PM 1 & 2 Community
I’m leading the creation and facilitation of a local community at Microsoft to help Product Managers of Levels 1 and 2 build connections amongst peers, share with managers and leadership the challenges they face at these levels, and be supported in career growth and development. Within the community, we leverage design thinking methods to facilitate discussions, to understand community needs, to generate ideas for addressing challenges, and to pilot programs to test ideas.
Photos of community members at lunch on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, WA.
kick-off Workshops
To start the community off on the right foot, I facilitated 2 workshops aimed at understanding and defining the needs of the group and generating solutions to address those needs.
Coming out of the workshops and through using tools from Design for Belonging toolkit, it was clear that the community has been significantly impacted by the Covid pandemic and the shift to remote-work. Additionally, we found that the needs of the group fall into 3 buckets: Learning, Relationships with peers, and Career growth. Using these areas, we brainstormed over 100 ideas that have since been turned into 4 pilot programs.
Pilot programs
There are 4 initiatives that have been launched as pilot programs as part of the PM 1 & 2 Community:
Community roundtable: Monthly meetings with facilitated discussion on group-voted topic, safe feedback forum amongst only PM 1 & 2s.
Speaker series: Monthly meetings where the community hosts Senior PM colleagues to share and teach on their area of expertise.
Shadowing: Pair program for PM 1 & 2s to shadow Senior levels and above for ~3 months.
PM bootcamp: Day of learning dedicated to foundational PM skills that can only be taught on-the-job.
Tools used
Interviewing
User Needs statements
Crazy 8s
Think, Pair, Share
Storytelling
Community members
Emma Sheridan (Community lead)
Sina K. (Program lead)
Udisha B. (Program lead)
Prasant K. (Program lead)
& 20 others!
Community info
Org: Commerce Platform & Experiences (CPX)
Year: 2023 - ongoing