5 mistakes that even smart product managers make
By: Tanulekha Roy
Tags: Product Management Skills, Product Management, Software Development, Agile Development, Product Manager

Here are some of the common mistakes and traps that product managers often find themselves in. While some are observations, I must admit some have been personal mistakes too. Let me know what your score is.

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Mistake 1: I am a hands-on PM, I work very closely with the developers to implement each story perfectly.

A high degree of accountability and ownership are key strengths of a product manager, but sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally the same strengths create a culture of centralization of power in the team in no time.

Warning signal: Hundreds of unread emails & messages on slack, seeking your confirmation for the smallest of tasks. Realize, you have become a bottleneck.

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Empowering your team to make product decisions, creating an environment of shared accountability by rotating key tasks of stakeholder management within the team, and paving processes or frameworks to keep the ship sailing on its own can work wonders not only for the team but also for you.

Mistake 2: I focus on releasing a lot of features as it shows my team’s effort in front of management.

While there is no doubt that it definitely helps to fill pages of release notes & slides of the monthly deliverable PPT, but is this why a PM exists in the team? Implicit pressure to deliver ideas presented by key stakeholders and the urge to fill up the next sprint’s scrum board with tickets, often lead a PM to prioritize wrong and low value add features.

Warning signal: Ask yourself why are you building a feature? If the answer matches with any of the above 2 reasons, cancel the ticket from the backlog now. Now means now!

With the right prioritization, a single solid idea may have the potential to lift up the quarter’s target.

Mistake 3: I ensure that the UI and UX of my solution are excellent.

Since we explore tons of websites every day, visualizing a solution from a UI or frontend perspective almost comes naturally to many of us. While there is nothing wrong with it, but what is wrong is ONLY thinking about the UI part of the solution and not the backend structure.

Warning signal: Imagine, that the frontend is handled by a different team of your organization or perhaps a team of a different organization altogether, will your proposed solution still work? Have you handled the edge cases/validations of your APIs?

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The idea is to think of the solution end to end and being fair to the APIs as well.

Mistake 4: I know we are doing a great job as my metrics are improving.

While being metric-driven means you are definitely on the right path, but are we sure we are tracking the right metrics? For eg, while a significant improvement in the click-through rate of your emails may look promising, but if not validated against the open rate of your emails, it may give a wrong impression. Similarly, if traffic to conversion % is increasing, does it give a true picture? Have we seen the traffic volume for the same period?. Sometimes, seasonal variations or festivals can also pump up metrics, but it might just be a temporary push.

Warning signal: We have not released anything great, but metrics have improved significantly.

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The best way to get out of this trap is by choosing the correct portfolio of metrics, evaluating year-on-year movements, and always taking the A/B testing route while releasing features. Why live in a bubble when we have the potential to touch the sky?

Mistake 5: Documentation is useless as nobody reads it and creating roadmaps is simply a wastage of time as prioritization will anyways change in the quarter.

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I can not count the number of times I have heard this from different stakeholders across organizations. I won’t deny the fact that prioritization changes very fast and that your detailed documentation will only get a handful of readers, but amidst so many noises what we miss is the fact that roadmapping backed by solid research & metrics definitely helps in clearing the clutter. While good ideas may lose their space for great ideas on the execution chart, but seldom will a bad idea be able to creep in.

Warning signal: A new hire joins your team and they have no clue what your product is all about. Moreover, a B2B customer or an important stakeholder asks you about your team’s future plans, and you have no clue of what they just asked.

The best way is to keep your documentation light by adding easy-to-read visual components. For roadmaps, work hard on them, like them too but don’t start loving them so much that you become oblivious to an excellent idea coming your way in the quarter.

Each one of us has our own journey, let me know some of the traps which you fell prey to & but soon learnt the art of sailing through.