Main takeaways: - When to start talking to customers and what questions to be asking - How to approach conversations with stakeholders - Strategies for learning existing processes and informing product discovery

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5. Nikil Ramanathan
T O N I G H T ’ S S P E A K E R

6. Background
● Currently Senior Product Manager at Newsela
● Newsela is an instructional content platform for teachers and students
● Focused on a Reporting and Insights product for Districts and Teachers

7. Background
● Prior to Newsela, I was a PM at WeWork
● Also worked at Amazon as both a PM and a Product Analyst

8. Background
● How many PMs/aspiring PMs do we have today?

9. Agenda
● Common Pitfalls
● How to Avoid Pitfalls
● Questions to Ask
● Outcomes for First 30 Days
● Key Takeaways

10. Common Pitfalls for New PMs
● Trying to learn everything about the company and product through
documentation
● Trying to make big decisions too quickly without full context

11. Common Pitfalls for New PMs
● Building roadmap around your ideas rather than the customer’s
● Doing too much of your previous job and not focusing on being a PM

12. How to Avoid these Pitfalls
● Trying to learn everything about the company and product through
documentation
INSTEAD
● Set up 1-1s and meet everyone on your team
● Talk to stakeholders across the organization
● Talk to customers

13. How to Avoid these Pitfalls
● Trying to make big decisions too quickly without full context
INSTEAD
● Learn about your team’s process, problems, and priorities
● Understand intention of team
● Reserve making judgments. Understand the context first.

14. How to Avoid these Pitfalls
● Building roadmap around your ideas rather than the customer’s
INSTEAD
● Talk directly to customers as soon as possible (internal and external)
● Build a high-level roadmap to avoid biases setting in too quickly
● Talk to proxies for customers (customer success, other PMs, user
researchers) to validate hypotheses

15. How to Avoid these Pitfalls
● Doing too much of your previous job and not focusing on being a PM
INSTEAD
● Set goals that are product-focused and measurable
● Partner with teammates and become an ally
● Learn from other PMs what success means

16. Who should I be speaking to?
● Customers
● Manager
● Customer Success
● PM that previously had your job
● Leadership
● Other PMs
● Other Business Stakeholders
● Sales

17. What questions should I be asking?
● Understand their background, their role, their team, and their experience
● What has been working well?
● What can be improved?

18. What questions should I be asking?
● Key projects they’ve worked on
● How do product processes work here? (e.g. getting buy-in, running sprints,
writing user stories)
● What goals/metrics does your team have?

19. What questions should I be asking?
● What is working/not working with the product I am owning?
● What existing documentation exists around your team?
● Who else would you recommend I speak to?

20. Why ask these questions?
● Now is the time to ask questions while you’re still new. Ask as many whys
as possible. Dive deep.
● The purpose of meeting a wide variety of people and asking a lot of
questions is to understand what isn’t working well and get ideas on how to
solve these pain points

21. How to Structure First Week
● Set up daily 1-1s with your manager
● Work with manager to create an individualized 30-day plan with measurable
goals and outcomes

22. Outcomes of 30-Day Plan
● Meet with customers and key stakeholders
● List of 3-5 biggest pain points with existing product
● List of 3-5 most important metrics to measure for product
● Ideas for quick win solutions to pain points
● Begin roadmap/vision doc for product for big rocks

23. Key Takeaways
● 1) Talk to customers as soon as possible. This allows you to get feedback
before any biases set in.
● 2) Meet as many stakeholders as you can. Ask questions to get high level
context and to figure out what's working and what can be improved
● 3) Be Patient. Learn the process before jumping in and changing things.

24. THANK YOU!
Questions?

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