💥 20 Good PM vs Great PM Insights 💥

1) Good PMs consistently deliver quality products and results. Great PMs consistently and singularly improve the company’s trajectory through the products they work on. 2) Good PMs make metrics-driven product decisions. Great PMs make metrics-informed product decisions. Great PMs are masters of the art of blending quantitative and qualitative inputs, as warranted by each individual situation. 3) Good PMs extensively research the domain in which their product operates. Great PMs become worldwide experts in that domain. When new to a domain, great PMs bootstrap this process by seeking the counsel of existing worldwide experts. 4) Good PMs are proactive about doing user research to identify & fix UI issues in their product. Great PMs have a broader view of the value of user research. Great PMs are diligent about using a variety of user research methods to inform what product to build in the first place. 5) Good PMs make product decisions based on a thoroughly logical and rational view of the world. Great PMs view logic and reason as important tools, but they also know that people — and therefore the users & customers of their product — are driven by emotion more than by logic. 6) Good PMs know the importance of talking to customers frequently. Good PMs listen intently to customers to develop their product hypothesis. Great PMs also listen to what isn’t said and anticipate where the industry overall is headed when developing their product hypothesis. 7) Good PMs inspire their teams with their creative product ideas to get their buy-in. Great PMs know that buy-in isn’t enough; you need passion & ownership to build great products. Great PMs facilitate discussions that get the entire team to come up with creative product ideas. 8) Good PMs seek to validate their ideas & instincts with trusted colleagues. They often ask: “Does this make sense?” Great PMs make it as easy as possible for colleagues to push back on their ideas & instincts. They often ask: “What am I getting wrong?” 9) Good PMs are detail-obsessed, making sure that the product meets the desired quality bar for launch. Great PMs pay this degree of attention to the entire customer experience: they know that the docs, the API, blog post, website, support emails, etc. are also “the product”. 10) Good PMs can make convincing arguments to support their point of view. Great PMs can also make convincing arguments to support the opposite of their point of view. 11) Good PMs write detailed and lucid product requirements documents (PRDs). Their teams become highly reliant on these PRDs to make forward progress on engineering & design tasks. Great PMs iteratively write their PRDs so engineering & design tasks are rarely blocked on them. 12) Good PMs work hard, are always extremely busy, and are often overwhelmed. Great PMs work hard but are rarely overwhelmed. Great PMs understand task leverage and spend the majority of their time on the highest-leverage tasks for the company. Great PMs also delegate frequently. 13) Good PMs follow & espouse the company’s product principles to build better products & eliminate decision deadlocks. Great PMs edit the company’s product ethos — they identify the unintended flaws in the principles, fix the flawed parts — and only then follow & espouse it. 14) Good PMs over time converge on a set of tools & processes that they trust — sprints, OKRs, RICE,… Good PMs introduce these to all their teams for better execution. Great PMs are more adaptive — they have a wider repertoire that they expertly tweak for each specific team’s needs 15) Good PMs understand the value of infra-work, but they advocate for more eng time to be spent on features that meet customer needs. Great PMs advocate for infra & tech debt work because they care as much about uptime, latency, dev productivity as they do about new feature-work 16)At product reviews, Good PMs provide thoughtful answers to executives’ questions. Great PMs see their role as being greater than just answering execs’ questions. They know that product reviews are a joint truth-seeking process and so they often reframe execs’ questions. 17)Good PMs usually deal in answers and data. Great PMs usually deal in questions and wisdom. 18) Good PMs are outstanding problem solvers. Great PMs are outstanding problem preventers. Great PMs are discerning about which problems to prevent, which problems to solve, and which problems not to solve. 19)Good PMs try their best to deliver optimal results for a given product strategy. Great PMs first ensure that the product strategy itself is optimal. Great PMs know that their team’s time is too precious to be squandered away on the impeccable execution of a flawed strategy. 20)Good PMs can describe their product strategy over the course of a short elevator ride. Great PMs ensure that their team members can also describe the product strategy over the course of a short elevator ride. In the comments below, please share your insight on good PM vs great PM 👇