How I transitioned from UX to Product Management

Change is hard. This post is about a change I made — transitioning to product management after almost five years in product design. It’s about the personal challenges I faced (what was I afraid of and what helped me silence the inner critic) and the professional ones (what I needed to learn) and what resources helped me bridge the knowledge gaps). I hope this will help others considering a similar path.

Photo by Ross Findon

In this post I’ll be referring to UX and product design as the same job, although I’m aware these differ from one organisation to another. Also, opinions and observations are my own.

What is Product Management, and how is it different from Product Design?

The boundaries of the product manager’s role vs the product designer’s vary between different companies and even teams. I believe that in order to create great products, the two have to work together as partners towards the same goal. Although their responsibilities differ, both need to know the users, product and the impact it creates in order to have justified opinions and valid arguments.

UX, design and dev are parts of a product cycle the PM oversees but not directly manages. As I see it, the main responsibilities of the PM are:

1. Defining the product vision and strategy, conducting research and planning ahead.
   A PM is responsible for setting a product vision based on the business goals and user needs within existing constraints. She must understand where the product is now, who the competition is, and where it needs to be — next week, quarter, or year.
2. Working with developers on ongoing tasks and setting priorities.
   A PM needs to know how to break a big task to small action items, clearly communicate them and build a reasonable timeline for execution together with the dev team. Then she needs to be available for her team when they have product questions while working on these tasks. Not everything goes according to plan and there are decisions to make on the fly.
3. Talking to users to get constant feedback.
   Talking to users is something a PM must do on a regular basis through various channels in order to collect feedback, prioritise and filter it back to the team.
4. Syncing with other teams and keeping your team in the know.
   This includes communicating with stakeholders, but also making sure every team member is aligned on the short and long term focus and goals.

A product designer, on the other hand, owns the visual language and consistent user experience. She needs to translate the product requirements set by the PM, business goals, research and testing insights into delightful designs that improve the product. Ideally, a product designer spends most of her time in research, inspiration, creating various versions of a product flow and guiding developers with performing visual QA and exporting / tweaking assets and flows.

So a PM is responsible for the product strategy and setting goals, while the UX helps find the best way to get there. Both are important, but they require different skillsets. I found that being a PM requires you to have leadership and operational skills, while design is more focused on craftsmanship.

Why I decided to switch

It all comes down to personal growth and curiosity. Every now and then you need to stop and think about where you want to go and if you’re on the right path to get there. That question starts bothering you when you find yourself working on the same project for too long, or getting too comfortable in your current position. As creatives, we have this intense drive to learn new things and overcome new challenges, so I bet you’ve felt this way a couple of times in your career, that “now what?” feeling.

If you’re a freelancer, you usually need to balance between which projects are interesting to you and which pay the bills. If you work for a large company, your role must consist of what you need and what the company needs. So how do you grow?

After some time working as designers, we are generally faced with a choice. We can either advance our careers by “getting promoted” to people managers or we can continue evolving our skills as individual contributors (ICs). I wanted to have a bigger influence on the product but I didn’t want to directly manage other people yet. Our company has a well-defined design language, so I didn’t feel that continuing to work as a designer would be challenging enough for me. I started asking myself what new things I could learn or get better at, and that’s what led me to product management.

Throughout my career, I got to work with a variety of product managers. Some of them were particularly good at helping their team achieve their goals by being inspiring leaders. They were the kind of people that have a clear vision of what needs to be done and communicate it so openly, it makes you proud to be part of it.

I wanted to know what these product managers knew, and to do what they did. I was curious what exactly happens before the product gets to the hands of the designer. I wanted to learn how to decide on a strategy, on priority, manage the scope, and what are the challenges there. I wanted a broader point of view.

The Transition

I was already doing part of the product work at the time and was lucky enough my managers trusted me to start taking on more responsibility. So for some time I did both UX and a bit of product. After a while, I felt it was time for an official transition — I had to give my job boundaries. I couldn’t focus on learning how to do a business analysis while being asked to export assets. I couldn’t constantly jump between roles until I gain enough confidence in both of them. I needed time to learn.

