A Letter To A New Product Manager

The product manager is responsible for prioritizing the product roadmap and communicating it to the team. Not as a top down dictator, but as a consensus builder amongst all the stakeholders, breaking a tie when necessary.

Once you master all of that, you will need to develop product vision (conviction about where things are going in the future, make the hard calls about what to eliminate, etc) and strive to make something truly great. You can think about it not just as eliminating customer pain, but actually creating customer delight.

You need to be a ​communication hub, both when building consensus internally on priorities/roadmap, but also externally communicating changes to customers. Users need to see that the product is continually improving by hearing about it from you. Everyone internally needs to be on the same page when changes roll out. You are the point of contact for... See more