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DIFFERENT SKILLS = DIFFERENT STRENGTHS AS A PM Jackie Bavaro - @jackiebo

How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

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Learn how the skills you already have can make you a great PM, and how to build the skills you're missing. Includes the Venn Diagram of PM Skills

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Page 1: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

DIFFERENT SKILLS = DIFFERENT STRENGTHS

AS A PMJackie Bavaro - @jackiebo

Page 2: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IS ALL ABOUT FILLING IN THE EMPTY SPACE

ANY EXPERIENCES YOU’VE HAD CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PM

Page 3: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

•The Venn diagram of PM Skills

•Examples of how different roles have built up those skills

•How to build the missing skills

•How to find a company and role that’s good for you

•How to use your unique skills to succeed as a PM

Overview

Page 4: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Design a great product

Ship It

Strategy & Vision

Leadership

Customer Focus

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Prioritization

Project Management

Technical Skills

Communication

Page 5: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision

Leadership

Customer Focus

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Prioritization

Project Management

Technical Skills

Communication

ENGINEER

Page 6: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision

Leadership

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Technical Skills

Communication

MARKETING

Project Management

Customer Focus

Prioritization

Page 7: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision Leadership

Customer Focus

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Prioritization

Project Management

Technical Skills

Communication

DESIGNER

Page 8: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision

Leadership

Customer Focus

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Prioritization

Project Management

Technical Skills

Communication

PROJECT MANAGER

Page 9: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision Leadership

Customer Focus

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Action Oriented

Technical Skills

Communication

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Prioritization

Project Management

Page 10: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

Strategy & Vision Leadership

Product Design

Analysis & Synthesis

Technical Skills

Communication

BUSINESS ANALYST

Project Management

Customer Focus

Prioritization

Action Oriented

Page 11: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

INDUSTRY EXPERTISE

Page 12: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

HOW TO BUILD THE MISSING SKILLS

Page 13: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

CUSTOMER FOCUS

• Spend time with people

• Watch them use products and look for where they run into problems

• Learn what their goals are

• Practice framing products in terms of customers and goals

• Build up some compelling anecdotes to make the customers real for you

• Check out the IDEO Human Centered Design Toolkit

Page 14: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

PRODUCT DESIGN

• Use a lot of products

• Always think about how they could be improved. Double check your improvements for customer focus

• Stay on top of new trends, notice what you like and don’t like, and why

• Consider ways that you could apply something that works well on one product to another kind of product

• Read some books on product design

Page 15: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

ANALYSIS

• Learn the fundamentals of data analysis

• Check out Lean Startup and the KISSMetrics blog

• Practice if you can

• Sit in on data analysis meetings

• Play with the data yourself

Page 16: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Take some courses

• Optimize for learning skills that you could actually apply at your job: CSS, Scripting, SQL

• Discuss technical issues with engineers

• Ask them to help you ramp up

Page 17: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

BEING MORE ACTION ORIENTED: SCRAPPINESS

• Be Brave

• Make a habit of stepping up

• Do, Delegate, or Decide you don’t need it

• Look for times you or a teammate feels blocked - that’s a sign there’s an opportunity to be scrappy

• Yes, this is hard work

Page 18: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

PRIORITIZATION

• Get comfortable with the need for prioritization

• If you waited until the product was perfect it would never ship

• We’re not always right about how important things are

• Once the product launches you’ll learn much more from your customers

• Decide what you’re optimizing for

• Are you testing a hypothesis? Making a use case possible? Aiming for a quality bar?

Page 19: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

PICKING THE RIGHT ROLE FOR YOU

Page 20: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

• Consider making the transition at your current company

• Consider going after a TPM or EPM job

• Look for a role where your skills will be valued

• “How do you split the work with designers and marketing?”

• “What do you look for in a PM?”

• Look for a company where you’ll be able to learn a lot

• You might want to pick a company with lots of PMs so you can learn from them

Page 21: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

USE YOUR UNIQUE SKILLS TO SUCCEED

Page 22: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

•Use your skills to identify areas where you can be helpful

•eg. put together a marketing plan, do some data analysis

•Especially great if you can use your skill to be helpful early on

•Pick up experience and ask for advice in the areas you don’t know.

•Ask how to learn, don’t just pass questions along

•Share your skills

•Build up your credibility by teaching other people what you know

Page 23: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

...oh, and maybe buy our bookTHE END

Also: pmblog.quora.c

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Page 24: How to Succeed as a PM with your Unique Skills

PHOTO CREDITS

• http://flic.kr/p/aEHMU

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soyuz_TMA-09M_rocket_in_the_assembling_facility_1.jpg

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Decisions_Decisions_(Horton,_Oxwich_Point_or_Castle)_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1511202.jpg

• http://flic.kr/p/99XzqQ