8 tricks to be a better remote PM

I never believed you could do Product Management remotely. Not only I was wrong, I believe I have a better PM process today because our team is location-agnostic.

But working with a remote PM team requires effort, creativity and a large dose of empathy.

Instead of telling you what tools we use, here are 8 cool tricks to achieve this:

[1] Miro Storyboarding: it’s easy to be far way from the development process. Each person working “on its own”. To fight it, we build on Miro. From requirements, to design versioning, to tech comments and architecture details. Everything happens in an inclusive, collaborative environment.

[2] Notion presentations: most people lose their attention to PPT slides after 5 minutes. To fight it, we started doing written presentations on Notion. People invest more (coupled with pre-readings, see below) which leads to a richer (and more attentive) discussion.

[3] Slack threading: slack is chaotic. Threading creates a bit of peace. Good threading gets those who matter focused on conversations, and allows to run parallel topics without destroying productivity.

[4] Zoom recording: sometimes you can’t be there, and a flexible workplace should get that. But it doesn’t mean the content shouldn’t matter to you. Recording some (if not all) calls allows everyone to catch-up and feel less anxious about their calendars.

[5] Async messaging centric: the same way recordings optimize for everyone’s time, so should messaging. Expecting sync replies just slows down the building process. Leverage on async (read whenever) and use those lead times (while you wait) to progress in multiple fronts.

[6] Commented pre-reads: if you use written presentations, open your document to everyone before meetings, and ask for people to comment. It enriches your point of view, captures more data, gets everyone more invested, and sometimes, even removes the need to meet.

[7] No agenda stakeholder calls: remote gets super transactional very fast. With the “always have an agenda” mentality, you’re optimizing for efficiency. Sometimes the best stakeholder conversations come from the chaos of going off topic. Try just asking “dump everything you’re thinking about ____, and I’ll take notes”.

[8] Transparent roadmapping: distance makes everyone question everyone else. “What is that person doing all day?”, “Are they building what I need?”. Get your roadmaps (and the process to get there) accessible to everyone. Add direct links in your communication channels.

Some (if not all) of these tricks are quite simple, but it’s more important than ever to bring some harmony to the chaos of remote product management.