# Product Manager onboarding ## First day ### Objective: Get a good idea of what your first few weeks and months at Mattermost will be. ### Activities * Meet with direct manager * Review your area of ownership and team members * [Product Areas of Ownership](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-handbook/blob/0.2.1/operations/research-and-development/product/product-management-team-handbook/product-ownership-areas/README.md) * [R\&D Org](/operations/research-and-development/organization.md) * Get added to key organization and team meetings * Get 1:1 set up for the next few weeks for frequent check-ins * Review the onboarding plan for first 90 days * HR Paperwork & Logistics * Look at the product with “fresh eyes” * Install Mattermost on your laptop, go through the steps of setting it up * Optionally also install the Mattermost Mobile App on your mobile device * As you read the documentation, look out for any improvements that can be made (outdated information, spelling/grammar, etc) ## First week ### Objective: Get an introduction to product, customers, team members, resources, and processes ### Training focus * Introduction to our Customer Obsession Principle * Introductions to team members through 1-1s * Use introductions as learning opportunities to understand different parts of the company (ask questions!) * Introduction to product * Introduction to key resources * Introduction to key processes ### Training outcomes * Post introduction to PM team to GTM teams. Request to join customer calls * Get access to key tools (Jira, Github) * Open your first pull request in Github for an improvement to docs.mattermost.com or in-product text. ### Activities Customer Obsession: * Join and introduce yourself in these channels, ask to join any and all customer calls - see if you can get a couple scheduled this week: * [Product Management](https://community.mattermost.com/private-core/channels/product-management) * [GTM:PM Engagement](https://community.mattermost.com/private-core/channels/csmpm-engagement) (Stu Doherty, Jenn Lawler) * [Sales Discussion](https://community.mattermost.com/private-core/channels/sales-discussion) (Lance Howden, Steve Green, Richard Pidgeon) * Join and review the topics and posts in these channels to get a better understanding of our customers: * [Customer Feedback](https://community.mattermost.com/private-core/channels/customer-feedback) * [Customer Support](https://community.mattermost.com/private-core/channels/community) * Begin watching training videos on [academy.mattermost.com](https://academy.mattermost.com/) * Begin reading [docs.mattermost.com](https://docs.mattermost.com/) Team: * Join a location-specific channel (e.g. `Loc: Canada` or `Loc: US`) for region-specific updates * Meet your R\&D team (Developers, Designer, QA, Technical Writer) and join team meetings * Ask questions to understand development, design, QA processes, and documentation processes * Meet with Amy (Release Manager) and read the release process doc * Meet with Ian (CEO) \[[https://github.com/it33/readme/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/it33/readme/blob/master/README.md/)). This will be scheduled for you * Meet other Product Managers (Jason Blais, Eric Sethna, Katie Wiersgalla, Ian Tao, Chen-I Lim, Neil Barnett, Winson Wun, Laney Coletti-Saracino, Don Hogan, John Lugtu, Sandy Atkinson) * Learn about their areas of ownership * Participate in PM, R\&D, and Customer Obsession Meetings * Jira * Sign up to Jira and post in the “Jira configuration” channel to be added to internal team * Get Jira training from PM buddy * [Mattermost Platform](https://mattermost.atlassian.net/projects/MM/issues/MM-10977?filter=allopenissues) * Make your first edit and pull request on GitHub * Update documentation or product help text * Make other small contributions based on your fresh experience with Mattermost * File a bug in Jira * Test a new feature on a test server and suggest an improvement in our UX feedback channel * Leave feedback on a design proposal in our spec channel Fresh perspective product review: Before diving too deeply into docs, processes, and everything else - take this chance to share a list of questions, observations, and points of confusion to help with your own learning and to provide feedback on your first impressions of Mattermost for the rest of the team. A good place to start is exploring the websites, and then start a cloud trial account. * Google Mattermost * [https://mattermost.com](https://mattermost.com/) * [https://docs.mattermost.com](https://docs.mattermost.com/) * [https://developers.mattermost.com](https://developers.mattermost.com/) * [http://github.com/mattermost](https://github.com/mattermost/) ## First 30 days ### Objective: Build your foundational knowledge of our company, product, and market. ### Training focus * Users and customers * Product * Features/Functions * Technical * Market and Competitive Landscape * Team * People and Processes ### Training outputs * Post detailed notes from customer calls in [Salesforce](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/customer-success#logging-a-customer-feedback-in-salesforce) * Answer at least one question during the week of community support in the Mattermost [forum](https://forum.mattermost.com/) * Document areas of improvement you see in your area of ownership or in team's processes. Share these with your manager. * Update this onboarding document. ### Activities Learn about our customers and users * Learn about Mattermost Support by getting an overview on support processes and systems * Customers: Zendesk (Sven Huester, Support Lead)) * Community: GitHub, Forums (Amy Blais) * Learn about Customer Success (Brent Fox) * Overview of Customer Success team, who owns what * Current Customer Success processes * Typical challenges during customer onboarding * Join one CSM team meeting to meet the rest of the CS team * Join customer and prospective customer calls * Join calls with CSMs & Sales team * Take detailed notes and log in [Salesforce](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/customer-success#logging-a-customer-feedback-in-salesforce) * Review feature requests * [Process feedback in productboard](https://mattermost.productboard.com/insights/shared-inbox) * Spend a week doing community support in the Mattermost[forum](https://mattermost.uservoice.com/) * Review