Starting a Side Project to Launch Your Product Management Career
By: Jackie Guan
Tags: Lessons Learned, Product Management, Tips, Careers, Side Project

SIDE PROJECTS

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

“The most important thing I look for in a product manager is experience.”

I’m sure we’ve all heard this before. Product management is a unique field where most product positions require you to have some experience in being a product manager before applying, yet there seems to be no easy way to gain said product experience. Most companies have limited entry-level associate product management positions, so gaining the right experience presents a huge challenge for new grads and career-changers seeking a career in product management.

So how does one get started in product without experience? As an engineer turned PM, this is my story of how I used a side project to launch my product management career.

Starting My Own Side Project

I was a project engineer in the mining industry for almost 8 years before I decided to transition into tech and product management. My first product manager role was for a non-profit e-learning startup in Austin, TX. After a few months though, my team was being re-shuffled, and my responsibilities were changing, so I decided to look for other opportunities. At the time, I had only been doing product for a few months, and I knew I needed to work on something else to further improve my skills while I applied for my next PM role.

The idea to work on my own side project began when I saw an opportunity for people to pitch a Side Project on the Women In Product Facebook group. The event would be a friendly way for people to showcase their side project ideas and to find people to work with in a group. Having been an urban cyclist for almost 10 years, I had an idea for an app that would make it safer for other cyclists and with nothing to lose — I figured why not? I’d always loved making presentations so what’s the harm in making another one?

Gathering My Team

Since my primary objective for my side project was to use it to showcase my skills in interviews, I wanted to build a cross-functional team to practice working with people with different skill sets. Cross-functional teams are something that product managers work with all the time, and the different skill sets present would help me take my idea to the next level as well.

Using the pitch deck that I built for the Side Prjct Pitch event, I decided to reach out to a few individuals within my personal network to join me. The main criteria I looked for in my teammates were curiosity, commitment and a willingness to learn. With this in mind, I was able to find two friends who were interested doing more development and design to be my teammates! I also decided to set a timeline of 3 months — long enough to build something, but not so long that we would lose drive and motivation. Although I was not sure on the final outcomes would be, I knew that building this side project would be a great opportunity to collaborate and to refine our craft individually.

Alternative Sources for Gathering a Team

If you don’t have anyone in your network to work with, consider the following spaces:

Online Tech Communities (e.g. Tech Ladies, Android/iOS Slack groups, etc.) — there are countless tech-related Facebook, LinkedIn, and Slack communities out there, and I suggest you to look in your local one to find like-minded individuals to work with. I suggest local because it makes it easier to collaborate without having to deal with timezones, and when the pandemic is finally over, you’ll have added another contact in your local network!

Student groups — many students struggle to find internships and opportunities to showcase their skill. Look at the local university/college in your area and try to post opportunities there.

Angel List — Angel List allows you to post non-paid opportunities; consider using the platform to find additional teammates.

Outsourcing — if you have the funds, consider breaking down the required tasks and hiring your own team using sites like Upwork.

If you’re not able to find a cross-functional team, I suggest you to do as much as you can on your own anyways. Competitive analysis, user research, customer journey building, wireframing, feature determination, user story writing and prioritization — these are all key skills a product manager should have and can be done by yourself. Who knows, maybe someone will like the work you do and want to join in later as well. The point is, there’s much to be done, even on your own and not finding a team should not be the thing that stops your side project!

Getting Started with Your Team

If you do decide to build a team, here are some suggestions and tools to get you started:

Discuss your expectations, for each other and for the project before you start any work — Why did your teammate(s) decide to join? What do each of you expect to get out of this? How long and how much time can you commit?

Agree and write down some Team Rules — it doesn’t have to be anything fancy but discuss team behaviors that each member should adhere to. Ideally, it should come from your whole team and not just one person. Some things to include are — how often will you meet? What happens if you get into a disagreement? How do you want to make decisions? Check out the Atlassian Playbook for great templates and activities on team building.

Use Miro to brainstorm, collaborate and note down your ideas.

Start a Kanban Board with Trello to keep track of task progress and who’s doing what. Trust me, it’s important to keep communication open and having everyone commit to using the Kanban board will make everyone’s life easier.

Collaborating with My Team

During our 3 months of collaboration, we definitely encountered some challenges along the way in working together. Examples of the challenges we had to overcome include suffering from imposter’s syndrome to miscommunication over milestones. Some tips to help you avoid and mitigate these conflicts are:

Set aside 10 min at the beginning or ending of each of your meeting for personal, random chats: Doing so will help you build your relationship with each other and make it easier to work together.

Consider assigning multiple people to complex issues/tasks: Having another person to work with and bounce ideas off of will make solving tough problems less lonely and keep morale and motivation levels high.

Be honest with each other and don’t be afraid to ask questions: What is a persona? What will our product launch look like? These things might mean different things to everyone, and it’s important to be on the same page if you are working together.

Have personal check-ins with each team member regularly (e.g. every few weeks) to further build your relationship and to gauge how your team member is feeling about the project and to see what else is going on in their life.

Results & Benefits from My Side Project

After 3 months of collaboration, we were able to survey 130 people with a $0 budget, launch a website, build a demo app for alpha users, and put in an entry for the Slingshot Pitch competition. It was a tonne of fun working with my team to build the project, but unfortunately, my teammates had to go back to school so this is the end of the journey for us. However, I’m still really proud of what we made, as we got to learn something new, improved our skills and now we have something to show the world!

If you are interested in seeing about how I showcase my product skills from my side project, check out the slide deck I made here.

Just to sum it up, here’s a list of benefits I’ve gained from building my side project:

Ability to solve a real problem and to find a unique solution

An opportunity to collaborate with a cross-functional team

A discussion topic with new people that I meet

An opportunity to experiment and to try new things

An opportunity to showcase my skills, passion and talents

Ability to learn and use new skills — I had never built a website, used Figma, or surveyed users before this!

Next Steps

I listed the accomplishments from my side project on my resume and LinkedIn profile and I’m currently interviewing for Product Manager positions. If you want to find out more about me and what I’m looking for in my next role, check out my Reverse Job Application.

At the end of the day, people might not be interested in your product idea but they will be interested in your approach to building the product. Having something actively in development was exciting to share and because of my passion for the topic, it really shone through in my discussions with others. And if there’s one thing people look for that you can’t teach — it’s passion, and building a side project is a great way of showcasing that to the world!

Do you have a side project idea or experience to share? Send me an email about it as I love hearing about other people’s side project ideas!