The 7 Things on Every PM's Christmas Wishlist

A Christmas Wishlist for Product Managers

• A roadmap that stays the same for more than a month

  • No people adding random stuff to it. Just you, your vision, and a roadmap that aligns with it. For a whole freaking month! Imagine all the cool stuff you could get done.

• Easygoing stakeholders

  • We all have that one PITA stakeholder. Wouldn’t it be great if they out of the blue said “Hey! you know what? You’re right! Your way is best. Let’s do that!”

• Clean product metrics

  • You don’t want to guess whether stripe_plan or strip-current-plan or stripe_plan_id is the metric you need. You just want one consistent naming schema that’ll result in exactly the query results you need

• Smooth releases

  • I hope you will never have a moment of sheer panic at 2 am on a Saturday morning as you realize something just went very, very wrong.

• Engaged users

  • Your life as a PM is so much easier if your users are engaged and care about your product. If you don’t already have these, I hope that you can find some quickly.

• All the high-quality feedback you can get

  • It doesn’t even have to be positive. My wish for you is that you’ll be spontaneously contacted with constructive feedback from an engaged user that explains what they want, why they want it, and how they plan on using it. Complete in a pre-assembled PowerPoint presentation (hey, this is a wishlist after all).

• Real authority

  • Not just influence! I hope that someone tells you that you can put your foot down once and a while and make people do what you need. Just once and a while is all we’re asking for!