Dear Melissa: Answering Questions About PMs as Scapegoats, Breaking Hard News to Developers, and Sunsetting Products
October 5, 2022
In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about how to handle the unfortunate reality that oftentimes product managers are blamed for things out of their control, how to communicate to engineers when it’s time to pivot off of a project they’ve devoted a lot of time and effort towards, and how to build a shiny new product without completely disregarding all of the learnings from the original one.
Q: What should your course of action be if you perceive yourself a scapegoat position in product management?
Q: Have you ever had to pause a tool or product? Do you have any frameworks when making such decisions? To what degree is it my responsibility to communicate this as opposed to senior management?
Q: How can we use our current product to help us build a better replacement?
Resources
Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter
MelissaPerri.com
In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about how to handle the unfortunate reality that oftentimes product managers are blamed for things out of their control, how to communicate to engineers when it’s time to pivot off of a project they’ve devoted a lot of time and effort towards, and how to build a shiny new product without completely disregarding all of the learnings from the original one.
Q: What should your course of action be if you perceive yourself a scapegoat position in product management?
Q: Have you ever had to pause a tool or product? Do you have any frameworks when making such decisions? To what degree is it my responsibility to communicate this as opposed to senior management?
Q: How can we use our current product to help us build a better replacement?
Resources
Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter
MelissaPerri.com
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Previous guests include:
Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Doodle, Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard, Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber, Colin Anawaty, Chief Product Officer of First Dollar, Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services, Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures, and Leon Barnard, Education Team Lead at Balsamiq
Check out our Top 3 episodes:
- Episode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber
- Episode 132: Simplicity by Design for Product Development with Jason Fried, Co-founder and CEO of 37signals
- Episode 153: Decoding the DNA of Successful Product Management with Quincy Hunte, Global Transformation Product Leader at Amazon Web Services