30–60–90 Day Plan in a New Product Role

The first 30 days — Learn

Objective: learn everything possible about the company, the product, the people, the problems, and the systems and processes used to do business.

· Try to meet with anyone that is critical to doing the job on a daily basis.

· Get to know my boss better and learn their expectations.

· Get to know my direct reports better (if applicable) and learn how they like to be managed.

· Spend as much time with the product as possible.

· Establish some milestones/goals for the next quarter, half, year, and beyond.

· Start looking at customer feedback or meet with customers to avoid internal biases.

· Learn about the business’s goals for the product.

· Ask my Manager to create their own 30–60–90 plan for my new role.

· DO NOT; Get lost in the paperwork and spend too much time alone.

· DO NOT; Start challenging established norms or processes.

The first 60 days — Grab hold

Objective: act as the leader of the Product and start to make an impact.

· Try to identify issues percolating just below the surface by asking how we can do things more efficiently, faster, better?

· Start acting as the central resource for the product, if I don’t know something, I will go learn!

· Spend more time doing in-depth testing and using the product.

· Try to find a small win; whether it’s championing a small feature or fixing a specific customer complaint.

· Spend more time learning about the users and their goals, problems, and buying behaviors.

· Continue to learn more from the same channels used in the 30 day plan.

· Learn more about the existing Product Management ‘process’ in the company (if there is one) including roadmaps, user feedback, working with design, working with engineering, etc.

The first 90 days — Own the Product

Objective: take the reins and steer the Product towards success while socializing the plan.

· Own the backlog and everything in it.

· Own the roadmap and be ready to share it.

· Target key metrics and show how I plan to track them.

· Set some long-term goals beyond the standard 1 year roadmap.

· Do more in-depth market and competitive research.

· Establish a product vision statement, or re-visit the current one, to act as a ‘North Star’ for the product.

· Start building user personas, or re-visit the current ones, to help build empathy for the users and understand their motivations.