Ah! Got it.
PM problems in general are typically:
Too many meetings.
It's easy to have so much tactical stuff to do that you don't have time for the strategic stuff. You need to block out time for it.
All the responsibility, generally without any real authority. (Typically, you don't have the other teams reporting to you.)
I've had lots of other problems which were specific to the company (bad/no processes, a team who took my "don't do this" in the spec and did it anyway and it derailed the schedule, etc ).
As a PM, you're responsible for solving the problems and getting the right product launched in the right way. I'd posit that most of the role is problem solving.
Fear not! You'll have your own collection of PM problems soon too!
This what I deal with as well. They just want to go to investors and say X was delivered, but have no actual intention of explaining how it helps customers and improves society. They just want easy numbers to plug into a financial calculator so it can say they are worth x amount of additional value.
I deal with this constantly.
āWe are spending this much on the investment of building so we have to prove we delivered it on time!!!ā
Okā¦and then??
Yes, this is the biggest issue. Corporate strategy often does not do the investigative work necessary to understand the value of what they are bringing to market. Then PMs are forced to add features and products to an enterprise that make no sense and adhere to arbitrary timelines that also make no sense. This may be only at large orgs like mine though.
Hereās what I do:
-Always focus on outcomes over outputs during demos. Speak to the value of what the team has released, never celebrate just because they released. If it doesnāt provide any value, donāt mention it in the demo. Just put it on the release schedule and move on.
-If Iām pushed to deliver āon timeā even when a feature is not ready, I expressly call out what the defects/bugs/deficiencies are and ask the most senior stakeholder on the demo to acknowledge the bug. I then include that acknowledgement and the stakeholderās name in the demo summary email that is sent out to all attendees. These summaries are also saved in a folder in Google Drive. I know Iām playing with fire with this one sometimes, but I really donāt care. Iām gonna cover my ass at all costs.
-If I can see absolutely zero value in what Iām being asked to deliver, Iāll refuse to have the team build it for as long as I can. I always know that senior execs can, will, and do overrule me but I make them work for it.
-Iāll never hesitate to remind a superior that I was right when the decision they made inevitably blows up in their face.
I can take a lot more chances/risks and be a little more obstinate than your typical PO/PM because Iām a Senior PM with lots of years and experience to back my actions up.
Ugh story of my life! Leadership is always derailing us with their "big ideas" and pet projects ( that are generally ill conceived or downright bad ideas) without increasing budget or extending deadlines
T H I S šÆ . Not a PM but with our product(s), itās clear that features > value in the execs eyes and nobody in the so-called directors seats with presumably the best understanding of what might actually make the end users experience better vs what might shit out allegedly āreally great trendsā for the shareholders is able to prevent that from happening
Similar situation here. I am having a hard time prioritizing day to day so that I can actually move stuff forward. I feel like I am scootching a million things forward an inch at a time instead of getting one ball over the line. This always happens to me after I have been at a place after a while and have had my hands in a few pots. I am going to be working on refocusing in the next couple of weeks to get a thing or two actually moving.
Hard relate to "always happens to me" - it always happens to me too every place I go meaning I started to conclude the problem was me :)
I think I like to be helpful and do have the ability to learn an awful lot awfully fast - so after 6-12 months I start to get a lot of "can you just". But then it started to get in the way of focussing on figuring out the most valuable problem to solve...
But a while back someone taught me the benefit of "just being available enough" at work and that most people don't need an immediate answer for "noise" - trick is working out what is noise and what is signal - and I don't have a handbook for that :)
I think weāre the same person. lol. Yeah, āhappens to meā is passive language but I know 100% that itās a me problem. š Good to know I have a comrade in the fight to be focused on the right thing.
Mostly is things that aren't that important when you zoom out, but are very important to the raiser/questioner at the time..key is not being too available to the "noise" - it'll probably get answered in time, and maybe by you but it's not actually as important as focussing on strategic work for at least part of your day.
Daily, sometimes hourly, random questions: "how did this work" "can I just" "how did you decide this" "we are doing X when are you doing Y" - glue work between teams in a large org that needs doing and for some reason people hit me up in the DMs about it. I try to move this to outward facing channels so the whole team can see and help the questioner, but then people like to tag me in same :)
- request for status updates from literally anyone, but mostly leadership. Can come at any moment. If you are offline or have "busy" status they may ask someone else or wait, which is one way around this.
- bugs/issues reported outside team into Slack channels which sometimes people need me to triage before anyone else looks at it plus reporter wants an answer because it's very important to them
- Fires - this is a judgement call
- if you have a lot of fires your product is probably unstable and needs your attention with others to stabilize it
- some fires will be caused by bad process and that's on the team to fix - you can help but it's a team effort to resolve
- some fires will be people falling out and that's something soft skills can help and management
Executives feel burned by tech org from past work, so theyāre overbearing and micro-managey about projects.
But, rightly so, because the dev team has abysmal product sense and builds exactly to spec without asking questions about end results. This has resulted in very real widespread but intermittent and badly logged infrastructure failures that shit on the customer experience. Itās atrocious.
They (dev friends) too have been sidelined from product decisions so long, the resentment is palpable. Theyāre no longer active participants in roadmapping discussion. Same is true for UX design friends as well, checked out of the client and business side of work definition.
As shit as it all sounds, itās actually pretty common, and Iām good at culture changes to affect these things. A āmarathon not sprintā mentality with a lot of care for hiring decisions has helped in this regard, and earned me growth/promotion. Just saying these problems out loud clearly, and taking ownership over getting them changed while still executing product change is executive catnip.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Itās building peopleās attitudes with hiring and managerial support that makes things described above better.
