PM FAQ series: How to scale as a PM?

Scaling as a PM is hard. There aren’t many ways to do it, but it is often on our mind. I recently spoke with a colleague of mine on this topic, and his advice truly hit a nerve so I thought I write about it.

Hustle for resources

The first tactic I found successful PMs apply well is to find resources where there are none. In the true ‘entrepreneurial’ spirit of the role, PMs go and try and make folks work on parts of the problem, and also help with PM tasks. Now there are limits here, and we can’t simply throw folks into the deep end and hope for the best. But if you have a talented Program Manager on the team, and they are excited about the feature, ask them if they would be open drafting the PRD. Better even if they come to you and ask where they can help out.

Another source are folks who want to break into PMing. Help them. Provide opportunities for them to work on things that show them what a PM does. But be selective. One way to avoid being rude is to point folks to low-risk items to start with. This way it is a ‘safer space’, and also allows you to safe face when things don’t work out as planed.

Rigorously prioritize

To begin, I want to say that I am bad at this. There are folks there who are WAY better at this than I am. Where I crumble is when it makes sense to me to do it from a product point of view, but not necessarily from a resource / urgency / impact point of view. And that is an area of development of mine. Just because I like it, or it is ‘cool’, doesn’t make it the most relevant thing to work on. But I am getting better. Here is a framework that I like to apply (careful, 2×2 matrix ahead):

Take inventory of what is on your plate and take a look at two dimensions: effort, and impact. Use known and accepted metrics for both, so you can defend your ranking. Of course this is a crazy oversimplification, and things like ‘what happens if we don’t do this now’ aren’t factored in here at first. But it is a heuristic to give you a quick overview and let’s you attack things in a more structured way.

Bottom left: Low effort, low impact

Low effort low impact are areas you can avoid, unless they are critical. Sometimes the debt stuff falls into this category. Also: consider time value. What is low impact might grow into a big problem over time if not taken care of. These are also things that might led itself for projects where there is a higher tolerance for risk in terms of PM ownership. This means: delegate these to others. I once had a project where I simply said: I am not going to be in your way, but you (eng, ops, project management) have to lead this and I can only be available reactively. It worked, they launched the feature.

Top left: High effort, low impact

These are the ones to stay away from. Sometimes highly visible projects fall into this category. For me, deprecations fall into this category, as well as anything that ‘saves stuff’ (money, resources). Unfortunately, it depends how much those projects are rewarded in your organization. Sometimes they are worthwhile if they are highly visible and you can negotiate the outcome if done well. In that sense, overall impact might be low, but your personal impact might be high. In this case, engaging might be justified. Also, with high effort comes a need for continuous staffing. This might be super challenging of the impact is low, especially as time drags on (and it most likely will).

Top right: High effort, high impact

The second best kid on the block. Try and figure out ways to phase these projects, push high impact work to the front. Largely because it keeps folks engaged, and you will learn much more once you are more deeply in the iterations. Things will change, and you can maybe make some good adjustments. In other words: break these apart as much as possible with the aim to move components to the ‘high impact, low effort’ quadrant. Sometimes large, multi year initiatives are in here. Those are ok to be added as such, and strategically might make sense. For you personally, I’d still say try to avoid taking on the ‘whole thing’, unless you are at that level and can staff all pieces.

Bottom right: Low effort, high impact

The winner of the show. Try to spend almost all your time on these things. If you can’t, ask yourself why. Ask how you might move yourself to this bucket, or what you can do to create things that can be classified in this way (often tough tho). Corrective action might be urgent if nothing you work on is in this bucket, such as changing teams or talking to your manager / leadership why nothing on your plate is impactful. Ensure you use the most durable definition of ‘impact’ for this bucket. This is key. The more scrutiny you put on the definition, the stronger the response to your work (in a positive way).

Manage people

Obviously, one way to scale as a PM is by managing other PMs. This is something I have done little of. I managed interns, rotators, and ‘informally managed’ more junior peers. My rules for managing are pretty simple:

• Be a good coach: People love someone that helps them. So be helpful. Don’t think people you manage are there to ‘do what you think’. Especially as a PM. The biggest negative consequence is that you are missing out on so much: so much feedback, so many good ideas, so much fun, so much creativity. Read The Coaching Habit if you have a hard time getting people to talk to you.
• Be authentic: Avoid lying as much as you can. Also, try to be positive but give folks a good and robust picture of the risks as you see them. Rank by likely impact on success.
• Be hypertransparent, but know who with: Select a trusted set of folks who can handle hyper transparency. ‘Handling’ means mainly to avoid spreading unproductive aspects of these subjective versions of peoples facts.
• Avoid being too close, but remain approachable: Something I struggle with the most. As a manager, sometimes you need to bring difficult news. It is key to avoid a relationship where communication about difficult topics becomes too complicated or even harmful. I like the HBR Manager’s Handbook approach. It gives practical advise how to be a good manager.

I am sure people have found many many things that help them scale as a PM. These are my favorites, which I believe are also long-term investments in the growth as a PM. Working harder, putting in more hours, are short term fixes. We all need them, and we all do them, but most of them erode our long-term capacity so they aren’t good buddies to have sticking around for too long.