Urvi Chetta

Prioritization is hardest and most important problem to solve when you are Product Manager #1 in a company. Because in early stage startups, it can be really choatic with changing needs and market conditions, I don't recommend following RICE or any other standard prioritization framework. In my opinion, Product Manager with most product sense will succeed the most here. Product sense is a combination of deep understanding of jobs-to-be-done for users, continuous user interviews and deep market knowledge. That can help you decide what to build and when to pivot. In addition, working closely with visionaries ( mostly CEO or CPO) in our company who are driving long-term differentiation and strategic advantage is crucial. Listening and Learning / Re-learning skills are most important. Pragmatic approach rather than going by the books is what I recommend in this scenario. Outcome I look for is delivering small iterative features that are received well by users ( i.e. there are indications that features are adding value ) and that team is learning more about user behaviours/interactions in relation to the product at hand. In a more mature product or company, I would recommend more structured approach such as RICE framework to prioritize product features / intiatives.

Here is my process to building a well rounded PM team: 1. Goals: Start with what space/market am I operating in, what product I want to build, what are our weaknesses / Strengths. This allows me to understand if I need a PM that has strong domain expertise or someone with background in psychology. 2. Hiring / Onboarding: come up with must-have and nice-to-haves for the PM hires and craft out a thoughtful interview process that is based on evaluating core PM skills and personalities. 3. Feedback loop: There should be a constant feedback loop between PMs and leaders to understand what can be improved in processes and come up with experiments to try and improve those areas. 4. Measuring not just on what but how: I measure PMs not just on OKRs they achieve and metrics they move but also on how they end up achieving their goals. Best ones create long-term advantage for the organization and company while collaborating across groups/departments.

There are many different ways to create an effective PM org structure. It really depends on the company, their strategy and values. At Gitlab, PM team organization led by CPO. VP of Product reports into CPO. Directors and Sr. Directors report into VP. Group Managers report into Directors/Sr. Directors. IC PMs report into Group Managers or directors. Highest level of IC is Sr. Staff Product Manager. CPO has Technology, Revenue, Sales and HR counterparts in the C-level who all report into the CEO. Product Teams are organized based on DevSecOps life-cycle stages meaning each team is responsible for a stage ( Create, Plan, Manage, Secure etc.) within devSecOps life-cycle. This allows us to dive deep into the painpoints of that stage and focus on ensuring user experience is unparalleled in comparison to competitive products.

More often than not, we are in scaling phase as a company/group when trying to expand from 1 PM to multiple PMs, I want to ensure that following is in place: 1. Clearly defined roles & responsibilities for PM * What outcomes we want to drive * what processes we want to develop * what skillsets are must have and nice to have for the PMs * Clearly defined interview / hiring process * Well-defined onboarding process 2. Clearly outlined process for PMs to add value: * Well defined product validation and product execution processes * success metrics for PMs * widely communicated and common understanding in the company on what PMs bring to the table * supporting orgs such as Product operations or data analysts ( if not clearly outlined expectations on what tasks PMs need to fill in because we are missing other roles )

I leverage different channels & format of communication depending on what I am communicating and who the audience is. Here is few different types of updates I use consistently: Product Execution Updates: A summary of how execution to executives/VPs is going with high level status update emails periodically ( weekly/monthly) with metrics/insights charts. A more deep-dive for major milestones / releases / events where I cover wide range of topics including PR updates, perceptions around releases, first interactions with early adopters, risk mitigation strategies. Product Reviews: Internal meeting with Product Managers ( occasionally with close counterparts from engineering & design ) to deep-dive into product roadmap, key results we want to achieve, behaviours we want to change, levers we will be deploying and how we will pivot & manage risks. The goal of this exercise is to purely get better at PM craft and get strong as a PM organization. Impact & Insights communications: It is extremely important to communicate not only results but the importance of path we took to get to the results. This is form of communication goes to entire vertical or even company to highlight the impact we are making on the customers and company overall. The content is usually wins in term of metrics / OKRs we moved, success stories of customers, big rocks we conquered along with the nuances on risks we managed. This communication to celebrate the wins and give credit where its due. Product Goals & Roadmap updates: These updates happen quarterly and yearly. The main goal of these updates is alignment - To answer any hard pressing questions, to uncover probable roadblocks/ issues in execution and to accelerate momentum that comes from joining forces. I do this kind of updates for 2 different audiences : 1. Internal facing ( Product, Engineering, design, research, Data) 2. External facing ( Marketing, CSM, Account execs etc.) The main difference between two audience is level of details. For external facing, we want to be clear on outcomes we are driving and who we will be delivering value for. In addition, what are we not going to focus on in our strategy. Internally, we want to follow it up by Pre-mortem exercises if there are big risks or concerns around execution.