<aside> 💡 Product Management role is quite dynamic. The workday listed below is purely indicative about how I've come to approach the job overtime. Not everything goes in such a preordained manner. Your circumstances could be quite different from mine (B2B vs B2C or Pre Series A vs Unicorn). Purely from a statistical measure if I could follow this schedule on >70% of workdays, I feel content.
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9 am
Check overnight mails with a special focus on customer escalations via Customer Success Team and Senior Management callouts.
9:30 am
Status Track on Project Management Tools (Jira/Asana). Respond with comments and add new items (if any) on the basis of overnight activity.
10 am
Daily Standup Meeting to discuss progress on priority tasks to be delivered in the current sprint (in smaller setups the sprint could be weekly). Usually, this involves engineering but can also include business teams in smaller B2B or B2B2C setup (primarily sales and marketing). In rare cases, there can be senior folks (VP, Products, or vertical heads).
<aside> 💡 It's always recommended time-boxing such daily meetings. Fortnightly Sprint Planning helps avoid regular meetups. If there are some unavoidable escalations from internal or external stakeholders that require fresh thought, I encourage hiving the discussion off to a separate meeting and freeing up the engineering resources.
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11:30 am
Generally, I try to devote the next hour to Growth Tracking - analytics report (daily transactions) and Digital Marketing plans.
Now, in smaller setups often the analytics burden could fall on the PM himself/herself. Here a working knowledge of SQL helps. Over time it would be prudent to have a dashboard developed or implemented Mixpanel/GA for quick tracking and automated reports. In larger setups, there could be data folks to let the PM focus on drawing actionable insights from the data.
A quick check with the Marketing Team - campaign schedule, customer feedback and collateral updates could be different agendas.
12:30 pm
Here I take a backseat and view the items that need my direct intervention. They could be Updating PRDs, Starting any new ones, Queries/Comments on Process Docs, Wireframes, Testing APIs. I proceed towards making any necessary changes to my schedule - shifting any meetings if required, adding buffer times for any new meetings and customer calls.
Having completed this deliberative exercise, I would then chalk out my plan to pick up the tasks as per priority. Before going to lunch, I do check my inbox (Mail/Slack/Whatsapp) to see if anything requires my immediate attention.