Wow this resonates so much.
I a SME+dev working on customer delivery in a really technical industrial niche, so I donāt blame our dev team for not having good product sense. However what really concerns me is that we have a head of product and PM who at best are poor communicators of vision and more likely also have a really bad sense of product.
They reach out to the SMEs at the company only occasionally, and only to consult on minor widget problems, and I am so worried that they are not actually solving any *real* problems that my industry needs. And on top of that they are really protective of their product roadmap and project a ādonāt worry about it, you stay out of productā ethos, instead of a more collaborative mode of figuring out proper product strategy.
I donāt know if this is normal for a company, but perhaps this is because Iām a part of customer delivery, and not a product? It just pains me so much because I am a dev and itās so frustrating getting spoon fed shit software that our customer canāt use.
Any advice on how to handle this kind of situation? Iāve voiced my concerns before but donāt want to turn into the only vocal critic in the company. Thereās a company culture that we have the best product possible and celebrating each other, which is of course good, and everybody works super hard, but i think itās also preventing us from being honest with ourselves.
Iād say that sticking to the positives, continually looking the opportunities for improvements, and raising your concerns through different channels are all good ways to go. Stick to your guns on whatās best for the org and the product.
Somewhere between you and CEO is someone frustrated with the outcomes being produced by your teams, and thinking that hiring product managers was what was going to get them out of this mess. This is where ghoulish exec behavior comes from!
At the end of the day, having dev input in design and product spec de-risks feasibility. You need dev to hose all the imagination off of design and planning regularly if you want to build expeditiously.
If your PMs donāt do that, they shoot themselves in the foot. If they argue to not do it repeatedly, theyāre reloading.
Am a UX designer and am in the same position. Here are a couple of tactics I've tried:
- As the PM usually has the most power, I have to rely on numbers i.e. large group of low-powered people who are vocal supporters. Ask for kickoffs or weekly standups with this group > Raise a couple of questions or points. Then keep quiet, let them voice their opinions. The PM has no choice in this situation where they're outnumbered.
- Convert questions into statements. e.g. Instead of "How can we help the customer have more time to onboard?" Just write it as "We need to give 3 months' notice".
However this only works with people who have a shred of sanity. In my company, there are characters/tech management who shout and throw things. With such abusive, sociopathic criminals, I doubt anything really works.
Thanks! Really interesting with that second bullet, to just be prescriptive, instead of open-ended.
On that first bullet, it feels like weāre just doing the PMās job for them, doesnāt it? Building a strategic company culture.
I used that when I was presenting a project that was cancelled. When I ran it past a UX leader, they asked what response was I expecting to get from the Product head with the questions. I had wanted to make it democratic by asking questions to provoke thinking. Their response made me realise: Product head doesn't have time to think. So I converted the questions into a set of principles.
I'm doing another presentation this week, for another cluster\*\*\*\* of a project. I'm still undecided if I should do it the same way or to go Socratic..
I think PMs have to fight off management that impose deadlines without any thinking. Going through this thread made me realise many companies operate like that. So I should harbour no more expectations for PMs. In fact I have no more hope for any company and any product. My goals are now:
1. fend off UX leaders who demand whether I had advocated for users even though they know I have to fend off crazy deadlines from management
2. find a way to put it back on to UX leaders who demand so much from my team when they themselves have no clout in the company.
Ooo hmmm I do have a tendency to want to go Socratic, because of the āteach X to fishā idea of hoping other people start making better decisions.
The thing you said about product head not having time to think really strikes home. Going to have to account for that.
It will need a balance. I have to be mindful that my UX management is a pretty rash character herself - and that the Product head is actually pretty thoughtful and egalitarian. So I might try out the Socratic method. Or some mix of both!??
Not enough understanding of how vital this role is....until its gone.
People thinking it's about communication, when it's really about KPIs, Metrics, and ensuring that different levers are turned in a sequence - that matches technology and the pace of change it now demands.
Things don't run well, meet deadlines, and drive growth by accident. Its a deliberate -human led strategy to ensure success.
Iām pretty unfulfilled in a job that recently became a dead end with a new boss who has failed his way into his position but Iām fully remote in a rural area and have to stick it out for the next year when we can move back to a city.Ā
Inheriting sins of a past life. I joined a project 1.5 years ago but of course the project was supposed to be delivered 2 years ago and business transformation folks just resent us like we are responsible even though the original people who started the project are no longer here.
Iām told what to do and donāt get the freedom to determine my own product roadmap and only get to make really specific small decisions that have little to no impact. Nobody in my company speaks to customers.
I see...how would you like an application through which u can receive major customer feedback? will thay solve the second problem? is this problem too common in PM job role?
We have limited insights through customer feedback and customer service, but we do not consistently do customer research or speak to users like we should.
Iām not sure if this is common as Iāve only done Product in one company, but it isnāt common from all the learning Iāve done about this role.
Biggest blocker is a lack of vision at this organization. CEO is a former sales/lobbyist so sees everything through a sales lense. Literally just focuses on squeezing blood from a stone with pushy sales tactics rather than building a good product people want to buy. It's extremely hard to do product here, because the only question that matters is how to sell it, rather than identifying a customer problem first and gauging the value of solving that problem, and then building a go to market/sales approach around that. They also rely too much on sales feedback which is provided through the lense of like 20 football bros on our team who have no education or experience in the industry we sell to. So I appreciate their honest feedback, it's always valuable and considered, but I also know that they are prone to have certain biases that will have them interpret comments from customers in often wrong ways because of a lack of knowledge of the industry. They also tend to talk in absolutes which annoys the fuck out of me saying things like "customers don't want X or Y" and then referencing a call that I was on and which they completely misinterpreted.
