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Product Management at Rise8

Being a product manager is an exciting, challenging, and rewarding role but it can sometimes be confusing to know where to start. Whether you are a brand new PM or shifting over to a new organization, you may feel that the expectations and responsibilities of your role are not the most clearly defined. We do not believe there should be a rigid universal definition of product management, rather PMs should utilize the open-ended nature of the role to leverage their unique strengths and build a style that works best for them and their team. That said, there are three primary pillars that we feel a product manager should be accountable for:

Responsibilities

Product Direction:

As a PM you are the main voice of the business among your balanced team. This means you are constantly focused on building the most valuable thing right now, since the business will hold you accountable for contributing to its objectives. Successfully supporting the business side of things does not mean deprioritizing the needs of users or technology, rather it involves balancing priorities to achieve the best outcomes. PMs collaboratively research business problems to understand users in their environment, set product priorities and goals, measure delivered work to adjust direction, and frequently communicate product direction to stakeholders, portfolio leaders, users, and the team.

Team Process:

In order to most effectively achieve outcomes for the business and users, teams must have a smooth operating rhythm with established processes. As your team’s PM, you should always be building and optimizing your team’s practices for maximum efficiency. Are your rituals (like Iteration Planning Meetings) effective? Is the team leveraging or improving industry best practices? Can you use data (such as DORA metrics) to indicate your processes are working?

Team Health:

There is consistent evidence demonstrating that high performing teams share several key ingredients like psychological safety, autonomy, and shared ownership over their product’s impact. As a PM you have the most visibility into all of the different disciplines and personal interactions on your team, so it is of paramount importance to dedicate time to building and improving team health. PMs should always be working to have a safe collaboration environment, maintaining a sustainable pace, fostering learning and growth, and protecting design and engineering resources.

Servant Leadership

A strong product manager balances strategic and tactical processes with interpersonal relationship building in order to serve as a steward for their team and their product. Product managers are often portrayed as the leaders of their team, but we strongly recommend treating your team as a flat structure so you can leverage the expertise of other disciplines as effectively as possible by exercising servant leadership.