Lessons in remote product management

_Caio Ferreira, senior product manager, and Lucie Oudinet, group product manager, sound off on tips and tools for scaling a product while working remotely._ _TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT

TAXFIX_ CAIO — I’m the product manager for the Operations Services Team. Our work enables the Customer Success and Operations Teams inside the company. We make sure that they have the right

processes and the right tooling to serve our customers best while growing the business exponentially across multiple markets. LUCIE — I’m the group product manager for our German market.

This group is composed of four cross-functional delivery teams — or missions. My goal is to define objectives for the group and align everyone on the product vision. Most importantly, I

enable product managers to deliver great work and reach towards our goal of creating the best tax filing experience in Germany. While iterating on this core experience, we also introduce

innovative features that bring us closer to our dream product vision. _HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR TEAM ALIGNED WHILE WORKING REMOTELY?_ CAIO — When I first joined the company last year, I was

working remotely from my home country, Brazil. Being the only remote team member was a challenge, especially during meetings where everyone else was physically together. So, in a way, when

we all moved to an extended home office setting, everyone was suddenly in my shoes. This shift drastically changed the way we communicate and document information. We had to be even more

transparent, engaging and empowering everyone in the team. We treat Slack, for example, like a virtual office space. Instead of having private conversations, we try to write everything in

public channels. This helps to avoid silos and spread the information across the team. Also, as it’s an asynchronous communication tool, it reduces the need to be in meetings. LUCIE — All of

our mission teams follow Lean Product Development processes, which implies running structured ceremonies like daily standups, grooming sessions, planning sessions, and retrospectives.

Having those meetings already in place helped maintain alignment when we shifted to remote working. What we struggled with in the beginning, however, was how we plan experiments and share

resources across our different mission teams. For instance, when running A/B tests on the product experience, we’ve had to create a lot more clarity around which tests are running when. This

way if two teams are delivering something on the same part of the experience, there is no cross-contamination between experiments. I think these changes would have happened sooner or later

because the company is growing. Working remotely just sped things up. _HOW DO YOU STAY CONNECTED WITH STAKEHOLDERS?_ LUCIE — I always try to understand the best way to engage with different

people and functions in the organisation. With some stakeholders, you get much more value out of having a chat. With others, you’d rather prepare a well-structured document and go back and

forth with written comments. I like to treat my colleagues as ‘users’ and adapt to deliver the best experience possible for them. So if there is a particular method that works better, I want

to figure out what this is. You have to be willing to challenge what you’ve done in the past. When I have the feeling that the energy in a meeting drops, or we don’t make the most out of

it, I’ll change the format. CAIO — I made a conscious effort to bring stakeholders closer to the team. Through our weekly shadowing initiative with Customer Success — our internal customers

— everyone on my team had a chance to talk with them and understand their needs. Speaking directly with stakeholders, especially in a remote setting, has made work more collaborative. It has

also increased the level of autonomy in the team. They can take decisions themselves because they have full context on the problem we’re trying to solve. _WHAT NEW METHODS AND TOOLS HAVE

HELPED YOU?_ CAIO — We introduced silent meetings this year, which made some tasks, like setting our quarterly objectives and key results, much smoother. In this format, one person prepares

a ‘table read’ beforehand. All meeting attendees then go through the information together and make comments directly within the document — all while remaining silent. This style of meeting

has been far more efficient because the context is already there in writing, which allows us to focus on making decisions instead. The entire team has a fair chance to provide their

thoughts, and we document everything as we go. We only jump into a vocal discussion when needed — which isn’t too often. LUCIE — On the design side, we’ve shifted to using Figma. This tool

enables the team to comment directly on the screens shared by our Design Team; it’s a very straightforward way to collaborate. We also adopted Miro for design sprints with large groups of

people. This one is very visual, like a giant digital wall. And since we work a lot with walls and sticky notes in Product, we needed to find a remote-friendly way to recreate this. For

retrospectives, we found an excellent tool called Metro Retro. This one lets the team easily cluster sticky notes and open voting sessions to prioritise points. _WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE

OF SCALING A PRODUCT WHILE WORKING FROM HOME?_ LUCIE — Making decisions on the Product organisation structure demands better planning when all deciding forces are working remotely. As our

product matures in the German market, the biggest challenge is to find the right balance between innovating and investing in our core product, while also scaling the way we operate as a

business. We’ve tackled this problem by creating more defined focuses within our different product groups and created whole new product groups to ensure operational efficiency or to look

into new service lines. Making changes in the Product organisation requires strategic cooperation with many stakeholders and alignment on the long-term company objectives well in advance.

It’s all about anticipating what might take longer or will need more iterations in the remote set up. CAIO — Running discovery in a remote setting is far more complicated. Typically in

product discovery, it helps to be in the same room with your users so that you can observe how they interact with the product. In times like now, where we’re all stuck at home, you need to

approach this differently. I recommend having everything prepared in advance and splitting what you want to discover into more phases. We did this with our Customer Success team last quarter

by conducting smaller experiments and scheduling follow-up sessions to go deeper into our questions. _WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST LEARNING FROM THIS EXPERIENCE?_ CAIO — Communication and empathy.

In my opinion, one of the essential skills for a product manager is communication. And this year it’s been even more important to communicate not only with our team but also with the

different area stakeholders. I’ve learned to document excessively and to ensure that everything makes sense in a structured way. So that not only the team, but stakeholders and management

can digest the information, and we can make better decisions, together. As a team, we’ve also learned a lot about each other this year. It’s so important to recognise the headspace of the

other person. Even just taking five minutes before the start of a meeting to ask how someone is feeling or what they did over the weekend is a great way to relax and prepare ourselves for

the important work that lies ahead. I appreciate these little moments because it helps me connect with the person on the other side of the screen. LUCIE — At the end of the day, it’s about

the people and building trust in the way that we work. How do you keep this personal connection between people in a remote setup? I think the most valuable learning from this year is that

you can’t give up on the people. Your team is, and remains, your top priority as manager. If you have people with you, anything is possible — even shifting the way we work. Everyone feels

differently about working from home — some like it, some struggle a bit more. As a manager, you have to pay attention to the details, take the time to care for each other, and try to read

between the lines. This connection will help you continue to achieve great results as a team. _INTERESTED IN JOINING OUR PRODUCT TEAM? CHECK OUT OUR __OPEN ROLES__._