Top Ten Time Management Tips for New Product Managers
Top Ten Time Management Tips for New Product Managers
Stay Protective of your time: Prioritize themes, not projects
Avoid Procrastination
Get organized:
We all know that “priorities” are part of organizing but why not take priorities out of the mix – how do you organize so you always know what’s going on?
From managing vendors, to development, to business relationships, to the boss, to vision, to strategy, to evangelizing, to market research, to sales and marketing, to you name it.
Moreover, anyone having trouble with organizing should remember that organizing simply boils down to knowing where things go and what needs to get done. Thus, having reminders of things around the workplace may help the person to become more organized. And of course, having a schedule of doing things is going to help the person as well in the long run since it is always easier to have organization when you have a schedule and know when things are coming up. Thus, before panicking, the person should realize that organization is something that they can learn.
Remember the 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule (or the Pareto Principle) is the idea that by doing 20% of the work you can produce 80% of the benefit of doing the whole job.
The value of this for a project manager is that it reminds you to focus on the 20 per cent of activities that matter. Of the activities you do during your project, only 20 per cent are important. Those 20 per cent produce 80 per cent of your results. Identify and focus on those activities.
Meeting should not just “Status Updates”
It’s best to avoid team meetings where you go round the room asking each person to give a status update. These meetings have little value and waste time. Instead, spend that time focusing on risks, issues and opportunities. Use the team to brainstorm solutions and create ideas.
Team meetings should have an agreed agenda that you stick to. If you schedule an hour for the meeting, make sure it lasts for an hour and no longer.
Take big issues off-line if they are likely to cause a meeting overrun. Don’t make everyone sit through lengthy technical discussions that don’t involve them. Setup a working group to focus on the issues and report to the team at a future meeting.
This rule first occurred to me during my experience at a previous company where two of the people I worked most closely with ended up leaving the organization within the span of several weeks. They were both highly effective communicators, worked long hours, and as it turned out, sent a lot of email. While they were at the company, our email cadence seemed absolutely normal. It wasn’t until after they left that I realized my inbox traffic had been reduced by roughly 20-30%.
Avoid distractions:
Multi-tasking can be an enemy:
Reclaim your calendar … and your life
Stever Robbins, famous for advice on maximizing your creativity and whipping your email into submission, now is integrating time management and innovation into a coherent system for getting things done. From his new guide to working less and accomplishing more, Robbins offers these four simple but elegant time-management principles:
● Live on purpose.
●Make technology your slave, not the other way around.
●Don’t confused “neat” with “organized.”
Courtesy: Business Management Daily.
As a Product manager, you must remain involved in your employees’ activities. But where does involvement stop and micromanaging begin? Sticking your nose too deeply into an employee’s work process can be counterproductive and waste time. Learn to control the process, not the people.