Session recap: Companies can differ in organizational structure, methodologies and processes, and culture, and that impacts how product management operates within them. But in her PMF Connect session, Patricia Morizio, senior Product Manager at Verizon, shared with us that just because a company is large (hers has 160,000 people) and steeped in history (132 years), that doesn’t mean that the PM function can’t still be nimble, “agile,” and innovative.
Main takeaways: don’t be afraid to try new things, give credit where credit is due, a supportive manager goes a long way in helping you make an impact and effect change, use data and proven results to advance your cause with other teams, and try to understand reasons for why other stakeholders might seem resistant to change.
Questions included:
- How to you help create or effect change at a company with a culture/legacy that is pretty entrenched with the status quo?
- What’s more difficult to do – build a successful startup or build a successful team start-up within a big company? And what did she like more?
- Does scaling agile help?
- Re innovation – would she recommend dedicating X% effort per sprint for innovation? And how is she doing it in practice?
- Any tips for working with a development team resisting the move to agile?
- When you launch, what’s the bar for “good enough” – and balance between perfection v/s launching+iterating?
- Did she have an executive champion who supported her as she tried to push through changes?
- Who’s on her core team? What does her team makeup look like?
- Telecom is generally not considered a “sexy industry.” How did she get into the industry and any advice for PMs working in industries that are not as “popular?”
Thank you to all who joined us, and to Tricia for hosting the session. Stay tuned for our next PMF Connect Session, which will be on Effective Team Decision Making with Google PM Nabil Naghdy on Wednesday, 17 January 2018 @ 1pm CET.