Shyvee Shi

So you want to become a Product Manager…
Do you know what type of PM you are?

Few aspiring PMs can answer this question with a well-thought-out response.

Yes, it’s true that many PMs switch to a different type of PM role with a job change, but it’s very important to understand not all PMs do the same work.

As a first-time PM and a career pivoter though, it’s more effective if you don’t treat all PMs equal and have a clear sense of your PM type.

✨ What are the types of PM? ✨

There are lots of ways to segment a PM role. Our intent is not to cover all segmentations possible and share with you the most common types.

🔹 The 0-1 PM (aka The Innovation PM): These are PMs who like to work on venture bet ideas, they bring new ideas to market.

🔹 The Growth PM: These PMs are obsessed with metrics and experimentation. They marry customer psychology with numbers to drive product adoption.

🔹 The Platform PMs: They are building technology which is used by other teams/businesses to develop their applications. They are usually more technical.

🔹 The Consumer PM: These PMs possess strong user empathy, envision the consumer journey, and tell you how to improve it. They have a knack for design and workflows.

🔹 The domain experts: These PMs have found their niche. They are the subject matter experts and command products in their specific domains. The domain could be Machine Learning/AI, Data, Hardware, Ecommerce, Marketplace, Privacy & Trust, etc.

✨ Which type of PM are you? ✨

👉 Most PMs are likely to fit more than one type. In many cases, the type will change as you change the products you work on and as you gain experience.

👉 As career pivoter and first-time PMs, you should assess your strengths and relevant work experience to identify which type of PM you are.

✨ Do I need to know before I interview which PM type I want to be? ✨

👉 Yes, this clarity will help you put your best self forward and effectively re-position your relevant “non-PM” experience to get your first PM job!

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💬 What type of PM are you?

Share your comments below👇 and I’d love to hear from you!

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Kudos to Akash Mukherjee for visual and branding support!

#ProductManagement #Careers

How to write a Product Requirements Doc (PRD)? ✍️

A “Good” PRD usually contains the following sections:

- Problem & Opportunity Statement
- Goals & Success Metrics
- Users
- User Story
- Concept mocks
- Roadmap & Go-to-market plan
- Open Questions

A “Great” PRD adds more thoughts and depth:

- Where should we play in this problem space?
- Why are we uniquely positioned to “win” this?
- Why now? What drives the urgency?
- What user insights give us the conviction?
- What are some product principles we follow?
- What are the key trade-offs & decisions?
- What are the risks & their mitigation plan?
- What are the riskiest assumptions? What must be true for this idea to work?

👉 Here are additional tips to ensure the PRD lives to its fullest potential:

[1] Use the writing process to clarify your thinking.

[2] Make it easy to read and understand, including diagrams and charts, use bullet points, move as much as possible to an appendix, and highlight the controversial bits that need feedback/alignment.

[3] Use the doc as the focal point for feedback. Writing PRD isn’t about handing your perfect plan over to the team - it’s about making the plan better! The final spec isn’t as valuable as the process you go through to write and collaborate on the doc.

[4] Judgment > template. Don’t get overly-focused on picking the right template, focus on understanding the purpose of each section of the template, and how it may help drive desired outcomes for your product.

[5] Focus on outcomes > output. Don’t overspend your time perfecting the PRD; your job isn’t to deliver a spec. You want to use it as a conduit to guide the team towards a concrete outcome.

Credit: Jackie Bavaro for some of these best practices and a spec template from her days at Asana for folks for you to reference: https://lnkd.in/gHSid-fE

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💬 What other tips or examples you have about writing a great PRD? Share them to inspire the Linkedin community!


#ProductManagement #Careers

A PM’s calendar sucks. 😫

- Stakeholder meetings, UX interviews, customer calls
- Standups, plannings, retros, and groomings.
- All hands, metric reviews, and many 1-1s.
- Product jams, design critiques, GTM discussions.
- Many adhoc “Do you have 15 mins?” quick questions
- And last-minutes “fire fighting”

How many times our calendar is double or even triple booked?

How many times do we have to carve out the weekday nights and weekends in order to do the “real work”?

How to take back control of your calendar?

Top tips to fight calendar chaos and thrive at work 💪

1️⃣ Audit your calendar and remove any meetings that can be resolved async. Unless the decision needs real-time collaboration, leverage documents instead.

2️⃣ Spend 10 minutes before you go to bed mapping out the top 3 priorities for the next day.

3️⃣ Start your day by setting intentions. Carve out a block of time during your “peak” energy hours to focus on your top priorities and avoid any distractions. It takes an avg of 23 mins to refocus after a distraction.

4️⃣ Batch process: schedule multiple 15-min focus blocks to review and respond to open threads. Don’t let communication take focus away from you outside these scheduled blocks.

5️⃣ Change 30 mins meeting to 25 mins to take back 30 min for every 6 meetings. Small buffers can help refocus, quickly resolve open threads, and you are more efficient when you know you have less time.

6️⃣ Try to schedule meetings of similar nature on the same day to avoid context switches and stay “in the flow” to increase productivity. Back-to-backs with small buffers work better than too many 30-min “dead times” in between meetings. This way, you can plan for “light meeting days” to focus on deep work.

7️⃣ Create leverages by investing in automation. Make templates, write scripts or documents, invest in the right tools, and reduce repeated decision making.

8️⃣ Hack your motivation by increasing the pleasure of doing a task. For me, this means treating myself with an Oat Latte, listening to Daniel Jang playing pop music on a violin, and getting my standing desk set up. This builds a mental cue to associate a potentially draining task with some joy.

9️⃣ Overcome inertia by tricking your brain to do the task for just 5 mins. A body in motion tends to stay in motion; a body at rest tends to stay at rest. You never know what will happen after this magical 5 mins…you just need to get started! 😉

🔟 Don’t forget to rest and recharge. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Recharge by taking walks, walking 1:1s, sitting in the garden, cooking, taking a nap, sipping some tea. Anything to make you feel good and show some self love.

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💬 What’s your favorite productivity tip? Share them with us and we may feature them in future posts!

#ProductManagement #Careers #Productivity

10 of my favorite PM templates and frameworks 📚

1/ On writing PRD
https://lnkd.in/gE9DXU9K

2/ On product strategy
https://lnkd.in/g_DZxWPX
By: Ian McAllister

3/ More on product strategy
https://lnkd.in/gQ8VJmJ2
By: Gibson Biddle

4/ On defining a compelling product vision
https://lnkd.in/gju6McY2
By: Roman Pichler

5/ On product roadmap
https://lnkd.in/gvDPqA8P
By: Miro

6/ On product rituals
https://lnkd.in/ggWyDqbD
By: Shishir Mehrotra

7/ On product launch plan
https://lnkd.in/gt9PD-MV
By: Michael Taylor

8/ On decision-making
https://lnkd.in/g866PyQH
By: Gokul Rajaram

9/ On first 30/60/90 days
https://lnkd.in/gStFyFuU
By: Deborah Liu

10/ On career development
https://lnkd.in/ga7Cfg8F
By: Reforge

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#ProductManagement #Careers