How to Succeed at Remote Product Management
Wondering how to succeed at remote product management?
Smart move.
The pandemic of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our world. Like other fields, this pandemic has also affected the business industry. Many companies have started to hire remote workers for their projects. As a result, the demand for remote project managers has increased.
Pursuing a remote product management career brings numerous challenges.
Despite all these challenges, there are many privileges to pursuing remote work. You work from anywhere in the world, have a flexible schedule, and don’t need to commute to work.
To help you cope with the challenges of remote working, we have come up with this article. This article contains tips that help you cope with the challenges of remote working and make your virtual working experience as fruitful and productive as possible.
7 Tips to Succeed in Remote Product Management
Here are some tips to excel in your remote product manager job:
Create Work-Life Balance
The most important thing for remote workers is to create a work-life balance. While working from home, indulging in work 24/7 is easy. It is tempting to work all day and night without any break without your coworkers around you.
It has adverse effects on your mental and physical health.
It is essential to set boundaries and not mismanage your professional or personal life. To do this, you need to set work hours, stick to a routine, and take regular breaks. You need to take time out for yourself and your family. Take breaks between work, go for a walk, or watch your favorite show. Doing this keeps you energized, productive, and motivated.
Create a Dedicated Workspace
It is vital to have a separate space for your office work when you are working from home. It helps you focus on your work and avoid distractions. Working from the bed or sofa might sound tempting, but it leads to neck pain and backache.
Utilize a spare room, basement, or garage as your office space. Your dining room is another great place to set up a home office. The environment of your working space also has an impact on your productivity. A welcoming and comfortable space helps you stay focused and motivated. Place plants, and hang creative paintings or family photos to make your workspace more exciting.
Ensure your workspace has all the necessary office supplies like laptops, printers, notepads, pens, etc. Install sound barriers to keep you away from the noise of kids playing, TV, or people talking.
The room’s lighting matters a lot when creating a home office. Choose a well-lit and airy room for your office work. Keep everything organized in your working space. Remove clutters and distractions from your desk. Decluttering enables you to start your work with a clear mind.
Communicate
Communication is the key to success in remote product manager jobs. Product managers have to deal with cross-functional teams, including developers, designers, marketers, and salespeople. To manage these teams, you need to maintain regular communication with them.
Credits: MDPI
Remote working makes it difficult to keep everyone on the same page. As a result, there is a risk of miscommunication and misunderstanding. The best way to avoid such problems is by over-communicating with your team members.
Use various communication channels like phone calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, and emails to stay in touch with your team. You need to schedule regular meetings to discuss work progress and upcoming tasks.
Encourage your team members to ask questions and share their ideas. Use communication tools like Zoom, Dropbox, or Airtable to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Conduct Product Research
As a remote product manager, you must be extra vigilant about the products you manage. Don’t rely on your team members for feedback and insights about the product. You need your customer’s consultation to improve the product. Customers’ feedback provides you with an unbiased view of your product. Conducting user research is essential to understanding the needs and wants of your target audience.
The best way to get insights about your product is by conducting customer research. Customer research helps you understand the needs and wants of your customers. It also gives you an idea about the competition. You need to use various research methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups, and user testing to get feedback from your customers. Analytics tools are also helpful in tracking the usage of your product.
When working with remote companies, conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups are not always possible. In such cases, online research tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms offer an excellent opportunity to collect data from your target audience.
User testing is another great way to get insights into your product. Use online tools like UserTesting and TryMyUI to conduct user testing. These tools help you find potential customers for your product and get their feedback.
Connect With Stakeholders
As a remote product manager, you need to present your product to key stakeholders like investors, customers, and partners. Connecting to a remote audience is not an easy task. That said, there are tools and techniques to help you engage your audience.
When presenting something to a remote audience, engaging everyone is a challenge. You need to make sure your presentation is interesting and engaging. You need to create an appealing and easy-to-understand presentation. Use infographics, charts, and graphs to make your presentation more engaging.
While presenting, you need to keep an eye on the questions and comments from your audience. Q&A pages are also helpful to engage your audience. They help you understand the interests and concerns of your audience. Tools like Prezi, PowerPoint, and Keynote are helpful to create an engaging presentation.
Accountability and Sharing Information
In remote jobs, being accountable for your work is essential. The product management teams need to share information about their work with team leaders and stakeholders. Team leaders also add technical account managers and support teams to meetings to get feedback.
Team meetings enable everyone to stay updated about the work progress. Sharing accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned helps everyone remain up-to-date with the progress of the team. It also helps everyone understand the difficulties other team members encounter on the job as well as how they work to overcome them.
It is essential to use various tools to share information with the team. Documentation tools like Google Docs and Confluence help create and share product documentation. Tracking tools like Jira and Trello help you gauge the progress of your work.
Tools for Remote Workers
As remote working grows, so too does the need for tools that help remote workers increase. Tech companies have come up with various licensed tools to support remote workers. Here are some popular tools well-built, and licensed tools that assist remote workers.
Communication Tools
Zoom
Zoom is a popular video conferencing tool that helps remote workers to communicate with each other. It offers an excellent opportunity to connect with your team members and stakeholders. Its free version allows 100 participants for 40 minutes. An upgraded plan offers more features like unlimited duration, recording, and transcription.
Slack
Slack is a communication tool that helps remote workers to communicate with each other in real-time. It offers various features like group chat, video calls, and file sharing. It also enables you to integrate it with other tools like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Collaboration and Productivity Tools
Google Workspace
Google Workspace is a set of tools that helps remote workers to collaborate and be productive. It includes popular tools like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google Workspace also offers features like video conferencing and screen sharing. It enables you to engage with your team members and stakeholders.
Asana
Asana is a popular project management tool that enables remote workers to collaborate and be productive. It allows you to create and manage various tasks. It allows teams to create projects, assign tasks to team members, determine the deadlines, and track the progress of the work.
Task Management Tools
Jira
Jira is a popular task management tool that enables remote workers to track the progress of their work. It allows agile project management and helps track bugs and new feature requests. Jira also enables you to create and manage tasks.
Trello
Trello is another popular task management tool that enables remote workers to manage their work. It helps you to develop and manage projects. It also allows you to create a task board with three columns: To-Do, In Progress, and Done. Trello enables you to drag and drop tasks from one column to another.
Productboard
This tool enables remote teams to collaborate on product planning and execution. It enables you to document, prioritize, and track progress on your product roadmap. It also provides features for capturing customer feedback and integrating it with your development process. It allows you to create multiple boards for various aspects of your product and manage them all in one place.
Remote Product Management: Key Takeaways
As the world evolves, the way we work also changes. With the advancement of technology, more and more people prefer remote work. Product managers also need to adapt to this change and manage their work.
While remote working has its challenges, it also offers various opportunities. It allows you to work from any place in the world.
Remote product management is a new concept and is getting popular. Find ways to incorporate the tools mentioned in this article to make your remote working career more exciting
Above all, don’t forget to stay connected with your team members and stakeholders.