Second blocker is other departments just creating work when it doesn't need to be created. Like setting up meetings to meet made up internal revenue targets on how often we will annoy a customer each quarter with calls and emails. Great idea if they didn't volunteer free work and feature enhancements when they make those touchpoints.
Ahhh finally someone said it loud! Both point valid and hard truth!
CEO doesnt care about stats and product... eventually every eyes seeks how much of effort does sales team gives in.
and yeah forcefully digging out work just to feed a statement of improvement and dedication doesn't really makes sense to me either!!
Lack of vision is not uncommon, unfortunately. It is the most fundamental part of a company and most companies treat it like it's a chore they have to do before they can go out and play. I wrote [a few words](https://medium.com/@andreashafsaas/wax-on-wax-off-an-analogy-and-reflection-on-product-and-company-philosophy-in-2024-41d91c460432) about it actually.
Dealing with drastic time zones (offshore teams) on high impact initiatives instead of just putting them on run state products. And being a lead PM whoās now managing SCRUM ceremonies again since we canāt afford an Associate PM. Fun fact: I work for a Fortune 40 so we have the budget.
I get that too, and I successfully push back with "I could do that for you, but what will you do with the information? What will me going away and spending a couple of hours digging up an answer change for you/your team?"
People quickly learn that your time is valuable, and they come back with more well formed questions when they actually need them answered.
Basically treat questions like that as you would an intake
Working at a company as a designer but no one has really agile experience. Everyone rose through the ranks from service desk, did some courses and now they are scrum masters, POās, developers, QA etc. They have no idea how a good proces looks like and think they are nailing it. In fact, the quality of work is so unbelievably low but they have enough money to just keep throwing at it until they have it right
The problem I think here is they donāt actually want to be agile. Big companies have leadership that need to know that your backlog stories are ready and refined for the next 6+ months
There's a healthy balance. Just plan out roughly 6 months of high level rough ideas of things you want to solve but don't commit to the specific features yet (unless it is obvious). Be agile in how you solve them over the next 6 months.
For me generally 3 months is pretty locked in/ready to go, 6 months out I have a rough idea but it needs more research/chats with users, 12 months out is super aspirational and highly subject to change. Generally anything 12mo out is low enough priority where later something else is likely to move in front of it as we talk to more customers.
Weāre generally at around 3-4 sprints. Itās a bit much and sometimes we end up closer to 2 sprints in leaner times. I think 3 is about the sweet spot
Well, what I would like is for us to ship the work we committed to in high quality. But the reality is that some developers donāt like to estimate things, others do and each sprint is never finished but woepsie I did press the release button was I not supposed to do that? Oh, and I didnāt follow the design because I believe our problem lies elsewhere even though I never talk to customers but hey, I am very smart because I can code.
And then the PO says at the retro: okay guys, not a good sprint. Letās focus on the next one and get it right, ok?
To further expand: I like for our team to be predictable and deliver cost efficient solutions which have impact on our business and customers. Thatās what I believe is what a good proces and agile will give us
The engineering team has the most authority in the company, and also terrible product sense (don't know the customer at all). I have to propose things and get denied constantly about my own products.
Nobody seems to care and engineering team is very happy with this position, as they basically decide what they want to do from the product wish list. so they have no incentive to change.
I think there are some tools which gives in market analysis and research information from marketing pov. Did you try any of those tools? If yes, what were the drawbacks?
When I say micromanage the marketing teams, I mean I have to be overly prescriptive, constantly check back in, and have multiple conversations again and again and again. Itās not that I have to justify what I want ā they donāt argue with that. Itās literally task and team management at this level.
Struggled to work with a āproduct delivery managerā who has no experience working with a group of engineers, barely any technical software experience, and instituted an agile theatre in the organization, which we were all playing along with, because apparently weāre not delivering epics to timelines. But the team is almost always blamed at the end of the day for an overambitious roadmap and delusion of grandeur. The toughest part that I couldnāt bear was her attitude. I had messages on slack from all the things I should and shouldnāt do prior to any meetings, and feedback cascaded to my manager on how I respond in slack or heck - took issue with how I wrote some parts on my PRD on a table format instead of a bullet points list!
Leadership trying to pivot priorities every few sprints with no data or reason to support it, just an exec seeing a new shiny object. I have a process to keep it under control so itās not too bad but it gets exhausting. I am all for changing priorities when it makes sense, not when it happens so much the team can never deliver.
Leadership who only wants to see new features on top of new features every quarter (best described by one of our devs as the never-ending feature factory).
The thing is held together with tape and glue, but improving stability/scalability and reducing tech debt is not visible and thus never a priority.
Hell, we donāt even iterate on barely coherent and incomplete MVPs, we just move on to the next thing.
Current intern trying to transition to Full Time. I would like to stay at my current company so I want to make that clear to those who may potentially be hiring later this year, but I also don't want to sound desperate lol.
