Things a PM owns

Sean Horgan

PMs are responsible for capturing ideas and turning them into results which usually requires writing docs that synthesize the work, align the team, and connect with users & customers.

Common across all docs should be the following sections/headers:

Objective

Risks

FAQ - start dropping any open questions here along with answers as you figure it out

Status & Meeting Notes

Product Requirements / Launch Docs

While I don’t love traditional PRDs for many many reasons, some orgs love these documents because they aspire to be the single source of truth & alignment for everything related to the product. Generally this is a set up for failure as most people are looking for different things and a single doc gets too cluttered and unmanageable. Having said that, there are times and places for making changes to templates and you should account for the work to make those changes.

I’ve found Ash Maurya’s Lean Stack to be an enduring model for product discovery & development:

https://leanstack.com/⁠

. This model includes the following elements that should be included in every product brief:

Vision. This is a succinct & simple statement that describes the future state of your product. Why should it exist?

Product: problem, solution, key metrics, cost structures

Market: landscape w/customers & competitors, unfair advantage, channels, revenue streams

Unique value proposition

Plan/timeline to win. Usually best to lay out a series of milestones (e.g. M1, M2, etc) that start the learning process with live users ASAP.

Risks & mitigation

Doc template

TLDR / Executive Summary

Approval / LGTM table

Go-To-Market

Appendix

People & References

1:1s & team checkins

For 1:1s and team check-ins, I use the following structure

People - always start with topics related to people. Sets the right tone with the team that they are the most important topic and you can frame this as action oriented

Pipeline (customers)

Product

Partners

Planning

Pro Forma P&L

Even if your product serves the needs of internal users it’s good practice to maintain a P&L statement. This doesn’t need to pass SEC tests, just a simple accounting for revenue, costs that help you answer important product questions like your team’s marginal contribution to the overall company business.

Product Requirements / Launch Docs

1:1s & team checkins

Pro Forma P&L

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