Hey PM community, I'm writing this post to share my day and to get some feedback what you think I must handle differently and maybe share how your day is different from mine, I hope to get insights to make my day more productive.
My day as a product manager starts with syncing with dev team to see how things are moving. Then I get aware about problems dev team is facing, and they usually tell me "it appears it was much more complicated than we were assuming at the start, so let's either do it differently or just move the deadline". Now I need to compromise or bring necessary people together, ask the right questions to figure out how it could be solved. After some firefighting, I move forward to observing product health dashboard, and take some notes. Then I start replying to questions from sales team or customer success whether it is possible to build this or that feature, and trying to explain why a specific request from customer can/should be satisfied or not, and explaining that we have much work in the pipeline and it can't happen immediately. If eventually any adjustments were made, I go and update the roadmap. Then I get to reading, analyzing, sorting, categorizing customer feedback, discussion on social media, therefore analyzing the progress of latest release or launch, planning and deciding on whether we are going to roll out to next user group or make it available for GA or maybe it needs more improvements and fixes. If it is the end of the sprint I must be getting to writing release notes, recording demo videos, communicating with sales, customer support and training and technical writers team to update the help center, guides, also sync with marketing team so they are aware of new releases.
I delegate making announcements about collecting user group for next feature alpha release to our junior PM, then I cherry-pick users from applicants list. Then I separate insights for ideation for new features or improvements that are not directly related to newly launched features/improvements, maybe even do one-on-one customer interviews for picking lighthouse users for new products. Getting in touch with customers asking for interviews is also in my to-do list, but it is usually done by associate PM. Then I will get back to ideation board trying to collect more insights about improvements in the pipeline from various sources which must help me to prioritize roadmap and present it to management. Finally, I go to backlog to prepare for the next sprint or if needed to change the priorities. This is like my routine, not counting some alignment meeting, product strategy review days and stuff that happen from several times in a quarter or in a year. Lastly, at the end of the day I go to reading tech news, product newsletters, M&A, swipe through competitor releases and product hunt launch list, and try to keep up with the industry trends in general.
P.S. I don't use much tools apart from Jira, Miro and recently I start using Jira Product Discovery for roadmaps and Fireflies for note-taking, if you can share some worthy tools you use daily, it will also be helpful.