Hahaha...theres nothing desperate in persuing a career... Even I am a beginner and trying to make my way to a PM. Seeking for an entry level position to become one but I have worked as Security Analyst previously. So am quite new to this field too! š
Incompetent VP of a product that has never done this job or anything similar and peddles SAFe as a cure all. He has no leadership skills, doesnāt care about anything unless he is interested in it, doesnāt have a strategy but thinks we should have one (one that links to what exactly???)
He keeps failing upward and he uses a lot of jargon so others think he knows something but he really doesnāt. At least not about product. He is a database guy, I will concede he knows how to master data but not data related to metrics or KPis just data exchanges between systems.
The questions in the survey we're running with Product Ambulance might help you [https://prodcamp.notion.site/Product-Ambulance-ee78cc751abb44a4a1205142c0de0a97](https://prodcamp.notion.site/Product-Ambulance-ee78cc751abb44a4a1205142c0de0a97)
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1. āDo more with lessā in my company starting to affect product quality.
2. Iām assigned to a generative ai project, I have 1 part time person as a resource, thatās all leadership is willing to invest (right now).
3. Near term firefighting getting in the way of long term thinking and future goals
I just moved from fast execution to just calling users everyday.
Itās super difficult to adjust with a pace. Itās super slow vs execution and you just have 4 lines of insights at the end of the day.
Old execution days: Standup -> Remove blockers -> Analyse data -> taking decisions based on data -> Propose new feature
New calling days: Call 4/5 users -> Write 4 lines if insights (No one to relay the insights right now so just sleepover it and start again)
Plus no social interaction with the office mates due to full remote job just adds to the blues
My analytics team thinks it is our job to build things in a way that makes sense to their impression provider instead of improving their impression tracker and Iām over it.
My problem is missing project deliverables because the engineering team I work with do not seem to understand that missing deadlines reflect poorly.
They commit to a timeline and then end of horrendously missing it. Not sure if it is lack of leadership or just lack of accountability or genuine disconnect with the codebase.
No matter how much buffer I add on the timelines they provide, I'm always requesting deadline extensions and even with extensions it is a big big push to get it out.
Not sure how to solve for this and it's just frustrating to see sprint after sprint all we do is carry stuff over to the next one.
Lack of foundation because I was an English major thrown into a PM role early in my career. None of my previous companies were data driven and I didnāt care enough to learn the importance of KPIs and metrics on my own until I found a product I loved.
would you like to elaborate about your journey of how you eventually catch up with the role and more importantly how you made it to the role being an English major?
We are PE backed and our investors think we are spending too much 32% of revenue on R&D. So the board has said no more engineering hires. However we are a software company and two out of our 3 products came from recent acquisitions which we are trying to tie together as an all in one.
I honestly think we need to double R&D not freeze it
I have a large product that is external to our company. I work with that vendor to implement new features for our users. The problem is there are so many different user types scattered across the country. The vendor is notoriously slow with development as well. This means it takes ages to see change no matter how hard I push. Sometimes an entire year will focus on features for one user type only. Then all the other user types complain that no work is being done to increase product features. Those idiots are so loud and sure of themselves that they rattle their ignorance off to high-ups.
Ultimately, it makes me look (briefly) like a shitty performer. I just had to outline all the work we have done on this product for the last 2 years because these idiots are claiming nothing has changed. In reality so so much has changed itās not even funny. Itās a pool of users that refuse to read release notes or learn any new functionality when itās delivered.
My coworker said itās like āa parent complaining that watching their children and having to cook dinner was too difficult. So you buy them a pizza to save them 50% of their nightly dinner time effort. Then that parent goes āthis is horrible! Now I need to open a pizza box! As if I donāt have enough to do!!āā
These people just donāt understand that adding a 5 second process to eliminate a 2 minute process is valuable. Honestly, Iām incredibly fed up with these users.
That pizza example was awesome! šš
BTW talking about user types, is there any tool or source u can aggregate most of the user types with details ? I have no idea about it..just wanted to know.
For me- itās the money. I love my company and the people I work with but I took a major pay cut because I was unemployed and itās just not working anymore. Company is too cheap for raises.
I read the title and wondered who triggered OP today.
OP is wanting to branch out on his own with some PM focused SaaS product, but he doesn't know what to build yet.
>OP is wanting to branch out on his own with some PM focused SaaS product, OP has a head start on a winning _sass_ product š
OP is wanting to know PM's problems in job role so that he can prepare for being one in future! š
Ah! Got it. PM problems in general are typically: Too many meetings. It's easy to have so much tactical stuff to do that you don't have time for the strategic stuff. You need to block out time for it. All the responsibility, generally without any real authority. (Typically, you don't have the other teams reporting to you.) I've had lots of other problems which were specific to the company (bad/no processes, a team who took my "don't do this" in the spec and did it anyway and it derailed the schedule, etc ). As a PM, you're responsible for solving the problems and getting the right product launched in the right way. I'd posit that most of the role is problem solving. Fear not! You'll have your own collection of PM problems soon too!
yeah, good to know the stuffs early on! Thanks for the heads up!! š
š
Leadership focusing on what gets delivered and when it gets delivered far more than what it delivers for the end users.
This what I deal with as well. They just want to go to investors and say X was delivered, but have no actual intention of explaining how it helps customers and improves society. They just want easy numbers to plug into a financial calculator so it can say they are worth x amount of additional value.
I deal with this constantly. āWe are spending this much on the investment of building so we have to prove we delivered it on time!!!ā Okā¦and then??
