As I start a new job tomorrow at ChampTitles, I took some time to reflect on what I learned at Patriot Software over the last 5 years. 

I was struck by how different my experience was at an in-house company, versus my previous 11+ years at agencies.

While I was in a different role at agencies – UX, rather than product management – my time at Patriot Software showed me there are unique advantages to being in-house.

Working in-house, as opposed to an agency, allowed me to:

• 🧑‍💻Get to know my stakeholders & team (dev/QA) and work with them over an extended period of time
  • Communication is key to a PM’s job; once you work with someone, it’s easier to understand how best to communicate
  • For example, when communicating async, some people prefer words while others prefer short video clips; some people like verbal communication where others want to be walked through a diagram
  • I was also lucky enough to work with wonderful stakeholders and have fantastic teams ❤️ 🥰
• 🔍 Create domain expertise
  • I bounced around Patriot Software, so the longest time I was in any domain was a year; still, that’s far longer than most of my client projects
  • While I always had “SMEs” (subject matter experts) to work with, having a deeper understanding made prioritizing and solving problems easier
• 👥 Develop deep customer expertise by having direct and consistent access to the customers
  • With some agency clients, we were able to do a formal study and talk to actual customers, but oftentimes we did not have access to customers
  • At Patriot Software, I was able to recruit however I wanted to, including picking up the phone and calling a customer for input; I ended up with a better understanding of my customers which led to better prioritizing and improved features
• 😬 Be directly involved in any incidents, and solving / communicating about those incidents
  • The Silicon Valley Bank incident was the biggest, by far
  • Incidents are challenging, but also great opportunities for learning
  • 🎙️My biggest takeaway from that incident, along with others: communication, communication, communication
    • Even saying “We know parts of the system are down, not sure which parts and why, but we’re investigating” is far better than silence when something goes awry and the calls are streaming in
• 🔢 Have access to the data to do my own ‘data digging’
  • I wrote over 600 SQL queries at my last job, plus created many ‘queries’ in other tools
  • I had an opportunity to learn a variety of tools over the years: MixPanel, Posthog, Google Analytics, Pendo, Redash (SQL query tool), Amazon QuickSight, and Oracle Analytics Cloud
  • With these tools I was able to uncover insights like unusual ways customers were using our software that pointed to a missing feature, or dropoff points to rework in workflows; it also allowed me to… 
• 📈 See the outcomes of my work
  • This was something I missed out on at agencies, outside of verbal feedback
  • In-house, I could not only set the goals, but see how we’re doing towards those goals post-launch, which leads me to….
• 🌀Iterate, iterate, iterate
  • I had opportunities to get feedback – both qualitative and quantitative – and iterate towards our goals
• ⚛️ Learn about our technology
  • At agencies, I mostly used platforms such as Hybris, IBM eCommerce, and Adobe Experience Manager; while I understood those at a high level, that’s very different than understanding whether we’re using React or Vue and why, and how our different systems communicate
  • This is directly relevant to iteration; I learned better tech = faster iteration
• ⛳ Leverage feature flagging
  • This wasn’t something I could control with agency clients, but here, I had my hands on the keyboard and could control rollouts to a much larger extent
  • This goes back to the ‘see outcomes and iterate’; we could see outcomes with a smaller group of customers, and iterate before a feature is fully rolled out
  • For example, with one feature, after turning it on for California customers, we realized we need a ‘bulk move’ tool; we added that before final rollout
• 📅 Beyond individual projects: see the outcomes of my strategies and plans
  • At agencies, I also created strategies and plans, but it was rare that I was with the client long enough to see how they played out
• 🚧 Work around the problem
  • I learned how to work around obstacles in a way that I could not in an agency, such as working with operational teams on a solution
  • As an example, one time the operations team wanted an analytics report built into our internal system, which would have been a fair amount of work; the compromise was for the devs to include a link to the analytics report built in another system

Other Lessons Learned: Coaching

Beyond the projects, I was also a manager for 3 and a half years. While I had coached before, it had mostly been in person; I improved my remote coaching skills, and my coaching skills in general. 

⏳Both in terms of coaching meetings and for team meetings, I consciously allowed a few minutes of chit-chat before ‘getting down to business.’ That isn’t my natural instinct, but it’s extremely important anywhere, and more so in a remote environment. 

💪 I also learned about the importance of keeping high-performing team members challenged, and finding areas they should continue to improve on even if they’re already strong; there’s always room for improvement for all of us. 

📚For coaching purposes, I found value in working through books with team members. The books I shared most often were ‘Product Management in Practice’ by Matt LeMay, and ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ by Dale Carnegie. 

‘Product Management in Practice’ is great for those new to product management, and also for more experienced PMs when I needed to make sure we were aligned on what it means to be a PM; it helped gain alignment between my expectations and theirs better than any career framework.

‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ is for anyone who wants to build stronger social and professional relationships. A manager gave the book to me early in my career, and it had a tremendous impact on my skills and career.

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As I move into another in-house product role, I’m excited to apply these lessons and look forward to all the new ones that await me.