The logistics of such a transition inside a big company aren’t simple. Your managers need to assess whether you have the potential to be good at the new role, and how a change of that kind would affect the dynamics of the team. You may be required to go through interviews and complete an assignment, just like external candidates do when applying for this job. As a designer-turned-PM, I would have to work with designers on my team, and although I’d understand their work better than most PMs, I’d still need to be careful not to disrespect them and not step on anyone’s toes.

The advantage of switching jobs inside an organisation is that you already know the people and are familiar with the culture of the company, so it’s not a complete shock. In my case, there was a PM position opening in my team, so I even got to stay and work with the same great people after switching roles.

My first few months as a PM

In the first few month of the new role, imposter syndrome hit me hard. I was doubting every step I took and every decision I made. After completing the “on boarding workshop for new PMs” in our company, I was both inspired and overwhelmed. I was worried about my lack of technical knowledge and that I was expected to be responsible for a real product people use.

I realised that my deliverables were no longer screens that the user sees, but deadlines and KPIs. My individual contribution now gets measured by the ability of my team to finish a product on time and its impact on the business and users. I now need to get things done through other people — the actual makers of the product. But what exactly do we measure? How do I know if I’m doing well at any given moment? I had to gain the ability to evaluate my own progress correctly in this new situation.

Learning new skills is hard, because part of it is accepting all your beginner insecurities and the fact that you’re going to make mistakes at first.

Eventually, if you repeat something for long enough you’ll become better and faster at doing that thing, it’s just a matter of time and practise. You just have to have a growth mindset.

If you feel you’re “failing” in the beginning of doing something new, ask yourself what the definition of “failure” is to you. Are you failing to have all the right answers and look smart and successful in the eyes of your coworkers and managers, or are you failing to learn new things and constantly improve yourself?

My first task as a PM was to conduct a competitor analysis on one of the companies building a similar product to ours. It took me weeks. I had to do research on how to do research before I even knew what to look at. It was no longer “how many steps do you need to complete the onboarding” but broader ones, like “what is the company’s competitive advantage” and so on.
Basically, what I had to do was start asking different questions and develop the skill of extracting relevant insights I could act upon.

A daily reminder

Here are some of the things I remind myself on a daily basis that I believe help me improve at this new job.

🤓 Learn from your mistakes — Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Make it a rule to learn from each mistake you make until you start getting it right effortlessly. Understand why you were wrong and what you’re going to do next time to get that thing right or at least better.

❓Always ask questions — even if it’s the same question over and over again. It’s better to ask once than waste time guessing what exactly someone meant. What helped me was accepting the fact that I’m new at this, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of at not knowing something. On the contrary, it only shows you want to learn and improve.

📝 Write notes and summarise meetings with their action items to know exactly what’s the next step that needs to be done and who are the people you need to sync with. A lot of a PM’s work is based on communication.

🤖 If you, like me, don’t have a technical background — don’t panic :) While you do need to know what technology is used to build your product and its strength and weaknesses, its ok if you don’t understand all the technical complexities. It’s enough for you to know how these complexities affect your product and your users to be able to make decisions related to these things. *This does not apply to technical PM positions, where a coding background is required.

✅ Be organised — always know what’s the next thing that needs to be done, what’s blocked and who you need to talk to. When overwhelmed with tasks, the best thing to do is to stop, write everything down, prioritise and execute accordingly.

⏱ Manage your time — or others will manage it for you. Your time is precious, don’t waste it all on meetings (don’t automatically accept them if you’re not sure why you need to be there) and emails (don’t work with your inbox open waiting to be distracted, it’s very easy to slip into a reactive mode). You need time to focus. PMs are invited to lots of meetings, that doesn’t mean they’re all equally important.

🏆 Take initiative and responsibility — Give credit and take the blame, be humble and stand by your team. Always look for places and ways to improve. Bring positive change without being told to do so.