documentation first and work with Support Lead or PM mentor to answer any questions documentation does not address * Update docs with answers as appropriate Learn about the market * Learn about Mattermost Sales (Regional VPs and Customer Engineers) * Sales team overview * Sales team priorities * What competitors are we up against * How does Sales team position the product * What are typical challenges for the Sales team * Which sales do we win, which do we lose * What are the most common questions on configurations and trials * Learn about Mattermost Marketing (Marketing Team Lead) * Marketing team overview * What are the Marketing team’s priorities * What is our current messaging and positioning around Mattermost * What is needed from Product Managers to support Marketing initiatives * Do some mini competitive research analysis * Review of MS Teams, Slack, Discord, and other collaboration products Learn about the product * Product Direction (Product Lead) * Current Year Company goals and strategy * Review videos on [Mattermost Academy](https://academy.mattermost.com/) * Technical Architecture (Feature Team dev lead) * Reference: * [High level overview (slideshow summary)](https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/1/d/1Z44Yhaab7ul7yrnyYjQpq_T2A_z0GbrYMYe8Ov6zRZw/edit#slide=id.g1994d3cd93_0_507) * [High level system design document (more detailed)](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NF6D3K83FfDaVcbPNeIFhS-Uw-otQEcsSecxQZhOaEQ/edit) * [Navigating the Mattermost database](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BuZaYHkmUgitKtLNbeV3mq6xa0ZwFyPw8Qc6aFZalZE/edit?ts=5cc0bb36) * Product areas: Functional Overview and Roadmap * Reference: * [PM Areas of Ownership](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/research-and-development/product/product-management-team-handbook/product-ownership-areas) * [Roadmap - All teams](https://mattermost.productboard.com/portal/19-combined-highlighted-features) * [Engineering OKRs](https://community.mattermost.com/boards/workspace/p33mj7xh4frntrtbxbp5xp1joy/886d2280-e88e-4065-8c85-1b62578f192e/2a95356b-d97a-461a-8bb3-f61ca8ff5da7) * Product Analytics * Tips on things to watch out for if running your own analytics * Dive into product analytics (via Looker) Learn about the product development process * High level overview (PM buddy) * [Team structure](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lH8QIjQGEoGospDUdVs_LQ_i2b82I1ce6W7z18vhPTQ/edit?usp=sharing) * [Product planning overview](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/research-and-development/product/product-planning/product-philosophy-and-principles) * Team-specific processes (PM buddy) * Team Triage * Sprint Planning * OKRs * Join all feature team meetings (Triage, Sprint Planning) * Design process (Feature team designer) * [Spec template](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1QC4-qysnp3DuPS5nROUpL31WtiJ7RhZCXz24T1WgTko/edit#heading=h.2msta3abogxt) * Competitor research * User research * Review process * Spec review channel * Working with contributor community (Jason Blais) * Help wanted tickets * Community buddies * …? * Release process * QA process (QA team member) * General QA process * Sites for testing * Release testing process * Add to release testing * [Release Testing assignment example](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gW7i8uF3jd5wuHd5mJ7UdBQsMFVZwHKMXE7WOtlDa0k/edit#gid=1130032476) * Release process (Amy, Release Manager) * [Release process](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/research-and-development/product/release-process) * [Extended Support Release](https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/extended-support-release.html) * Shadow feature team meetings and conversations * Contribute where possible (reviewing research and design specs, filing Jira ticket bugs) * Ramp up on a couple of ongoing projects or smaller projects * Identify areas of improvement for your area of improvement. * Other projects identified by PM mentor to assist in learning about your area of ownership Update this onboarding document! * Helpful links, FAQs, and summaries of what you learned that would be useful for a new PM to know in the future * Example past project: [Business Model Canvas](https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/1/d/1vMXmuJf_EuxPWzCeeAWswnexwo9zTE5qBumKx-8We0E/edit#slide=id.p) ## First 60 days ### Objective: Build confidence through contribution in your area ownership ### Training focus * Participate in job duties and acquire ownership of a full feature (or more). ### Training outputs * Document detailed notes from customer calls for requirements and use cases. * Kick off a project with the UX, Engineering and QA. * Write spec document and release announcements for your feature. ### Activities * Participate in transitional projects with exiting PM owner * Interview customers or users for research for an upcoming project * Document research findings, use cases and requirements * Work with UX team on specs for your project and validation of designs with customers * Work with Development on specs and PR reviews for your project * Work with QA on test plans * Prepare customer facing documentation for your project * Allow PM mentor to shadow you and review your work, providing guidance and feedback * Other projects identified by PM mentor to assist in learning about your area of ownership ## First 90 days ### Objective: Take full ownership of responsibilities ### Training focus * Own all features within the release * Update and maintain roadmap * Work directly with developers, designers, and other stakeholders to progress projects ### Training outputs * Update and share roadmap with your direct manager. * Respond to customers and internal stakeholders on questions relating to areas of your ownership. * Prepare research and requirements for next upcoming projects. ### Activities * Prepare research and queue next projects * Work independently with Feature team (Dev, UX, QA) * Answer questions related to the projects you have been involved in and areas of ownership within the product (with support as needed from PM mentor). --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/research-and-development/product/product-management-team-handbook/pm-onboarding.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.