In recent months I’ve had the question nearly once a week about advice/tips for becoming a Product Manager or more commonly referred to as PM. These are generally coming from people that are either currently engineers, or previously were and are in some engineer/customer role such as a sales engineer or solution architect. There’s a number of high level pieces talking about PM and it often feels glorious, I mean you get to make product decisions right? You get to call some shots. Well that sometimes may be true, but don’t assume it’s all rainbows and sparkles.

Especially as a first time PM what your day to day will look like won’t be debating strategy all day long. Here’s a few of the good and the bad sides of being a PM.

I find myself having more conversations with startups – both small and large – about product management. I’ve blogged about some of the tools in my chest here but I haven’t talked much about my “blueprint” for product management, which I find myself laying out in many conversations over coffee. What follows is this process I’ve used a few times over with new teams to get product and engineering moving together, shipping in a predictable manner, and tackling bigger and more strategic projects.