My experience: Associate Product Manager, IBM Data and AI
Part one of my Q&A recruiting series for product management.
With the beloved recruiting season starting once more, I’ve had several people reach out wanting to learn about product management! Every one has the same questions — Why did I choose product management? What does a product manager actually do? Do I have advice for the recruiting process? — so I wanted to publish my answers in hopes they can help others as well.
For someone recruiting right now, I know how stressful the process can be, so I hope these blog posts will make your finding your dream job easier.
Q: What does a product manager do?
A product manager owns the roadmap and strategic vision for the product. My first week at IBM, my PM mentor told me that product managers are measured each year on the financial success of their product. It was terrifying and exhilarating to think that I was responsible for a portion of IBM’s revenue.
The product manager will work with cross-functional teams in design, development, user research, marketing, sales, finance, pricing, legal and more to ensure their product is successful. The product manager helps the team through the entire product life-cycle — ideation, design, development, pre-launch, launch, post-launch — all the while constantly ensuring that the product fits the market needs.
Product managers become experts in their problem space, researching competitors, market trends and building customer empathy. They regularly check-in with executives to align their product strategy with the overall company strategy.
*Of course, this answer will vary depending on industry and company.
Q: Why did I choose product management?
In college, I majored in Business and minored in Computer Science, so I knew I wanted a full-time job integrating strategy and technology. In the end, I was choosing between two options: 1) management consulting with a focus on the tech industry, or 2) product management.
Ultimately, I chose product management for three reasons.
- I wanted to actually build real products from end-to-end where I could see the impact on customers directly.
- I wanted to improve my technical skills. I wanted to work closely with engineers and better understand the world of cloud, data and AI.
- I prioritized my work-life balance. I wanted a job that was closer to 40 hours per week because I wanted to do more than just work. I wanted to spend time with friends and family, explore my hobbies, and have time for self-care.
I’m extremely happy with my choice, because I have been able to achieve all of these things (and more!) Product Management is an incredible job, especially for someone right out of college. There are very few jobs that compare in level of ownership and number of learning opportunities.
Q: What does a “day in the life” of a Product Manager look like?
Every day is extremely different and right now, my product is in the pre-launch phase. (I’m preparing for my first ever product release!) The below is a list of tasks I’ve done in the past week, ordered by which function I work with the most in the pre-launch phase:
Product Management
- Connect with prospective customers to answer questions about new product capabilities, roadmaps and show product demo.
- Host weekly cross-functional meetings with the entire product team (PM, dev, design)to review final touches on the product before launch.
- Plan the roadmap for the next release, prioritizing features and capabilities that will provide the most value.
- Meet with Product Managers on other teams to discuss integration work needed between our products.
Executive Team
- Build out financial projections of product success for Executive approval.
- Prepare to present to Executive approval committees on launch readiness of our product and strategic alignment with the department.
Marketing & Sales
- Strategize with Marketing & Sales on what is the best way to position the messaging of our product in the market.
- Collaborate with Marketing to create external content for customers, — flyers, website content, blog promotional materials, etc.
- Work with Marketing & Sales to create internal content to educate IBM sellers and business partners on how to sell the product — product presentations, pricing & licensing information, etc.
Pricing, Legal, Release Management
- Meet with Pricing team and Legal team to approve pricing and packaging for the new product.
- Check in with Release Management to create product license, certificate of originality, compliance certifications, etc.
User Research
- Strategize User Research team about which personas to conduct research on for the future releases.
- Review feedback from user interview surveys and beta registration surveys to understand pain points and how to position product.
Development
- Plan the beta release of the product with development — how will customers access the beta? How will we manage the users and their data?
Design
- Review high-fidelity design screens for final touches needed before development code freeze.
- Prepare for executive Design Review by Design director.
Q: How do I like working as a Product Manager at IBM?
My first month at IBM, I was terrified I made the wrong choice. IBM felt like a huge company with dozens of bureaucratic processes, outdated cultural norms and a legacy company that had no future.
However, in this past year, IBM has shown me its commitment to modernizing and making it a great place to work. IBM has given me amazing opportunities and I’ve learned so much more than I could have somewhere else. IBM gave me the dream job I never knew existed.
I started my experience at IBM’s Associate Product Manager bootcamp. I spent 6 weeks in Austin, TX learning the basics of product management and design thinking. I became incredibly close with my cohort — 27 product managers from all over the world. IBM covered all the hotel expenses and even gave us rental cars. They prepared networking and social activities for us to slowly join the IBM community. From this moment, I could tell how much IBM was investing in us as product managers. This bootcamp was the best way to start my full-time career.
Then in August, I joined my team in San Jose, CA. I spent the first few weeks learning everything there was about our products. As an Associate Product Manager, I worked alongside the senior Product Manager on my team, who had worked on the product since 2015. I had so much to learn!
He pulled me into the ideation phase of the same product I’m releasing now. I got to work with him from the beginning to plan out the vision for this product. We traveled quite a bit in this phase too! For example, we went to Amsterdam for a three-day Design Thinking workshop with our sponsor client, a renowned Dutch bank. Then we flew over to Dublin to meet the IBM Research team who had spent years researching the problem space we wanted to target. It was amazing — I was living all of my wanderlust dreams.
Then, we went through the approval phase for investment ($$) in the product. Over this one year, I’ve watched the product team expanded from just me and the Senior Product Manager, to three development squads, a full design team and all the functions needed to support the product.
I plan to continue telling you about my experiences in future blogs, but in short I love IBM because I had incredible autonomy in just the first few months and my team recognizes the hard work I put in on the product. Within 9 months, I was promoted to Product Manager and today I own two other uniquely challengingly products in our portfolio!
This one year has been an incredible journey and I can’t wait to continue sharing my experiences here with you all.
Jessie Yang is a Product Manager at IBM based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.