I transitioned from engineering to product management and have been in the continuos cycles of making new mistakes and learning from them. Here are a few of them:
Confusing solution design with product design - This particularly applies to the newbie platform product managers. The requirements rely heavily on what the solution would look like. Dont get me wrong - a product manager should definitely be involved and invested in the solution design, but speaking the requirements or use-case language vs. api or services language can be a learning curve for a newbie (especially someone who transitioned from engineering).
Not having your own roadmap items - Especially in large and growing organizations, resources can easily be sucked up in meeting the needs of the stakeholders and upgrading the infrastructure. A newbie PM would have the added pressure of pleasing the stakeholders and build relationships with the engineering. This could lead to not having your own vision of the product or the platform you are accountable for. In fact, it may get to a point where one feels identity crises.
Relying on engineers to build the tracking - Another newbie mistake is to think that the 'requirements' for building a feature doesnt include the call out for data logging and the PM ends up relying on the engineers to log the right data that could eventually be used for tracking product performance. No matter how small a feature is - one needs to think through the tracking upfront!
Confusing solution design with product design - This particularly applies to the newbie platform product managers. The requirements rely heavily on what the solution would look like. Dont get me wrong - a product manager should definitely be involved and invested in the solution design, but speaking the requirements or use-case language vs. api or services language can be a learning curve for a newbie (especially someone who transitioned from engineering).
Not having your own roadmap items - Especially in large and growing organizations, resources can easily be sucked up in meeting the needs of the stakeholders and upgrading the infrastructure. A newbie PM would have the added pressure of pleasing the stakeholders and build relationships with the engineering. This could lead to not having your own vision of the product or the platform you are accountable for. In fact, it may get to a point where one feels identity crises.
Relying on engineers to build the tracking - Another newbie mistake is to think that the 'requirements' for building a feature doesnt include the call out for data logging and the PM ends up relying on the engineers to log the right data that could eventually be used for tracking product performance. No matter how small a feature is - one needs to think through the tracking upfront!
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