Mission

Build the right product.

The role of a product manager is to figure out what game we're playing and how we're going to play it. Strategy is choosing the game we're playing. It’s finding worthwhile areas to invest in and creating a compelling vision for how we can succeed in this game. Execution is how we play the game. It’s the day-to-day processes, decisions, and actions we take to make progress toward our mission.

Responsibilities

1. The problem space. Understand customer needs and translate them into valuable, usable, and feasible product requirements.
   • Have a deep knowledge of each category's problem space
   • Regularly talk with users and customers
   • Communicate with users on issues and epics
   • Uncover insights through research
2. Drive product outcome & quality. Define requirements for a solution that is loved by our users and customers.
   • Focus on KPIs and results. PM measures progress. Enjoy working with numbers. Sometimes you write SQL queries; other times you run scripts to extract data from logs.
   • Embrace iterations, we move one small step at a time.
   • Bring transparency to engage with the community. Always write things down.
   • Seek efficiency. Advocate for the boring solution if the best one. Optimize for the right group, and be the manager of one.
   • Activate collaboration. PM ultimately don't ship anything on their own. At MUI, the product is also driven by those who build it, PM should also aim to support them.
   • Push for high-quality outputs. Favor solving fewer problems better over solving more problems at lower execution levels than competitors.
   • Develop a solid knowledge of how the product is built. The more the product's differentiator is the quality of the implementation execution, the deeper this knowledge should be.
3. Viability. Ensure the product is viable at the end of the day for MUI. It's about ensuring the organization has the means to achieve its mission.
   • Follow and participate in the product development flow.
   • Pricing and revenue modeling. Define the tiers of the features.
   • Ensure the work is effectively prioritized and planned in a roadmap. This is the art of resource allocation. You set the strategy.
   • Interact with DevEx, marketing, sales, and support to enable the adoption (for all tiers).

Misc

Team responsibilities

Product - High-level team responsibilities

Relationship with engineering

Product management philosophy

Levels

Product Manager levels

Moving from

Successful product managers have a passion for solving people's problems and a strong proficiency in how it's built. As a result, they've been found to start their journey to product management from the following disciplines:

1. Engineering: Engineers understand deeply how the product is built and how they work. Usually, you will find a Tech lead. A desire to understand the user problem of their product and to further influence product direction can lead engineers to pursue Product Management roles.
2. Design: design leaders have built a great understanding of the personas and pain points their product targets. A desire to further influence not just the experience but the way the features alleviate those pain points can draw UX professionals to Product Management.
3. Engineering Manager: Engineering team leaders who've gained a strong understanding of the customer persona, pain points, and direction of a product often want to further influence that direction by transitioning to Product Management roles.

Specialties

Specificities of the PM role based on the different teams

Core

Requires:

• to have a strong design and engineering background. It's so rare to find, we could consider a duo.

X

Requires:

• a strong engineering background. A former tech lead is ideal