Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Renuka Thakur

In the companies that I’ve worked for as a product manager, I have always on boarded myself — because I’ve worked mainly for startups and they usually expect people to get on board with minimal assistance.

Here, I present to you some of the things I’ve learnt from on boarding myself.

Product on-boarding:

If you have been through the interview process and have some domain experience, ideally, you don’t need an overview of the product. However, if the product is in a slightly complex or different domain from what you are used to, it would be a good idea to do some basic research on your own from introductory resources on the web or internal company documentation. Since products are meant to be intuitive, I kick things off by going through the product on production and follow what users would normally see. Do not hesitate to do this as early as possible, since a product that isn’t easy on beginners might need some fixing, which would be part of your job.

Note down everything irrespective of whether they are positive or negative. You as a PM, are going through the product not just as a user but as a product person who has gone through tons of other products and know what is right in a given product and what is not.

Don’t hesitate to ask for the help in case you get stuck. Some products are meant for special types of audiences and you might not know that audience yet, so don’t hesitate to ask for help when required. For example, ask for credit card details if you are trying out flows which require payment. Don’t remain stuck for long- reach out to your peer as soon as possible!

Work closely with the support team:

To understand your customers better, it would help to talk to them directly. In case that is not possible, you could talk to the customer support team or shadow them as they interact with customers. Since this team interacts with the customers on daily basis, they know the customers better than any other team in the company.

Have an on boarding session with the customer support team.
Start talking to the customers (over the call or on chat)
Pick a few customers and interact with them to solve their problems.

After you have built some rapport with a few of the customers, ask them if they can spare some time to talk to you about their experience with the product. Make sure that you have a questionnaire ready at this point which would help you collect the information that you require.

The above steps will give you a better insight into your product and might also help prioritize your product roadmap.

Interact with all the teams:

If you are in a startup with less than 25 people, try to have one on one interaction with everyone. Go over to them and ask them when they are free for a chat or invite them for lunch/coffee. If you can’t meet everyone, try to meet leads of every team. Sometimes you will end up making good friends or find lunch partners in the process. And, of course, you’ll learn about the different teams, how they function, their job responsibilities etc.

Present your learning to the team

After you have followed all the above steps, it’s time to prepare a nice deck and present it to the team. Check with your boss if you aren’t sure who needs be to invited for the presentation.

You can show them issues that you faced or basic features that maybe no one thought about.

Prepare the points well. I’ve sometimes ended up working on projects that resulted from my findings during on boarding.

It’s a great way to show the team that they have hired a great PM.

And now, it’s time to build the company!

Good luck!

Product Manager on-boarding: How to on-board yourself was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Product Manager on-boarding: How to on-board yourself

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