Building a Product Management Career Development Program

To motivate product managers to grow their career with your organization, a transparent and documented process for roles and promotions is critical. Build your own development program with these templates: Job Description Hierarchy Template, Product Manager Baseline Expectations Template, and Promotion Packet Checklist Template

Background:
As your product organization evolves, high performing talent will want to know the process for how they progress their career at your organization (instead of leaving) and also how advancement is equitable (based on merit over favor), so these processes and templates are an outcome of how MSTS evolved their product manager advancement process to focus on continuous improvement in product craft, high emotional intelligence in stakeholder management, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Step 1: Commit to a Standard vs. Freestyling
Amongst the product leadership team, they will need to decide that they are committed to more structure/standardization, engagement with their direct reports on career development, and time to review advancement candidates. Being engaged, transparent, and promoting expectations means aligning and iterating together as a team. Leadership teams that freestyle independently may survive for a period of time, but will most definitely be treated with surprise attrition when high-flyers choose a different company instead of waiting for a tribal process to unfold.

Step 2: Outline Meaningful Role Descriptions and Hierarchy
As a product organization evolves, legacy job titles and meaningless numericals (i.e. Product Manager I to Product Manager IX) may introduce blurry expectations for promotion criteria, as well as the specific extended responsibilities of the role above the current employee. Agreeing on role titles and descriptions across a leadership organization will standardize expectations between employees and managers, as well as allows for HR departments to assign appropriate compensation structures.

Template: Product Organization Descriptions and Hierarchy
Credit: Teresa Cain

Step 3: Create a Fair Promotion Review Process
A fair promotion review process includes a standard Promotion Checklist Packet (see Step 4), a published cadence for when candidates are reviewed, and a standard for who is qualified to review candidates.

MSTS Documented Review Process:
- Once your manager feels you are ready to present your case to the board, you will present your packet to HR and at least three product leaders of a higher role — excluding your manager.
- The promotion board will make a decision on the promotion and/or provide additional feedback on areas to continue to grow.
- We will evaluate promotions twice per year — September and March.

Step 4: Establish a Checklist for a Promotion Review
Creating an organizational specific Promotion Checklist accomplishes the following goals:

1. A published Promotion Checklist provides a standard expectation for what is required by the Promotion Review Board, while also reinforcing company values on teamwork (e.g. questions on feedback from stakeholders), entrepreneurial spirit, and product craft (e.g. liking to UX studies, mockups, and KPI dashboards).
2. Using the questions in the Promotion Checklist, managers can work with direct reports to do quarterly retros on areas for continuous improvement and also identify new assignments needed to grow their product craft skills.

Template: Promotion Checklist
Credit: Dan Zimmerman

Promotion Equation = Exceeding Expectations on Product Management Standards + High Emotional Intelligence + Measureable Results + Professional-Level Artifacts

Step 5: Execute a Promotion Review Process
In order to ensure Promotion Review Boards are high-quality, take the following action:
- Pre-schedule rooms for bi-yearly reviews
- Create calendar placeholders for product leaders in management to reduce conflicts
- Require promotion packets to be submitted two-weeks prior by the candidates
- Require Review Board members to review candidate packets before attending Promotion Review Board
- Review Board members take pride in providing meaningful and encouraging feedback on areas for improvement when the candidate is or is not promoted
- Publically recognize to the bigger organization with clear examples of impact and outcomes for each candidate promoted.

Good luck!

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.