In the ever-evolving world of software development, the role of a Product Manager (PM) stands out as both critical and complex.

What PMs do varies tremendously based on the level of the role, the maturity of the organization, the maturity and scale of the product, and whether it’s enterprise or consumer-focused. Moreover, PMs often approach their roles with different philosophies about communication, decisions, and risk.

This track will address challenges unique to different life stages and market types, as well the core concerns most PMs share:

• Getting strategic decisions right. There are so many moving parts in the life of a product! We’ll cover essentials like audiences and value propositions, revenue models, and more.
• Leadership skills for PMs. While the Ambition Empower Leadership track covers these things in more depth, we’ll hit the highlights of leadership, negotiation, and turning a group of people into a team.
• Defining & measuring success. Defining the right metrics can make or break your whole decision-making loop. We’ll help you with assembling the right portfolio of metrics and OKRs, working with less-useful metrics you’re forced to adopt, and going beyond traditional metrics.
• Agility meets reality. What happens when not everyone understands or agrees on what agility is and what it is (or isn’t) good for? We’ll work on finding the balance between planning and learning, figuring out what is and isn’t helpful in estimation and velocity measurement.
• Understanding your market. We’ll work on skills not just for understanding customers and users, but also for looking at other forces that influence the market, like new regulations or economic shifts.
• Roadmaps. The problem with a roadmap is that maps depict places we’ve already been–and they set stakeholder expectations accordingly. We’ll dig into helpful strategies for taking input, developing roadmaps of various types, and communicating about work in progress and backlog.
• Enterprise essentials. When your customers are other companies, PMs need to be close to the sales cycle and part of the contract review team. We’ll discuss working across the org for successful implementation, customization, and well-defined pilots. We’ll also consider when in the product’s life cycle to address issues like scale, security, privacy, compliance, interoperability, versioning and upgrades.
• Consumer essentials. Product success in a direct-to-consumer setting can be just as much about marketing and pricing as it is about the product itself. We’ll work on developing great relationships with your marketing team and giving them the support they need.
• MVPs, experiments, and scope. We’ll help you align your team and stakeholders around tight, efficient learning loops–while building the stakeholder confidence you need to avoid cramming everything into the first release.
• Stakeholder and meeting management. Alignment, clarity, and delivery are three of the most critical words in a PM’s job description. We’ll work on tools and tactics for herding the cats.

This track is ideal for PMs who wish to enhance their skills and grow within all the diverse challenges of product management. Whether you’re dealing with a developing product or steering a mature one, this track offers the continuous insights and tools necessary for success. Also – as with all Ambition Empower tracks, the track continually adapts to the members' needs and requests.

Every week Kim Goodwin provides one hour of carefully selected recommendations on what to read, watch, or listen to stay ahead. The monthly 1h live sessions with Kim typically start at 16:00 CET/CEST. Once you sign up, you'll receive calendar bookings well ahead of each session.

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Interested in other topics? Check out all of the Empower tracks here!