This week, Product College hosted Meg Ross, Senior Product Supervisor at Amazon for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Meg offers this recommendation: observe the information, befriend your engineers to ask them countless questions on your tech stack, and prioritize understanding your prospects. Learn on for her in-depth solutions 🙂
Meet Meg
Meg Ross is a extremely proficient product skilled who is aware of the significance of making unimaginable person experiences. She is at the moment bringing her ardour for digital merchandise to the Amazon staff as a Senior Product Supervisor. Earlier than this function, she was a Senior Program Supervisor engaged on instruments utilized by the Digital and System Command Middle in Amazon’s customer support group.
What are your high ideas for somebody beginning out within the Product Administration discipline?
Hmm, good query. Prime ideas:
- Don’t be afraid to ask engineers questions (and study your tech stack again to entrance)
- The extra your buyer (both by information, anecdotes, or analysis), the extra assured you develop into in constructing for the shopper. And that confidence is seen by others!
- Handle priorities with the assistance of your supervisor—your time is a commodity as nicely.
How do you make sure that you create a steadiness between the wants of ALL person segments?
It actually is dependent upon the characteristic in my expertise. Some options resonate with some personas whereas others don’t. Within the case of fixing one downside for a lot of personas, I usually prefer to lean on CX analysis or Buyer Advisory Board-type suggestions to validate the speculation. CABs don’t get sufficient air time IMHO.
What’s your course of for understanding the shopper nicely?
It is dependent upon the corporate you’re employed for. In smaller firms, I’m capable of advocate for person analytics that assist me make higher choices by extra deeply understanding the shopper ache factors/journey. Coupled with Buyer Advisory Board arrange or different CX analysis panels, it’s a mixture of the 2. I’m a giant fan of information + anecdotes to validate or change our pondering.
Any ideas for somebody transitioning from inner PM (my customers have all the time been inner workers) to a PM for a B2B/B2C product?
Attention-grabbing—a variety of occasions with that transition the differentiating issue is the enterprise mannequin and the way you design/construct merchandise for that person/set of customers. So, what’s the enterprise making an attempt to do/the place is the enterprise making an attempt to develop? That’s the place the corporate will possible need to be innovating. With inner instruments that query has much less weight than say a client area.
What are good Product Administration initiatives you’ll be able to consider for freshmen?
For freshmen… the Enterprise Mannequin Canvas might be probably the most strong studying you are able to do in case you’re engaged on a B2B or B2C product. In any other case, all the time nice to spearhead UX experiments in partnership with UX. Leaders are often amenable to a brand new PM developing with a scrappy, low-engineering effort resolution for patrons simply to get some characteristic delivery beneath your belt.
Have you ever ever felt such as you didn’t perceive the expertise on a product? What did you do to compensate?
At any time when I be a part of a brand new staff or a brand new product, it’s often a brand new tech stack—I’ve labored on internet app, Android app, iOS, and now Alexa, not together with backend, so in every case, I prioritize making allies/mates with a number of engineers (going as far as to arrange 1:1s or data shares) to study the stack. It’s an ongoing course of, but when you may get the structure at a excessive degree fairly rapidly out of the gate, filling in specifics comes with time as you construct/develop.
What was probably the most difficult PM interview query you might have been requested?
The toughest PM query I used to be ever requested was, “How would you design an alarm clock for somebody who’s blind?” The explanation why it was arduous was as a result of I had nearly solely labored on software program, so a {hardware} resolution was past me on the time. I epically failed haha.
How typically do you end up in a scenario the place information or insights is telling a distinct story, and your instincts differ from the information? How do you deal with these conditions?
Wow, nice query. I can’t consider a time the place that’s been the case as a result of when the information was telling me one thing that didn’t add up, it meant that I/we had been lacking one thing. An element we hadn’t thought-about.
What is going on within the CX to justify the information we’re seeing? What is going on with setup? With launch? Regardless of the case could also be.
If my intuition says one factor and the information tells me one thing else, it means there’s something I/we’re lacking 99% of the time. Return and re-think. UNLESS it’s a knowledge retailer downside, during which case, BI wants to repair a bug 
See subsequent: Analytics for Product Managers…5 Talks That’ll Make You Fall in Love With Information
For somebody early of their PM profession, is an early development part or a greenfield product higher?
Greenfield which means all new? I’d suggest early development part as a result of greenfield can generally be an excessive amount of simply beginning out—it’s generally extra useful to be humble and go in with guardrails on a mission after which develop your ability set with time… That’s simply me 😀
What was your transition from Program Supervisor to Product Supervisor like?
I had been a Product Supervisor for 3 years previous to shifting into Program, so the transition was fairly instant and easy. I needed to present Program administration a attempt to see if I used to be into it, and I wasn’t hahah.
What are some analytical instruments which can be absolute necessities for PMs?
Ooh! Each PM has their favorites I guess! I like all of them tbh. Tableau, PowerBI, Excel, you title it. I haven’t gotten an opportunity to work with Looker although. Google Analytics I’m very Meh about as a result of they clear up the use case for e-comm rather well and I haven’t seen it carry out nicely for different use circumstances. That’s simply my bias.
Test it out: A Curated Record of Instruments and Software program for Product Managers in 2022
Are there any organizations that of the place one can carry out the PM function as a volunteer or by way of some sweat fairness (pro-bono)?
Good query! There are some firms that like to rent PMs for ad-hoc contract work like 10-20 hours per week! There are web sites and recruiters that cater to freelance PM work however I’m sadly not conversant in them 
They do exist although! I do know that a lot.
As a PM, I’ve to hearken to customers, however I even have a imaginative and prescient for the product. I’m at the moment placing 80% of effort into present person wants, and 20% on the imaginative and prescient. What do you consider this strategy?
A whole lot of occasions our work is to deliver the shopper alongside. If you’ll be able to get your imaginative and prescient in entrance of some prospects for some scrappy preliminary suggestions, I’d say combat to prioritize that, particularly in case you imagine that your imaginative and prescient aligns with the shopper downside(s) you’re fixing for.
In case you’re not getting suggestions from prospects that signifies they’re into it, take into account your imaginative and prescient level B and the place they’re as we speak level A and take into consideration some potential iterative takes to get from A to B 
Any last ideas?
Ideas for aspiring PMs:
- Be Humble
- Be Curious
- Prioritize figuring out your buyer nicely
- Have enjoyable!
Hope this helped you as we speak! Go forth and PM
