TL: DR
When a product manager joins a new team, they often inherit an existing product. Getting a good view of where the priorities for that product lie in just a few weeks is critical to both the product's future success and theirs. To manage this successfully, range across the product, check you understand what you see and ruthlessly prioritise fixing critical items first. Move quickly; you’ll get leeway and resources to resolve those significant issues and set your product up for success. Get immediately lost in the day-to-day, and you’ll not notice the significant issues until it’s too late, and all those problems are only yours to fix.
Introduction
If we are lucky, we get to start a new product afresh in our product life. We might have to sunset a product, but we often inherit a product somewhere in its lifecycle.
As this is a frequent activity, this article will share some of the opportunities and problems these inheritances present to you, the customers, the product and your organisation to give you a checklist for future product inheritance.
Navigating an inheritance well is critical to a fulfilling product development career. You have a lot of power in the first few weeks as you solve an organisational problem - a need for a product manager for their product; how to take advantage of that opportunity is what this is all about.
Firstly, let's talk psychology (BTW, I am originally an engineer, so those who are more expert in this subject, please pitch in below.). You and the organisation have an explicit psychological transaction when you take up a key open position as a product manager. You are helping them solve a problem that would be theirs if you weren’t there. In my experience, this gives you a honeymoon period of about six weeks in which you can ask for pretty much anything to help them solve their problem, after which all this and the fixing becomes your problem.
What do you inherit?
When you take over an existing product, you get all of the following in various states:
The product
The understanding of how it works
The teams that build, run, maintain, and develop the product
The teams that promote and sell your product
A management stack that is on the hook for the results of your product
Customers of your product
Risks, issues and complaints
A view of how your product is performing
History of your product’s life to date
Expectations of what your product will do tomorrow, next week, month, year
This list is long, so let's consider some tactics for managing an inheritance efficiently and effectively.
Cover the ground
Firstly, there will be many details you don’t have time to discuss immediately. Prioritise covering the ground first. Make time to meet, read, watch, and observe the aspects of your product. Remember that the team has likely been without a PM for at least some time; you have time to do this.
Listen
Listening might be in here more for talkative me than you, but ears open, mouth shut. You may be an expert but have yet to be in this product. Consider listening out for:
Are communications clear and compelling?
Are people engaged and listening?
Is the whole team involved?
Who are the stakeholders? How well do they know and support the product?
Are people clear on what the product does for customers?
People's tone is fundamental at this stage in your learning; you are trying to get a feel for what you are inheriting.
Playback
While tone is essential, you must get a handle on the product and how it works/is developed. Playback your understanding in small forums or to individuals and ask them to mark your homework. It’s a great way to engage with people, ask them questions, playback, and check if you have understood their expert information. Do this across the team and stakeholders to get a variety of views.
Assess
As you work through the inheritance list at the start of this chapter, assessing the state/quality of these is crucial in making you successful. You should not share this private information (see paragraph below). Find a way that works for you and score. I like to consider the following:
Completeness - Is the documentation or the team complete?
Accuracy - Is the information or understanding on point?
Effective - Does the team, document, and process work effectively to build, run and maintain the product?
Check
Do not share your private view of your product; they are your first unverified impressions. You must double-check if your assessment is complete. How you do this is key to success. Ask people about the best aspects of the product/team/process and what needs attention the most. Different people will have other areas of focus, which will help you validate if you have picked up the right or wrong end of the stick. You will also find allies that share the same concerns as you.
Prioritise
I’ll return now to that psychological window of six weeks. To be effective, you must prioritise and get support for the key critical areas most beneficial to the customers and your product. Top of my list are:
People / Skills - These can be hard to fix quickly and often need budget commitments
Goals - Misaligned goals create a lot of friction and can take time to solve.
Everyone’s list will be different, but prioritising is essential. The temptation is to focus on things you love rather than those that will help you the most (but are usually hard to solve). Use this honeymoon period to bring extra resources to bear on the big challenges.
Be honest and transparent.