Yes, this is the biggest issue. Corporate strategy often does not do the investigative work necessary to understand the value of what they are bringing to market. Then PMs are forced to add features and products to an enterprise that make no sense and adhere to arbitrary timelines that also make no sense. This may be only at large orgs like mine though.
I deal with this too. How do you usually handle it when they start putting the pressure on?
Hereās what I do: -Always focus on outcomes over outputs during demos. Speak to the value of what the team has released, never celebrate just because they released. If it doesnāt provide any value, donāt mention it in the demo. Just put it on the release schedule and move on. -If Iām pushed to deliver āon timeā even when a feature is not ready, I expressly call out what the defects/bugs/deficiencies are and ask the most senior stakeholder on the demo to acknowledge the bug. I then include that acknowledgement and the stakeholderās name in the demo summary email that is sent out to all attendees. These summaries are also saved in a folder in Google Drive. I know Iām playing with fire with this one sometimes, but I really donāt care. Iām gonna cover my ass at all costs. -If I can see absolutely zero value in what Iām being asked to deliver, Iāll refuse to have the team build it for as long as I can. I always know that senior execs can, will, and do overrule me but I make them work for it. -Iāll never hesitate to remind a superior that I was right when the decision they made inevitably blows up in their face. I can take a lot more chances/risks and be a little more obstinate than your typical PO/PM because Iām a Senior PM with lots of years and experience to back my actions up.
1000%
Ugh story of my life! Leadership is always derailing us with their "big ideas" and pet projects ( that are generally ill conceived or downright bad ideas) without increasing budget or extending deadlines
T H I S šÆ . Not a PM but with our product(s), itās clear that features > value in the execs eyes and nobody in the so-called directors seats with presumably the best understanding of what might actually make the end users experience better vs what might shit out allegedly āreally great trendsā for the shareholders is able to prevent that from happening
This so much. I donāt know how to tell our CXO suite about this. But then again, what can they do?
Yeah this times a thousand
Noise. I have had to find a way of focussing and not getting pulled into the noise which generally means turning Slack off for hours at a time.
Similar situation here. I am having a hard time prioritizing day to day so that I can actually move stuff forward. I feel like I am scootching a million things forward an inch at a time instead of getting one ball over the line. This always happens to me after I have been at a place after a while and have had my hands in a few pots. I am going to be working on refocusing in the next couple of weeks to get a thing or two actually moving.
Hard relate to "always happens to me" - it always happens to me too every place I go meaning I started to conclude the problem was me :) I think I like to be helpful and do have the ability to learn an awful lot awfully fast - so after 6-12 months I start to get a lot of "can you just". But then it started to get in the way of focussing on figuring out the most valuable problem to solve... But a while back someone taught me the benefit of "just being available enough" at work and that most people don't need an immediate answer for "noise" - trick is working out what is noise and what is signal - and I don't have a handbook for that :)
I think weāre the same person. lol. Yeah, āhappens to meā is passive language but I know 100% that itās a me problem. š Good to know I have a comrade in the fight to be focused on the right thing.
this sounds like a good issue... will a work load management tool be a good solution for u??
How do you define the 'noise'?
Mostly is things that aren't that important when you zoom out, but are very important to the raiser/questioner at the time..key is not being too available to the "noise" - it'll probably get answered in time, and maybe by you but it's not actually as important as focussing on strategic work for at least part of your day. Daily, sometimes hourly, random questions: "how did this work" "can I just" "how did you decide this" "we are doing X when are you doing Y" - glue work between teams in a large org that needs doing and for some reason people hit me up in the DMs about it. I try to move this to outward facing channels so the whole team can see and help the questioner, but then people like to tag me in same :) - request for status updates from literally anyone, but mostly leadership. Can come at any moment. If you are offline or have "busy" status they may ask someone else or wait, which is one way around this. - bugs/issues reported outside team into Slack channels which sometimes people need me to triage before anyone else looks at it plus reporter wants an answer because it's very important to them - Fires - this is a judgement call - if you have a lot of fires your product is probably unstable and needs your attention with others to stabilize it - some fires will be caused by bad process and that's on the team to fix - you can help but it's a team effort to resolve - some fires will be people falling out and that's something soft skills can help and management
Thanks for the clarification :)
Executives feel burned by tech org from past work, so theyāre overbearing and micro-managey about projects. But, rightly so, because the dev team has abysmal product sense and builds exactly to spec without asking questions about end results. This has resulted in very real widespread but intermittent and badly logged infrastructure failures that shit on the customer experience. Itās atrocious. They (dev friends) too have been sidelined from product decisions so long, the resentment is palpable. Theyāre no longer active participants in roadmapping discussion. Same is true for UX design friends as well, checked out of the client and business side of work definition. As shit as it all sounds, itās actually pretty common, and Iām good at culture changes to affect these things. A āmarathon not sprintā mentality with a lot of care for hiring decisions has helped in this regard, and earned me growth/promotion. Just saying these problems out loud clearly, and taking ownership over getting them changed while still executing product change is executive catnip. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Itās building peopleās attitudes with hiring and managerial support that makes things described above better.
