Here are some best practices that will help a Product Manager stay on their toes.

Team Coordination

Always stay in contact with your teams. Making a product is a large undertaking and you will have to rely on your team to build and market it. Every teammate is vital to the creation of a good product. So it makes sense to be in constant contact with your team. However, do not micromanage your team. 

Here is a link to our blog post on how to manage your product team.

Customer Feedback

Customers are an important source of information. They can give you live results of your product and update you on any faults that your product might have. They can also give suggestions to help improve your product on points where you and your team have failed to see. The end goal of your product is to be used by your customer so make sure the product fits the users’ needs. 

Here is a link to our blog post on how to obtain more customer feedback.

Overall Goal

What is the big picture? What is the overarching goal for the product that is being developed? Who are the consumers? Try to understand the purpose of the product. Understand everything so you can start pointing out a direction for the team to take.

Here is a link to our blog post on Product Vision.

After you figure your product vision than you can start working on your strategy for the product. 

Network

There is only so much one person can do by themselves. There are loads of communities out there for you to connect with. Connect with other product managers to see what they found helpful to their work. There are probably experienced product managers who have gone through what you are going through right now. 

Compare

Pay attention to other products besides your own. Look at successful products that have been launched and analyze what made them so successful. Come up with ways you may be able to apply what you’ve learned to your own product.