Framework to break into Product-Management

Here is a framework to craft one’s unique transition journey into product management. I’ve shaped this framework based on my set of learning and reflections from my personal transition journey from engineering to product. The framework focuses on building the right set of skills to become and thrive as a product manager.

Let me share a bit about myself and why I’m writing this article. I started my career as a software developer and engineered products for 11+years. I had a pivotal moment in my life when I self-acknowledged that I want to do product management. In about a year I was able to successfully transition to a full-time product role.

I’ll be honest, the transition journey was challenging, especially because I had been doing something else for more than a decade. The challenges pushed me to methodologically approach my aspirations.

“Excitement comes from achievement. Fulfillment comes from the journey that got us there” — Simon Sinek

Courtesy https://picsart.com/i/image-create-your-own-path-freetoedit-road-path-camino-286991566027201

The Framework

Many people have asked me ”What is the mantra for breaking into product management?” I believe there is none. Like a story, every individual has a scene to begin with, and a unique set of challenges. The right question to ask is how do we map out our career transition journey from point A to B, and be successful at B? Here is a framework to best define a successful journey:

1. Assess yourself
2. Assess the gaps
3. Build a plan
4. Work and Persevere

Opportunity hypothesis — Assess yourself

Start with self-assessments and reflections, which are immensely powerful. They give us a clearer understanding of who we are and what sparks joy in us. The four fundamentals I focused on are:

• My strengths
• My values
• The sense of happiness
• My trigger points

The above self-data points may not fully define you because we as sapiens are evolving species. It serves the following two purpose:

1. Surfaces the deep-rooted reasons as to why you want to be a product manager. It’s a commonly asked question when you’re out in the job field. Your crystal clear thought process will reflect in your storytelling and will bring a spark in your eyes, which many leaders love to see. In my personal experience, as I was working to transition internally and capitalize on the trust and credibility that I built as a developer, my team wasn’t ready to let me go. I was doing a 20% PM role as a side-project, and getting great feedback but still was constantly told to focus on the dev work. I could empathize with my team who had an herculean goal to achieve, but at the same time, I couldn’t see myself dragging my ambition. Fortunately I got an opportunity to talk to a C-level executive to share my passion and spark. From there on, I witnessed extraordinary leadership which will inspire me always.
2. Brings a sense of comfort about yourself. During all the several moments of feeling-low, a strong self comes to the rescue. There are gazillion different kinds of humans that we meet every day, and more than half will be super difficult to deal with while you are at the receiving end. The most needed attribute during this journey is being comfortable in your skin. Trust me, it helped me build resilience.

Problem Definition- Assess the gaps

Let’s be diligent in assessing the gaps that need to be worked on. Product management is at the intersection of the following three.

Deep expertise in one of the areas is good enough, what really matters is the passion for all three.

First, look at the spectrum of the product management role and find out, what kind of product manager you want to be:

A general Product manager usually lies in the center. Fortunately, I was able to test the waters by doing a couple of flavors before I moved into a full-fledged Product Manager role. I’d recommend the same if that’s a possibility. Another aspect is to figure out what type of product you want to work on? I’d strongly suggest going for the same type of product you’ve been working on which will build upon your strength.

Second, learn about the expectations for the kind of product manager you want to be. I have two suggestions:

1. Talk to the PMs out there, as many as you can. In my experience, it was really easy to reach out to people for coffee chats as everyone loves to talk about themselves and their work. Equally important is to take a selected few conversations forward and get mentors. I got four valuable mentors and sure, having multiple mentors played out extremely well.
2. Reach out to the hiring managers, and understand their expectations. My favorite question to ask was — “Who is an ace product manager for you?” The response also gave me some notes on what to highlight about myself during the real interview.

Third, articulate the biggest challenges that you foresee or are facing in making the transition. These challenges are what’ll make your transition story unique to you. For example, I was looking to transition internally and was working on a highly visible and critical project. A lot of leaders in my org were constantly telling me to focus on the dev work. My biggest challenge was to stand strong on what I wanted and not burn any bridges. Reason being as a Product Manager, I’d be working with the same folks as my partners.

Use the following model to jot down all the skills and challenges:

Through this exercise, I identified certain stereotypes attached to a developer that I had to face. Many people assumed I had no experience of public speaking or cross-functional partnerships, as I must have been doing heads down coding all day and night. My reality was different, so these were the skills I jotted down as the skills I needed to highlight.