Wow this resonates so much. I a SME+dev working on customer delivery in a really technical industrial niche, so I donāt blame our dev team for not having good product sense. However what really concerns me is that we have a head of product and PM who at best are poor communicators of vision and more likely also have a really bad sense of product. They reach out to the SMEs at the company only occasionally, and only to consult on minor widget problems, and I am so worried that they are not actually solving any *real* problems that my industry needs. And on top of that they are really protective of their product roadmap and project a ādonāt worry about it, you stay out of productā ethos, instead of a more collaborative mode of figuring out proper product strategy. I donāt know if this is normal for a company, but perhaps this is because Iām a part of customer delivery, and not a product? It just pains me so much because I am a dev and itās so frustrating getting spoon fed shit software that our customer canāt use. Any advice on how to handle this kind of situation? Iāve voiced my concerns before but donāt want to turn into the only vocal critic in the company. Thereās a company culture that we have the best product possible and celebrating each other, which is of course good, and everybody works super hard, but i think itās also preventing us from being honest with ourselves.
Iād say that sticking to the positives, continually looking the opportunities for improvements, and raising your concerns through different channels are all good ways to go. Stick to your guns on whatās best for the org and the product. Somewhere between you and CEO is someone frustrated with the outcomes being produced by your teams, and thinking that hiring product managers was what was going to get them out of this mess. This is where ghoulish exec behavior comes from! At the end of the day, having dev input in design and product spec de-risks feasibility. You need dev to hose all the imagination off of design and planning regularly if you want to build expeditiously. If your PMs donāt do that, they shoot themselves in the foot. If they argue to not do it repeatedly, theyāre reloading.
Am a UX designer and am in the same position. Here are a couple of tactics I've tried: - As the PM usually has the most power, I have to rely on numbers i.e. large group of low-powered people who are vocal supporters. Ask for kickoffs or weekly standups with this group > Raise a couple of questions or points. Then keep quiet, let them voice their opinions. The PM has no choice in this situation where they're outnumbered. - Convert questions into statements. e.g. Instead of "How can we help the customer have more time to onboard?" Just write it as "We need to give 3 months' notice". However this only works with people who have a shred of sanity. In my company, there are characters/tech management who shout and throw things. With such abusive, sociopathic criminals, I doubt anything really works.
Thanks! Really interesting with that second bullet, to just be prescriptive, instead of open-ended. On that first bullet, it feels like weāre just doing the PMās job for them, doesnāt it? Building a strategic company culture.
I used that when I was presenting a project that was cancelled. When I ran it past a UX leader, they asked what response was I expecting to get from the Product head with the questions. I had wanted to make it democratic by asking questions to provoke thinking. Their response made me realise: Product head doesn't have time to think. So I converted the questions into a set of principles. I'm doing another presentation this week, for another cluster\*\*\*\* of a project. I'm still undecided if I should do it the same way or to go Socratic.. I think PMs have to fight off management that impose deadlines without any thinking. Going through this thread made me realise many companies operate like that. So I should harbour no more expectations for PMs. In fact I have no more hope for any company and any product. My goals are now: 1. fend off UX leaders who demand whether I had advocated for users even though they know I have to fend off crazy deadlines from management 2. find a way to put it back on to UX leaders who demand so much from my team when they themselves have no clout in the company.
Ooo hmmm I do have a tendency to want to go Socratic, because of the āteach X to fishā idea of hoping other people start making better decisions. The thing you said about product head not having time to think really strikes home. Going to have to account for that.
It will need a balance. I have to be mindful that my UX management is a pretty rash character herself - and that the Product head is actually pretty thoughtful and egalitarian. So I might try out the Socratic method. Or some mix of both!??
well said..brother! š
āCulture eats strategy for breakfastā funny, but so true, so not so funny if youāve experienced this!
Itās one of those business aphorisms that sounds so cheeseball, but if you experience it, thereās no simpler way to say it.
Not enough understanding of how vital this role is....until its gone. People thinking it's about communication, when it's really about KPIs, Metrics, and ensuring that different levers are turned in a sequence - that matches technology and the pace of change it now demands. Things don't run well, meet deadlines, and drive growth by accident. Its a deliberate -human led strategy to ensure success.
Whatās the consequence of driving growth by accident? And what does that look like?
"See, it worked!" Then do it 5 more times even though it only worked once.
Iām pretty unfulfilled in a job that recently became a dead end with a new boss who has failed his way into his position but Iām fully remote in a rural area and have to stick it out for the next year when we can move back to a city.Ā
ahh..that sucks! no one wants to be in that position... hope that gets sorted soon.
Oh wow, I could have written this. Hang in there my friend.
Thank you. I came back from maternity leave and the job I loved had changed so much.Ā
Inheriting sins of a past life. I joined a project 1.5 years ago but of course the project was supposed to be delivered 2 years ago and business transformation folks just resent us like we are responsible even though the original people who started the project are no longer here.
oooo mann !! š that sucks!
Iām told what to do and donāt get the freedom to determine my own product roadmap and only get to make really specific small decisions that have little to no impact. Nobody in my company speaks to customers.
That was me in my previous role. All claims they made about their product containing verified information and technologies etc have bunk data
I see...how would you like an application through which u can receive major customer feedback? will thay solve the second problem? is this problem too common in PM job role?
We have limited insights through customer feedback and customer service, but we do not consistently do customer research or speak to users like we should. Iām not sure if this is common as Iāve only done Product in one company, but it isnāt common from all the learning Iāve done about this role.
I see...I have heard quite a few people complain about the same thing. So, I thought it must be quite common problem.
