In my role on the PM Steering Committee for a team of around 40 PMs, I lead the development of a survey to 1) determine the programs & activities the PM steering committee will organize and 2) understand if our PM ladder & the process around it (calibration, perf, promo) reflect the needs of the role. I didn’t want to collect feedback that we didn’t act on or turn this into a massive annual survey that no one cared about.
From https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17NDeyA0PcN1qBX2dad2RXW6wFwwNPH9UIGxK6VUwNOk/edit#slide=id.p2
Key insights
- 4 PMs (14%, mix of L4 & L5) responded that they spend no time on Strategic Planning.
- 7 PMs (25%, mix of L4 & L5) responded that they spend no time on Business Development. PMs of all levels should be involved in developing their businesses so we should dig into this. 50% of L4s report zero time on BD.
- PMs aren’t seeing the value in partner / customer management. Engaging directly with our customers & BD team is critical to product development so we need to dig into the underlying factors here (e.g. could be an issue with administrative tasks versus solving customer problems).
- PMs are spending a lot of time on team leadership & development but this isn’t a focus area in interviews and skills development.
- 12 PMs (42%, mix of all levels) responded that they spend no time on Technical Leadership. Are we fine with this?
