A Day and Week in the Life of a Product Manager

Each day in the life of a product manager may differ based on the specific stage of the product development process that their product is in. 

For a product in its early days of infancy a product manager may spend a large amount of their day speaking with customers to understand their problems, prioritizing the problems to solve, performing market research and competitive analysis, and testing and validating hypotheses.

How does a product manager's day typically start?

Typically however, a product manager’s day begins with a standup meeting with their team. 

In this meeting each member of the team discusses what they worked on the previous day, what they plan on working on that day, and very importantly, if they need help or are blocked on something.

This standup gives the team awareness of what their team members are working on and insight into who needs their help.

Thereafter a product manager may have another standup meeting specifically with their product team. Product team here refers to the other product managers at their company.

No two days may be the same for a product manager. This is one of the things that make being a product manager a fun job.

Some of the various activities that a product manager will do in a day include:

• Writing user stories and acceptance criteria for their development team

• Joining a customer success coach on a call with a customer to walk them through the product roadmap

• Running usability tests with customers with assistance from their design team

• Updating their product roadmap and communicating these updates with their team

• Testing a new feature to ensure that it meets acceptance criteria prior to release

• Crafting release notes for the latest version of their product

• Holding a meeting with their management team to update them on the progress of key roadmap initiatives

• … and a lot more

Product managers see more routine in their weekly schedule.

What a product manager do in a week?

On a weekly basis some of the recurring meetings and tasks that a product manager may have include:

• Sprint planning with their team

• Meeting with their product team to share updates, successes, and concerns

• Business review meeting with the managers of their business to share updates, risks, and mitigation plans

• Meeting with the customer support team to understand the critical issues that customers are facing and the plans and timeline for resolution

• 1:1’s (whether with their superior, those they manage, or both)

• Product demonstrations to present the latest product updates to their company

• …and more