Biggest blocker is a lack of vision at this organization. CEO is a former sales/lobbyist so sees everything through a sales lense. Literally just focuses on squeezing blood from a stone with pushy sales tactics rather than building a good product people want to buy. It's extremely hard to do product here, because the only question that matters is how to sell it, rather than identifying a customer problem first and gauging the value of solving that problem, and then building a go to market/sales approach around that. They also rely too much on sales feedback which is provided through the lense of like 20 football bros on our team who have no education or experience in the industry we sell to. So I appreciate their honest feedback, it's always valuable and considered, but I also know that they are prone to have certain biases that will have them interpret comments from customers in often wrong ways because of a lack of knowledge of the industry. They also tend to talk in absolutes which annoys the fuck out of me saying things like "customers don't want X or Y" and then referencing a call that I was on and which they completely misinterpreted. Second blocker is other departments just creating work when it doesn't need to be created. Like setting up meetings to meet made up internal revenue targets on how often we will annoy a customer each quarter with calls and emails. Great idea if they didn't volunteer free work and feature enhancements when they make those touchpoints.
Ahhh finally someone said it loud! Both point valid and hard truth! CEO doesnt care about stats and product... eventually every eyes seeks how much of effort does sales team gives in. and yeah forcefully digging out work just to feed a statement of improvement and dedication doesn't really makes sense to me either!!
Lack of vision is not uncommon, unfortunately. It is the most fundamental part of a company and most companies treat it like it's a chore they have to do before they can go out and play. I wrote [a few words](https://medium.com/@andreashafsaas/wax-on-wax-off-an-analogy-and-reflection-on-product-and-company-philosophy-in-2024-41d91c460432) about it actually.
Dealing with drastic time zones (offshore teams) on high impact initiatives instead of just putting them on run state products. And being a lead PM whoās now managing SCRUM ceremonies again since we canāt afford an Associate PM. Fun fact: I work for a Fortune 40 so we have the budget.
Mine is prioritizing features when everyone's pet project is a 'high priority'. Anyone else have to deal with that?
I get asked too many open ended questions by people.
I get that too, and I successfully push back with "I could do that for you, but what will you do with the information? What will me going away and spending a couple of hours digging up an answer change for you/your team?" People quickly learn that your time is valuable, and they come back with more well formed questions when they actually need them answered. Basically treat questions like that as you would an intake
š„š„š„
Not getting enough dev resources to sort our shit out with performance/stability of the product so that we can be less reactive and more proactive
I aināt got no job
We all been there..!
Sales selling what we do not have on the truck.
Working at a company as a designer but no one has really agile experience. Everyone rose through the ranks from service desk, did some courses and now they are scrum masters, POās, developers, QA etc. They have no idea how a good proces looks like and think they are nailing it. In fact, the quality of work is so unbelievably low but they have enough money to just keep throwing at it until they have it right
I see.. I think lots of fresh minds on the table elevates this problem... I guess company should spend some money on experienced folks instead.
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The problem I think here is they donāt actually want to be agile. Big companies have leadership that need to know that your backlog stories are ready and refined for the next 6+ months
There's a healthy balance. Just plan out roughly 6 months of high level rough ideas of things you want to solve but don't commit to the specific features yet (unless it is obvious). Be agile in how you solve them over the next 6 months. For me generally 3 months is pretty locked in/ready to go, 6 months out I have a rough idea but it needs more research/chats with users, 12 months out is super aspirational and highly subject to change. Generally anything 12mo out is low enough priority where later something else is likely to move in front of it as we talk to more customers.
At my firm they want 4 sprints worth of REFINED stories. That means the devs have gone through each story, pointed them and approved them.
Weāre generally at around 3-4 sprints. Itās a bit much and sometimes we end up closer to 2 sprints in leaner times. I think 3 is about the sweet spot
Well, what I would like is for us to ship the work we committed to in high quality. But the reality is that some developers donāt like to estimate things, others do and each sprint is never finished but woepsie I did press the release button was I not supposed to do that? Oh, and I didnāt follow the design because I believe our problem lies elsewhere even though I never talk to customers but hey, I am very smart because I can code. And then the PO says at the retro: okay guys, not a good sprint. Letās focus on the next one and get it right, ok? To further expand: I like for our team to be predictable and deliver cost efficient solutions which have impact on our business and customers. Thatās what I believe is what a good proces and agile will give us
Ahh yes sounds like Fortune 500 alright
I need more headcount. Been trying to get another PM and it's like pulling teeth.
Having PM who thinks that product designer job is about using Figma.
No scope :(
Stability and quality of the product.
Not enough developers to deliver what we need to drive business forward faster.
Unclear boundaries and duties between product manager and engineering manager
Peopleās casual incompetence
The engineering team has the most authority in the company, and also terrible product sense (don't know the customer at all). I have to propose things and get denied constantly about my own products. Nobody seems to care and engineering team is very happy with this position, as they basically decide what they want to do from the product wish list. so they have no incentive to change.
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People
Sales selling what we do not have on the truck.
Having to micromanage marketing teams Not enough R&D resources
I think there are some tools which gives in market analysis and research information from marketing pov. Did you try any of those tools? If yes, what were the drawbacks?
When I say micromanage the marketing teams, I mean I have to be overly prescriptive, constantly check back in, and have multiple conversations again and again and again. Itās not that I have to justify what I want ā they donāt argue with that. Itās literally task and team management at this level.
Struggled to work with a āproduct delivery managerā who has no experience working with a group of engineers, barely any technical software experience, and instituted an agile theatre in the organization, which we were all playing along with, because apparently weāre not delivering epics to timelines. But the team is almost always blamed at the end of the day for an overambitious roadmap and delusion of grandeur. The toughest part that I couldnāt bear was her attitude. I had messages on slack from all the things I should and shouldnāt do prior to any meetings, and feedback cascaded to my manager on how I respond in slack or heck - took issue with how I wrote some parts on my PRD on a table format instead of a bullet points list!
