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Advice for (new) head of product

First 90 days advice

This is advice compiled from other product leaders.

  • Meet with business stakeholders.

  • There is a lot more business stakeholder management than engineering roles.

  • Work with PMs on cadence for syncs, reviews of how Product and Tech support the business.

  • Measure product success against KPIs proposed at project inception.

  • Spend time with customers (users, buyers, or both)

  • Clarify product direction.

  • Communicate with org and make sure they’re aligned.

  • Figure out the main and secondary controllers/influencers of product and strategy for your product(s) and the company. Start building relationships with them and understand their perspective and motivation. Usually the places to start are founders, CEO, exec team, early employees, customer-facing leaders (not necessarily managers), and maybe the board.

  • Assess the PM, Design, Engineering, DevRel, Product Marketing, and Docs teams + artifact quality. Start making the most important changes in investment, approach, etc. that you see (assertively, quickly, with high leverage changes) in partnership with the leadership of any involved functions.

  • Meet with as many customers as possible, partnering with customer-facing roles.

    • Speak directly with as many customers as you can
    • Take at least one trip into the field with sales
    • Hear out what marketing/product marketing think about your place in the market and product, meeting with at least one analyst if that is relevant to the product
    • Spend a few days in customer success/support and hear out that group’s leadership (not just management) on the issues they see customers facing and that they face in satisfying customers

  • Somewhere before the end of the 90 days share your assessment of the situation and what you’re doing to drive positive change. This probably takes several forms for different audiences (execs, product team, design+engineering, rest of company) and can be a great way to build alignment and gather more info if done collaboratively.

Things an eng leader might overlook:

  • Product direction setting and communication with the org.
  • Product marketing is important.
  • Rolling out new features post stability.
  • Validation of product impact.
  • You may need to do analyst or investor facing communication.

Some product content you might follow

  • Lenny’s podcast and newsletter
  • John Cutler (may be a bit advanced)

Some content useful for new heads of product