I love to regularly participate in mentorship with other PMs (if you are interested, I'm happy to help mentor or set up times to chat with any internal developer PM -- free of charge!).
One thing that gripes my cookies is when I hear "we're platform PMs, we don't have a market."
Yes, you do! You have an immediate market with regards to optimizing the organization's operating model, and a downstream impact on those building on the business model.
One thing I might also recommend that I've found valuable for myself, is to give the team a window into what you're doing or thinking about. I would start a slack thread at the beginning of the week, something like "this week I'm looking to update our customer case studies... I think I'll start by pulling customer usage data and then reach out..." This helps ensure that you won't have this kind of misalignment with the activities you're performing and what the team thinks would be valuable, and helps you increase trust with the team by being transparent and a little bit vulnerable.
This was incredibly useful and insightful! I have been struggling with how unclear the role can feel, but I have managed to make my way to a lot of what you outlined here and there are enough moments when I feel some success to get past the frustrating ones.
One thing that gripes my cookies is when I hear "we're platform PMs, we don't have a market."
Yes, you do! You have an immediate market with regards to optimizing the organization's operating model, and a downstream impact on those building on the business model.
Thanks Dean, I agree :). What are some successful practices and models you've seen to achieve that?
Well I'm biased, but Productside.com has that covered :)
One thing I might also recommend that I've found valuable for myself, is to give the team a window into what you're doing or thinking about. I would start a slack thread at the beginning of the week, something like "this week I'm looking to update our customer case studies... I think I'll start by pulling customer usage data and then reach out..." This helps ensure that you won't have this kind of misalignment with the activities you're performing and what the team thinks would be valuable, and helps you increase trust with the team by being transparent and a little bit vulnerable.
This was incredibly useful and insightful! I have been struggling with how unclear the role can feel, but I have managed to make my way to a lot of what you outlined here and there are enough moments when I feel some success to get past the frustrating ones.
Thanks, KirSlevin! Glad to hear you're finding your way to be successful. Do you have any other advice to add for PMs looking to be more effective?