Product Management skills you can apply in your life and your career!
Product Management is not only about IT products and software in general. It’s a collection of knowledge that you can successfully apply to classical, “analogue” Products and even to yourself! Today, I’d like to list skills and techniques you can use both at work and every day, from the moment I wake up to when I close my eyes for refreshing sleep:
Accept you can’t do everything you want to do
Let’s face it! The world is full of opportunities you can grab. If you only have enough resources, you can basically do anything. Thus, as much as a Product Manager can issue almost any change in product, you can decide on doing almost anything. But that’s just it — whether it’s time, money or energy, you don’t have infinite amounts! You can’t have gym, horses, marathon and pool on the same day, you will be too worn out. Thus, you need to choose things that bring you the most value. But there is a catch — you should not feel bad about not choosing the things you decided to ignore! There will always be missed chances, but simply accept limitations and be proud of your choices!
Be agile: Adapt to change
Moltke the Elder quote is often paraphrased as “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Thus, just like the Product Manager needs to adapt to changes and select the best possible selection of tasks to issue to the team each sprint, she/he needs to be ready to make changes in his/her life! Change, taxes and death are the only three constant elements of our lives. You can’t follow a plan that is no longer good! You can take a road detour if you see something interesting on the road — you can arrive 2 hours later at your home! You can take a loan if you need to fix a car, despite planning not to have any debts by the end of the year! You can leave your job after 3 months if you got a dream job offer! Live is full of opportunities and feel free to grab it!
Be data-driven
Whether you are deciding on a backlog initiative, want to lose weight or increase your savings, you need to be data-driven! You need a set of metrics to follow and make sure you succeed. If you want to be leaner, is it enough to just weigh yourself in the morning? Perhaps it’s not enough — maybe better to buy a device that can measure your % of body fat, water, muscle, to make sure you are actually losing what you need to lose and not simply dry out! Perhaps it’s best to consider counting calories and analysing the ingredients on the packaging? Everything can be turned into useful, decision-driving data if you invest enough thought into it!
Control your calendar and let it control your life
You can’t do everything, but you can do more if you are organized. Be sure to help yourself by putting your tasks into the calendar! You will work/live more efficient if you are being reminded about your plans and don’t need to rely on your memory.
Create task lists in a Kanban board
Speaking of which, task lists are GREAT! I have 6 Kanban boards in Trello.com (for free!) to make sure I am on track with different aspects of my work! Whether it’s work, personal life, content creation or student and business initiatives management, everything is represented with a digital card with status and sometimes a deadline assigned. Nothing is lost and you can just do your things in the right order! Just be sure you are organized in a way you can quickly add new entries to your board!
Believe that people made the best decisions, given the time and circumstances
This is important to realize on a daily basis. People do stupid things on a daily basis and that won’t change. What can be changed is your attitude towards it — Do believe that people always try to make their best choices in a given set of circumstances. No one wants to make a bad choice! But people can be stressed, in a hurry or lack all the data they would need to make a better call. Thus, it’s almost pointless to bring up that a decision was stupid and what should have happened instead! However, also…
Never play the blame game: Figure out the way forward!
The only way forward is… forward! Rather than look for guilty parties, it’s best to decide how to deal with anyone situation and what is the way forward. Also, worth considering how to prevent similar incidents to occur in the future. You promised to throw out trash from the kitchen before they start smelling bad and yet you keep forgetting? Perhaps set yourself a daily reminder to check the trash when you get home? A bug ruined a release? How to make sure we can prevent bugs from doing that in the future?
Hope this will help you realize that Product Managers have many practical skills and approaches to life, that you can use each day! Would you extend this list? What would you add?
Looking forward to your comments!
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