It is vital that Product Managers document their results in objective data. As you work with your organization’s diverse personalities you’ll encounter many opinions. Don’t be overly swayed by these opinions. You need to be in full grasp of the facts. Facts diffuse errant opinions. Plus, factual data lets you build your reputation as the expert on your market. You’ll soon become the go-to expert everyone in your organization relies on.
Clearly Communicating the Facts
To successfully share facts with your company teams and leaders, you need to develop a Product Scorecard. This Scorecard needs to be a combination of quantifiable facts and qualitative information. As you climb the corporate ladder, you’ll be judged on what you’ve accomplished, and how you reached your objective. It’s a combination of the objective facts and subjective perceptions of others.
Understanding the Metrics of Successful Product Management
When you became a Product Manager in your company, one of the first things you did was review the business plan. Within the plan were financial metrics and assumptions that can morph into your annual performance goals. For example, if your company had a plan to increase revenue by $1 million, this likely became your personal goal as Product Manager.
Common goals you might be expected to meet could be things like:
- Reach your company’s sales and margin targets
- Publish fully resourced product roadmaps
- Achieve 80% of customer-facing roadmap deliverable
- Be in 100% compliance with the product lifecycle management process
Each of these goals will be easy for the Product Manager to track. The findings become the hard data that shows what you have accomplished.
Creating the Product Scorecard
As a Product Manager you’ll needs to work with Finance to develop a Product Scorecard. This will allow you to track monthly progress toward your financial targets. Developed correctly, the Product Scorecard allows you to step in and adjust course so that you can keep your group on track. It also gives you the information you need to document your year-end results. (For an example see page 214 from Take Charge Product Management)
In my next post I’ll breakdown this chart to reveal the value a Product Scorecard brings to Product Managers.
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