An unexpected journey from UX to Product management
A couple of years ago, I transitioned from UX Design to Product management. But did I really transition?
In this unexpected article I will be describing my experience and walk you through the challenges I faced in the shift.
The unexpected journey
I was working on a project called Office.me, a virtual office space for remote people to increase collaboration and teamwork between coworkers. I had a really good relationship with my manager, he was a really great leader, he helped me learn a lot of new things. He used to share his journey with me and give me advice to learn from his mistakes. While working on Office.me, we didn’t have a Product manager, I was the UX Designer, we had a UI Designer, and the Dev team.
One day, he asked me to take some online courses to help me with the product I was building as a UX designer. These are some of the courses that he suggested and I took them.
- Growth Driven Design — Hubspot
- Agile Software Developement — LinkedIn
- Agile at work — LinkedIn
- Growth Product management: Activation and Retention — Udacity
I realized after he suggest these courses that he wanted me to become a product manager, he wanted me to be in the driving seat, he saw that I was capable of leading the product forward without him interfering.
I didn’t know exactly what was the role of a product manager, I had the idea that a product manager should be an engineer, but it became obvious after a while that not all product manager have the same responsibilities. If you have a background in software engineering you might choose to become a technical product manager, if you are a designer, you would be more on the product side where your expertise are needed as a designer.
The transition to Product manager was easy for me in the beginning because I was still designing and collaborating on identifying new features, but at the same time I was learning about the strategy and business side of the product which fascinated me, and I realized that I like being a product manager, I realized that my experience as a UX Designer is helping me become a better Product manager, I was empathetic, I always had the user in mind, and I would always look forward.
What were the challenges I faced
Meetings
When I first started my career as a product manager, I always had back to back meeting, I never took my lunch break on time even though I had it scheduled on my calendar, my calendar was always full.
- Daily stand-ups
- Design reviews
- Brainstorming workshop
- Roadmap and strategy sessions
- Handover meetings
- Sprint planning
- Refinement calls
- Sprint retro
- Weekly marketing brainstorming sessions
I can keep going if you want, but the main Idea was I had no time for “deep work” time by Newport's definition, deep work refers to: “Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit”.
Tasks
As a UX Designer my tasks were
- User research: qualitative and/or quantitative research.
- Analyze and understand the findings
- Brainstorming workshops
- Concept sketching
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
- Visual design
- Usability testing
- Experimenting
As a Product Manager
- Communication between the different teams
- Coordination
- handover
- Vision
- Strategy
- Go-to-market
- Analysis
- Roadmap prioritization
- Experimenting and gathering data
So as a Product Manager I was responsible for the product strategy and setting goals and aligning with the different teams. while as a UX Designer I was required to find “the best way” to achieve our goals. Both are important, but they have different roles. I found that being a PM requires you to have leadership and operational skills, while design is more focused on craftsmanship.
Teams
I realized as a Product Manager that I was still part of the product team but my team was different from the UX Designer team, it includes other cross-functional teams such as marketing and business development, I noticed that I am still solving and improving the user’s experience but at the same time I was focused on having a clear vision of the product along with the goals we need to achieve to get there. I was the Person who reminded the whole team about this vision. As a Product Manager I spent my day working with different teams, from thinking like a designer to becoming a marketing specialist.
Conclusion
I think UX is a must-have for those starting a career in Product Management, because Product Managers will need to make UX decisions, they need to speak the UX language. Coming from a UX Designer background, helped me in this sense but didn’t prepare me to the responsibilities a Product Manager has.
Becoming a Product Manager gave me more control over the product strategy and vision, I have the chance to work with different people and learn a lot in different fields and manage the end-to-end product development process. The only downside of thing is I had to create my own “deep work” time, I started waking up earlier to have time to finish some tasks before starting the back to back meetings.
At the end, I am really happy with the transition to Product Manager, I have a lot of things to learn and I am excited about it.