Solution space — Build a plan

The gaps and challenges are better known now. The next step is to build a plan to bridge the gaps and overcome the challenges. Building a plan can be anything from doing a product tear-down to trying a business idea. I highly recommend discussing the plan with your mentors too. Happy to share the 4 plans from my diary.

• Product Assignments

The idea is get product assignments in the form of specific product requirements, competitive analysis or even backlog management.

• Speaking opportunities

Presenting decks is one of the most glamorous and desirable skills in a product manager. My mentor advised me to create speaking opportunities for myself. One of the ways to put yourself on the spot is to pick a product relevant to your current industry, and present a tear down. Through this, you can showcase your product thinking and your presentation skills.

• Learning

The intention here is two-fold. First is to learn the product management basics and work on the identified gaps. For example, if you feel data analytics is foundational for the product role you are looking for, take a course. To thrive in your future role, it’s important that you understand the basics. The second intention is to establish your interest. When I enrolled in a product management course from Product School, I made sure to talk about it to all the PMs I was talking to. It accentuates the seriousness about the transition, and establishes the interest, that you are here to learn and work it through. Not just courses, I’d encourage you to evolve yourself through reading books, blogs or listening to podcasts. I made a list of books and a few podcasts as part of my plan as well.

• ERGs and Outreach programs at work

I made it my annual goal to lead ERG initiatives at work. It’s a great way to demonstrate one’s leadership skills and experience execution of ideas resulting in a huge impact. It does extract considerable time bandwidth, and in my opinion that is totally worth it. As a bi-product, I made amazing friends and a very supportive tribe to surround myself with.

Other examples of ideas in the plan could be:

• Taking a hobby to the next level
• Joining a nonprofit’s leadership team
• Kickstarter project

Caveat — don’t spend too much time in making a perfect plan, rather just have one and keep iterating over it. The good action plan is a live document that is meant to evolve.

Execution and Iterations — Work and Persevere

Working on the plan isn’t as easy as it may sound. The most important skill here is to navigate through the opportunities. There may be times, when multiple threads of side-initiatives are running in parallel. Not to forget, most likely you have a full time job that you’re most accountable for. This is an opportunity to rehearse prioritization, which you’ll have to do plenty once you are in a product role.

Depending on your company dynamics, you may encounter some futile executions. In my case, I was continuously talking to PMs in my team and wider organization and looking to get a side project. Every product manager I talked to was drowning in work, still, it was hard for anyone to give me a small piece. Putting myself in their shoes, I feel it’s more about managing accountability than being generous. I figured the right approach is to offer help rather than asking for work. It’ll be relatively easier if you offer yourself to the PM in your team, as there will be less of a learning curve (and you wouldn’t be a huge time sucker). Through this route, I successfully grabbed an assignment of writing the product requirement for a very low priority feature.

Be precise and clear in the asks also leads to better results. I was also very clear in sharing my intention to my mentors and my manager. Since the leadership team has a much better idea of the wider scheme of things, they could help me direct to the right opportunity. Eventually my mentor played a big role in having me pick a run-the-business product which was destined to deprecate as my 10% project.

As I reflect now, the core elements which I leveraged as I made my way up to a full-time role are:

• Trust — Relationships build over trust. A lot of effort goes into building trust, and it’s totally worth it.
• Perseverance — Tangible outcomes take time, and in this time, frustration and dejection are detrimental to our success. Things were developing which I couldn’t see, but thankfully I kept giving my 100% to all the work I was doing.
• Communication — The smart work speaks for itself — False! It’s equally essential to talk about your work and capitalize on your interactions.

In the End

As humans, we have a huge bias towards action. Huge learning is that a successful career transition journey starts with assessing oneself mindfully. With the right mindset, assessing the skills and challenges leads to a powerful actionable plan. The execution might be a roller coaster ride, but that’ll ensure you build the right skills and be an ace product manager.

Hope this write up is helpful to you and you take home the following:

• A framework to break into product management.
• Tools to systematically build the career transition plan
• Positivity and inspiration to power through the transition journey

Thank you for reading and if you find this useful, please feel free to share with your friends who are in the same boat. My goal is to reach out to a much wider audience and hopefully they can embark on a much shorter and equally fulfilling journey than I did.

I’m on twitter and of course on linkedin.

Wish you all the best!