I believe in working in the open - being honest and transparent about who you are and where you are in your journey to understanding, joining this team and taking on this product. Tell people that you don’t know a lot and want to learn. Be clear that you need to understand the context before you can help with decisions. Trust the team; they are the experts, and it’ll help spread the workload as you get up to speed and beyond. Consider writing a public weekly or daily blog about the product and your work.
What to look out for
Let's look at each item in the inheritance list and help you spot some key things you should pay attention to and what you might do differently.
The understanding of how it works
When you ask people how the product works, can they describe it quickly and easily? How clear are tickets on the board? How easy is it to use the product?
If people cannot articulate what the product does, how do you hope to solve the customer problem and run a successful product? Filling this gap will form the backbone of your future comms and is a fast way to build confidence and followership.
The teams that build, run, maintain, and develop the product
Are the teams that do this work complete with the range of skills and experience needed to be effective? Are they able to deliver on the needs of the product development process?
Effective, high-performing teams are a sight to behold, but if it isn’t, fixes are rarely quick. Bear this in mind as we assess what upcoming developments might be needed. Seek help; improving a team is a team activity.
The teams that promote and sell your product
Do they talk about your product the same way the development team does? Do they speak to the development team? What is their incentive? Does it match the goals of the product?
Effective pipelines are all about alignment. Suppose your customer needs, promotion, and product goals align - awesome. But if the sales team incentive is the number of downloads and your goal is weekly users, then we need to get aligned. Don’t laugh; it’s more common than you think and often involves money and people. These can be tough to change.
A management stack that is on the hook for the results of your product
How do the outcomes of your product roll up the organisation's results? Is your organisation aligned with what the product is doing for customers? Are your stakeholders aligned on this, too?
Management alignment can be another crucial distraction for any product. If there is a division between the product and the company goals, you’ll have much longer-term issues over funding and direction priority. Misaligned goals will take time to fix. Look ahead in the planning cycle for opportunities to re-align; having strong comms will help you here. Watch out for stakeholders with different views or focuses; you must discover why.
Customers of your product
Who are your product's users? Does the team have a direct connection to them and the ability to observe, test, and learn with them?
Organisations that distance those building and developing the product from the customer are making it hard to do a great job. Get & stay close. KYC (Know Your Customer) isn’t just for financial companies.
Risks, Issues & Complaints
What problems might you face? What are the common issues with your product? Where does this information go? How visible is this to the team and other customers? How well is your team managing these?
On Risks and issues, there are two items to pay attention to. First, is there a well-functioning risk and issue process? Do people raise, manage, and close these? If this is true, great. Then, you can focus on the second part: the risks and issues today.
Complaints are vital feedback. If you cannot understand whether the product solves the customer's needs, you are effectively blind. In the best case, customers use your product for another problem; in the worst case, they never try it or try and then leave. Check if the main channels feed people's product issues into the team.
A view of how your product is performing
What data do you get on your product? Where is this data sourced from? Is this accessible to the team? Are you making decisions based on your product data?
We have been talking about data and products for years; products and companies with no data are at a competitive disadvantage, and the costs/effort of retrofitting data to an old product can be considerable. Proceed with caution if there is no data; you’ll not know if what you do has an effect, and you may face large amounts of tech debt to address this.
History of your product’s life to date
Does your product have a history? Do people know the history, and can they tell the product's story?
Knowing where you came from and what problem you were solving compared to where you are today is vital information to support excellent decision-making. It's not a big issue if it isn’t present, but start writing it down; stories are how we communicate with people and demonstrate progress.
Expectations of what your product will do tomorrow, next week, month, year
What are the current goals, outcomes, promised features and releases that people expect?
Understanding explicit or implicit expectations will be essential to how customers and stakeholders perceive your product. If there are gaps, this is a fast way to lose credibility.
To close
Inheriting a product is a heady and busy time with lots of people to meet, information to absorb, and details to understand. Getting lost in the weeds is an occupational hazard. Savvy Product Managers use the “I’m new here” space to first float above and understand what to focus on. Concentrating on the significant issues will set you up for success.
In this article, we discuss what you could do, but don’t forget how you handle your inheritance matters. Building relationships and communicating your plans and activities and their outcomes are crucial to success. You are joining a team in which you will be a leader. Start as you mean to go on!
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