🤝 Ask your coworkers for help — if there is a specific topic or a methodology that is used in your company you’re not familiar with, find the person that knows this domain the best and ask for 30 minutes of their time. Ask them for a brief overview and some tips on where to find more info on the subject. This may sound obvious but we’re sometimes embarrassed to approach others, especially if we don’t know them well. Don’t be — people are usually glad to help.

💬 Constantly ask for feedback from the people you work with — it’s the only way to know that you’re growing in the right direction.

Helpful resources:

These are some of the books, podcasts and blog posts I read that helped (and keep helping) me develop the skills needed for this job. I focus mainly on leadership, communication, time management and business.

Books:

• Deep work by Cal Newport
  Learning a new set of skills requires uninterrupted chunks of time of flow in order to dive deep and truly understand what you’re learning. This book explains the importance of taking time to yourself to learn and work without interruptions, and why it’s going to make you a more valuable worker.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  Diplomacy and assertiveness are must-have traits for a leader or a manager. This book explains in detail how to truly listen to people, give them constructive feedback and admit you’re wrong when you are. With these principles, you’ll be able to change people’s minds without arousing resentment and win them to your side instead of arguing.
• The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
  This book talks about how to live a better live while focusing on what matters. I found some of the arguments to be really relevant to the role transition I made. Things like embracing uncertainty, and how it is “the root of all progress and all growth”, how it’s important to admit you don’t really know anything to have an opportunity to learn, and how to get yourself motivated through taking action, instead of just sitting there waiting for inspiration, are some of the concepts I can really relate to, and are relevant to my transition.
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
  A book written by a former international hostage negotiator for the FBI that talks about the best tactics and strategies used to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
• Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin
  An honest story of a founder and CEO of a start up company, that provides a peek into the struggles of higher management ranks that we (the mere mortals) are rarely exposed to. Rand breaks downs the logic behind some tough decisions he had to make as a manager and openly speaks about building a company while experiencing work overload, exhaustion and depression. I recommend hearing this book on Audible, as it’s brilliantly narrated by Rand himself.
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
  Focuses on why and how to create products that are truly innovative, instead of copying things that already work.

Podcasts:

• This is Product Management by Alpha hosts big names from the industry, discussing a different aspect of the PM’s work on each episode. What I also like about this podcast is the format of the episodes — the host summarises the insights after each part of the episode, making it super easy to follow.
• Intercom on Product Management — A 9 episode podcast series on product management by Intercom. Each one is short and concise.
• Mozzarella — A local (Israeli) podcast discussing various topics related to product management like methodologies and decision making (it’s in Hebrew).

Blog posts:

• Julie Zhuo has so many great posts on her blog, but these are particularly relevant: What to Expect from PMs Part 1 and Part 2 explain what designers should expect from you, as a product manager.
• Design, or be Designed by Mia Blume, a design leadership coach, where she talks about effective time management. (Listening to Episode # 10 of DesignBetter.Co podcast with Mia is also recommended!)

There are various online courses out there as well, that can boost your knowledge on product management (like Product School and Udemy). I haven’t personally tried these yet but heard great feedback from peers who did.

No Regrets

A question I get asked a lot is whether I will or already miss designing. For me, design is more of a mindset rather than a job title. And through product management I design the experience of our users — not in a visual way, but in a more conceptual one. So I’m now focusing on getting as confident in the product field, as I am in design.

As for creative output, I still have my Dribbble account and my side projects. In my free time I can craft things for pure delight. I write my own briefs when creating an app with a developer friend, and I make jewellery so I can experience clarity — an absolute state of completion of a product with a real, physical deliverable.

If any of you are struggling with making a decision regarding a similar transition, ask yourself: When you make the change, what’s the worse thing that can happen? If you suck at it, you can always go back to your previous role, but at least you’ll know you’ve tried.
Don’t be scared and always try.

Thanks for reading!