Write a PRD
The buzz is don’t write them, that’s for design & eng to build these. But what if you freed them up to work in Figma & code? In our remote world, a collaborative PRD that is iterative and not dictatorial can be high leverage work for a PM.
Help QA
PMs from idealized worldviews find QA beneath them. But a User Acceptance Test can drive success of a big feature. It can help you think through corner cases – and maybe push your test to stat sig by considering the finer details in UX.
Source Ideas from Stakeholders
The “best practice” is to not have a sales and CX-driven roadmap, not cater to the execs… But, taking these ideas to your prioritization process, abstracted into problems, and evaluated objectively can be magic. And everyone loves you.
Communicate Timelines
It’s all too common to say the roadmap shouldn’t have timelines, the features for the quarter should not be pre-committed. But, once you have line of sight, committing can help stakeholders help you. They can plan more marketing and other support.
Say Yes
You don’t need to decline: meetings, 1:1s, ideas. Instead, become the approachable PM. Asking follow up questions and making time for those with ideas can drive a community of extended product team members, helping your features to succeed.
On these five elements, the “best practice” pendulum has swung too far in one direction. You can outperform “best practice” PMs by making counter-intuitive moves selectively. But not all the time. Best practice advice ought to be considered, “rules made to be broken.”
