job as well as external training, personal branding efforts, and my entrepreneurial side hustle made me a shoo-in for my current role. If I hadn’t done this legwork, I would have likely found myself in a familiar role, doing what I had done previously. It would have been enjoyable. I also would have been bored in six months.
Now that I have my coveted position, I’ve decided that I’ve reached a sufficient level of technical understanding for the time being. 2020 and its unintended solitary confinement was a good time for learning and discovery. I’d like to focus 2021 on growing my network and relationships in the product community. I’m excited to continue this journey with all of you as my readers!
