Delivered as part of the CTO/ CPO Summit at the annual Sequoia Hackathon (9th to 11th September 2016). Covers core, process and people skills that help individuals become effective product managers.

1. How to be an Effective Product Manager
Anshumani Ruddra/ @baboonzero
Sequoia CTO/ CPO Summit 2016

2. Legend
Skills/ Systems of an Effective PM:
#Core – skeletal and muscular
#Process – circulatory
#People – nervous

3. #Core
Spend the majority of your time
in the problem space
Why before How and What

4. #Core
Learn the difference between Attitudinal
and Behavioral user research methods
What users say – Attitudinal
What users actually do – Behavioral

5. #Core
Always be deconstructing
What works and why?
What doesn’t work and why?
How can this product be improved 10x?

6. #Core
Adopt an experimenter’s mind-set
Every experiment has three crucial steps:
Setting up the experiment
Measuring the results
Using the results to improve the experiment

7. #Core
Use first principles thinking

8. #Core
Build breadth and go deep on a couple of skills
At an org level – match people with
complementary skills

9. #People
Practice enlightened self-interest

10. #People
Peddle your wares to your teammates
Your backlog, roadmap, sprint plan, product
requirement documents – these are all products
you own and create for your teammates– your
first users. Set a high quality bar with them.

11. #People
Articulate the vision and mission
Users care about the ‘Why’
So does your team

12. #People
Build trust within your team
Set high standards and deliver
Expect high standards

13. #Process
Avoid multitasking
Do one thing at a time. Do it well.
Same goes for your product.

14. #Process
Bring order to chaos:
• Daily scrums are good
• Come prepared for meetings
• Take notes during meetings – share
with everyone
• Stick to shorter meetings
• Use Jira/ Trello/ whiteboards

15. #Process
Live by the two pizza rule

16. Q&A