30/60/90 Day Plan as a Product Manager
Ace your ramp up period by staying focused on three goals.
Your first 30/60/90 days as a product manager should focus on three goals:
1.) becoming an expert on your product
2.) building strong relationships
3.) positively impacting your team and company
Ramping up on your product
The product you’re working on might be something you already use daily, or something you’ve never heard of. Either way, you’re going to get VERY acquainted with this product and will likely be using it half the time while you’re at work ;)
There are multiple ways to ramp up on your product, fast:
Use the product!
Read the previous PRDs on the product
Look at the core metrics for the product and how they have evolved over time
How important is this product to the business? Has it always been that way?
Read through user research findings, understand current pain points of the product
Look at what’s being said about the product on social forums like Reddit and Twitter
Read app store reviews or in-product survey feedback
Identify the key user segments
Which user segment is the team’s priority? Why?
Read the press release or blog when it launched
Sit in on user interviews with your user researcher
Talk to team members who helped launch the initial product to understand the context and business need
Identify key competitor products, and use those frequently, too!
Building Relationships
Once you’ve ramped up on the product a bit, it’s time to start building relationships (which will accelerate your understanding, as well). Typically you’ll want to meet other PMs on your team, engineering managers, designers, data scientists, and user researchers – but I recommend you go even further and talk to all stakeholders your team works with: engineers, marketing, security, privacy, customer experience, finance, risk, and more depending on the company. There will likely be a handful of PMs not on your team that you work with and will want to meet with, too.
The more relationships you build early on, the easier collaboration will be going forward, and you’ll also pick up on more company knowledge. I recommend starting with your immediate team to ramp up fast. Once you have more context and your project plans are underway, set up time with senior leaders and executives in your org to introduce yourself, share context on your projects, get feedback, and build alignment.
You might be thinking, what should I talk about in these meetings? Each one will vary, and some only need to be a quick 15 minute chat. Good topics to cover include:
What does your team focus on? What are your key priorities?
When should I involve your team in our launch?
How can we best work together?
What has your experience at the company been like? What sets someone up for success at this company?
Positive Impact
Improving processes
Each PM brings a new perspective, and in your first few months you can identify what areas in the team can be improved. Is pre-launch testing not as thorough as it should be? Is the team feeling disconnected? Could the team be doing project management more efficiently?
Think about what worked in your last company or organization, and bring those learnings to your new team. Something we do at Coinbase is ‘retros’ where we discuss what went well and what went wrong after each launch, or even after each 2-week sprint. This helps us identify action items to take to make sure we’re always improving and working more effectively.
Another process we had at Facebook was bug bashes, where right before a launch we would get everyone in a room and have them test out the product. During this session, we would write down all the bugs we found and make sure they were triaged correctly to be addressed in the next few days. At Coinbase, we dogfood our products prior to launch – but it can be difficult to get employees to participate thoroughly. Introducing the bug bash process helped us test more thoroughly.
Processes that are especially critical for PMs to own include: organizing the roadmap, creating a project tracker, tracking incoming dependencies from teams, onboarding new PMs, and maintaining a team command center. If one of these stands out to you, you could take the lead in improving this process for your team in your first few weeks.
Executing on OKRs
Talk to the PMs and other team leads to understand your team’s OKRs for the quarter and next quarter/year (if available). Your manager should let you know how you can work on OKRs in your first few months. If not, you should definitely understand the team’s north star metrics and strategize ways you can contribute. Talking to people on the team can help reveal what areas need improvement and product input.
Helping other launches
Getting your hands dirty and helping other PMs on your team with their launches can be a great way to accelerate your learning of the product and build trust with the team. You can help by testing, giving feedback on designs, sharing ideas for the GTM plan, etc. This is also a good way to understand the launch process for your specific team!
To recap, the main focus areas are: 1.) become an expert on your product area, 2.) build strong relationships with stakeholders, and 3.) improve your team through processes or OKRs. If you feel stuck or like you’re not making progress, chat with PMs on your team who have been in your position and your manager to ensure you have a clear path forward to progress and make an impact in your first 90 days.