9: Everything benefits from a good start in life
I’m writing about one hundred things I’ve learned about being a product manager.
Don’t you find that it is always so hard to recover something that started badly? Whether it’s a development project, a product launch, or a new starter in your team, you can be reasonably certain that each will benefit from a good start in life.
It’s essentially your role to be the most prepared person in the room
There is a somewhat coarse saying in the UK military that “prior preparation and planning prevents p*ss-poor performance”. This is known as The Seven Ps. The key to ensuring a good start is to prepare and plan ahead. As a product manager, it’s essentially your role to be the most prepared person in the room, the one with all the answers.
So if you’re preparing for a development project, get preliminary user research sorted out in advance. Run your fledgling product strategy past a few different people and challenge them to find the holes in your case.
Make sure your new starter has what they need to do their job available to them on day one and share with them your clear plan for what you need them to achieve over the coming weeks and months and how you’ll measure their success.
In other words, use The Seven Ps to ensure everything you do starts out well.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“This is a great book for Product Managers or those considering a career in Product Management.”
— Lyndsay Denton
Jock Busuttil is a freelance head of product, product management coach and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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