Template for Onboarding a New Product Manager
Background:
At a growing company, I found myself onboarding several new product managers consecutively. After the first onboarding, I decided to make a checklist to solve the personal jobs to be done (JTBD) of how might I accomplish the following goals:
- How might I clearly outline all the stakeholders and decision-makers for the new product manager to meet with?
- How might I set expectations for product management at our organization?
- How might I set expectations on time frames and priorities for the learning curve?
- How might I have a checklist for our weekly status to track progress and find blockers?
PRODUCT MANAGER ONBOARDING TEMPLATE
Template Overview:
As with all templates, please modify it for what is most applicable to your product organization. Elements include product craft expectations, key stakeholders, product and organizational knowledge, and starter projects.
Sections: Operations Knowledge, Product Knowledge and Technical Craft, Stakeholder Relationships, Agile Transitions Ownership, First Projects and Sponsors, Miscellaneous
Steps on How to Use:
- For each product manager, before their start date, complete the checklist by populating each stakeholder to meet with, specific projects with outcomes, and organization-specific time frames for completion.
- Upload the template to SharePoint, and share with key internal stakeholders to make them aware they will be seeing meeting invites from a new team member for overview meetings, trainings and base camp immersive experiences (see Dish Network example of an evolved Base Camp Experience).
- Share the template with the new hire before their start date to help them understand what their first 90 days will look like, as well as to exhibit that you are prepared and excited for their first day.
- Print out and utilize the template for the first-day lunch or first-day onboarding meeting.
- Review the template, updated with current status, at the end of each week with the new hire to answer questions, track status of completion, and find ways to unblock any barriers to completion.
Kirby Montgomery is a post-it note advocate, a practitioner of data & design user-centric problem solving, and an extreme prototyper. As the current Director of Product for MSTS, he leads teams to build software platforms that remove the drama of B2B invoicing and collections. In addition, Kirby is a co-founder of TheraWe where he is on a mission to help parents of children with disabilities navigate the world of pediatric therapy.
If you want to chat about any of the ideas presented here, please feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or guykirbymontgomery@gmail.com.
