In May 2019, I was selected as the Product Manager Spotlight for the May Product Leadership Newsletter that is shared across Amazon to Retail Product Managers. Below is a snippet of the interview. Enjoy!
Tell me about your time as a Product Manager. What is a key skill you learned or mastered?
My time as a Product Manager has been an amazing experience! I do not have a technical degree but I have always had an interest in tech and engineering. Amazon is a “self-teaching” culture so I had to be very intentional about looking for training and books to continue to learn and grow as a PM. One key non-tech skill that I have learned is “seeing around corners.” We can’t only focus on the current problem or solution. We have to think about short-term and long-term solutions so that we can either build the product with those things in mind, and have a contingency plan in place.
What is a failure you have experienced? How did ‘hitting this wall’ help you?
I don’t like to think of things as “failures.” Instead I think of them as lessons. One of my biggest lessons as a PM was to ensure I “trust but verify.” It is important to dig into assumptions that are provided to you. Had I done this early on for one of my features, I would’ve been able to save my team time and resources, and pivoted to a different solution. I now take the time to ask questions and meet with each team that has a stake in my product to confirm all assumptions.
What is one thing you do every week to stay focused on customer needs?
One of my biggest customer facing projects is a video games customer experience (CX) improvement and personalization project. To ensure I stay up to date on what customers are looking for, I subscribe to different retail, video games and streaming newsletters. This helps me know what is happening in the industry and dig into customer feedback, comments and other anecdotes. We can’t innovate on behalf of our customers if we don’t know what their interest, or problems are.
What do you think about when you’re putting a team together to work on a product?
I look for two things: 1) people who are subject matter experts (SME) for the domains involved, and 2) people who are interested in the product/category. While it is acceptable to have someone who is knowledgeable in the product domains you are working on, you will see more creativity if it is something that they are interested in.
What advice do you have for a PM or PMT?
My top three suggestions: 1) get to know your engineering team, 2) ask questions, and 3) dig into the technology! I make it a point to get to know our engineering team outside of sending request their way. Building relationships goes a long way and your engineering team will be instrumental in your development as a PM. Second, do not be afraid to ask questions. I am constantly asking questions to understand how our systems work which leads me to my last point. Learn about the technology! Understand the systems/architecture that your team works with. You can do this by reviewing the design documents, reading internal project sites, and setting up time with your software development engineer (SDE)/software development manager (SDM). In my experience, they are always happy to discuss these things with PMs. It will help you build trust with your team, understand systems to provide better requirements and look around corners, and answer questions from external teams without their assistance.
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