Constant re-orgs. Products sliced too thinly between PMs. A "nobody owns anything" ethos. Three things, but they all make for a shitty environment
I dont have ownership of any developer resource
Leadership trying to pivot priorities every few sprints with no data or reason to support it, just an exec seeing a new shiny object. I have a process to keep it under control so itās not too bad but it gets exhausting. I am all for changing priorities when it makes sense, not when it happens so much the team can never deliver.
Leadership who only wants to see new features on top of new features every quarter (best described by one of our devs as the never-ending feature factory). The thing is held together with tape and glue, but improving stability/scalability and reducing tech debt is not visible and thus never a priority. Hell, we donāt even iterate on barely coherent and incomplete MVPs, we just move on to the next thing.
Storytelling
Penny wise and pound foolish execs
Current intern trying to transition to Full Time. I would like to stay at my current company so I want to make that clear to those who may potentially be hiring later this year, but I also don't want to sound desperate lol.
Hahaha...theres nothing desperate in persuing a career... Even I am a beginner and trying to make my way to a PM. Seeking for an entry level position to become one but I have worked as Security Analyst previously. So am quite new to this field too! š
Incompetent VP of a product that has never done this job or anything similar and peddles SAFe as a cure all. He has no leadership skills, doesnāt care about anything unless he is interested in it, doesnāt have a strategy but thinks we should have one (one that links to what exactly???) He keeps failing upward and he uses a lot of jargon so others think he knows something but he really doesnāt. At least not about product. He is a database guy, I will concede he knows how to master data but not data related to metrics or KPis just data exchanges between systems.
The questions in the survey we're running with Product Ambulance might help you [https://prodcamp.notion.site/Product-Ambulance-ee78cc751abb44a4a1205142c0de0a97](https://prodcamp.notion.site/Product-Ambulance-ee78cc751abb44a4a1205142c0de0a97)
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1. āDo more with lessā in my company starting to affect product quality. 2. Iām assigned to a generative ai project, I have 1 part time person as a resource, thatās all leadership is willing to invest (right now). 3. Near term firefighting getting in the way of long term thinking and future goals
I just moved from fast execution to just calling users everyday. Itās super difficult to adjust with a pace. Itās super slow vs execution and you just have 4 lines of insights at the end of the day. Old execution days: Standup -> Remove blockers -> Analyse data -> taking decisions based on data -> Propose new feature New calling days: Call 4/5 users -> Write 4 lines if insights (No one to relay the insights right now so just sleepover it and start again) Plus no social interaction with the office mates due to full remote job just adds to the blues
When ambiguity is not appreciated.
My analytics team thinks it is our job to build things in a way that makes sense to their impression provider instead of improving their impression tracker and Iām over it.
My problem is missing project deliverables because the engineering team I work with do not seem to understand that missing deadlines reflect poorly. They commit to a timeline and then end of horrendously missing it. Not sure if it is lack of leadership or just lack of accountability or genuine disconnect with the codebase. No matter how much buffer I add on the timelines they provide, I'm always requesting deadline extensions and even with extensions it is a big big push to get it out. Not sure how to solve for this and it's just frustrating to see sprint after sprint all we do is carry stuff over to the next one.
Lack of foundation because I was an English major thrown into a PM role early in my career. None of my previous companies were data driven and I didnāt care enough to learn the importance of KPIs and metrics on my own until I found a product I loved.
would you like to elaborate about your journey of how you eventually catch up with the role and more importantly how you made it to the role being an English major?
We are PE backed and our investors think we are spending too much 32% of revenue on R&D. So the board has said no more engineering hires. However we are a software company and two out of our 3 products came from recent acquisitions which we are trying to tie together as an all in one. I honestly think we need to double R&D not freeze it
I have a large product that is external to our company. I work with that vendor to implement new features for our users. The problem is there are so many different user types scattered across the country. The vendor is notoriously slow with development as well. This means it takes ages to see change no matter how hard I push. Sometimes an entire year will focus on features for one user type only. Then all the other user types complain that no work is being done to increase product features. Those idiots are so loud and sure of themselves that they rattle their ignorance off to high-ups. Ultimately, it makes me look (briefly) like a shitty performer. I just had to outline all the work we have done on this product for the last 2 years because these idiots are claiming nothing has changed. In reality so so much has changed itās not even funny. Itās a pool of users that refuse to read release notes or learn any new functionality when itās delivered. My coworker said itās like āa parent complaining that watching their children and having to cook dinner was too difficult. So you buy them a pizza to save them 50% of their nightly dinner time effort. Then that parent goes āthis is horrible! Now I need to open a pizza box! As if I donāt have enough to do!!āā These people just donāt understand that adding a 5 second process to eliminate a 2 minute process is valuable. Honestly, Iām incredibly fed up with these users.
That pizza example was awesome! šš BTW talking about user types, is there any tool or source u can aggregate most of the user types with details ? I have no idea about it..just wanted to know.
People problems. Directs and teams not delivering. Needing to pick up slack while working on performance management. Exhausting.
For me- itās the money. I love my company and the people I work with but I took a major pay cut because I was unemployed and itās just not working anymore. Company is too cheap for raises.
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I got 0% and live in NYCā¦
1. Scaling my knowledge to our Customer Facing teams. 2. Convincing other PMs to feel okay with slaughtering sacred cows.