Product Manager Onboarding: Your First 30/60/90 Days
How to drive maximum impact step-by-step. Notion template with a proven PM onboarding framework. What you should do in your first 30, 60, and 90 days.
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Today, I’m sharing a Product Management onboarding framework I’ve refined over the years and tested across different organizations. It’s designed to help you:
Maximize your impact as a Product Manager when joining a new company.
Evaluate the Product Manager onboarding plan in your organization.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Your First 30 Days as a Product Manager: Relationships and Learning
Your Days 31-60 as a Product Manager: Deeper Understanding and Quick Wins
Your Days 61-90 as a Product Manager: Driving Impact
🔒 [Notion Template]: Product Manager Onboarding: First 30, 60, 90 Days
You may need to adjust the timeline and details to fit your organization. One of your first tasks is to confirm your onboarding plan with your direct supervisor and set up recurring 1:1 meetings.
P.S. Thank you, Maarten Dalmijn and Siddharth Arora for reviewing this one!
1. Your First 30 Days as a Product Manager: Relationships and Learning
The first 30 days of your Product Manager onboarding are about building relationships, establishing rapport, and learning as much as possible about your product, customers, ways of working, and the strategic context.
The generalized framework that has always worked best for me:
Each item in the Notion collection contains a list of subtasks, for example:
Let’s dive into the details.
1.1 Focus Area: Build Relationships and Establish Rapport
Have 1:1 meetings with the team:
Your team (Engineers, Designers, QA, PMM)
Other PMs (ask them to present their areas)
Have 1:1 meetings with key stakeholders:
Marketing, Sales, Success, Support, Finances, Legal, Head of Product
Map their power, interest, and communication preferences to engage them properly (see the 2x2 Stakeholders Map Template)
Sync with your direct supervisor:
Confirm your onboarding plan and performance metrics with your supervisor
Set recurring 1:1 to discuss your progress, challenges, initiatives, and feedback
Your attitude: Proactively ask others for feedback and guidance
1.2 Focus Area: Learn the Ways of Working
Learn discovery and delivery practices:
Product discovery
Scrum events
Quality assurance
Production bugs
Releases, environments
Request and confirm access to the tools:
Product analytics (e.g., Amplitude, Clarity)
Design/collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, Miro, Notion, Jira, Confluence, Slack, Slack channels, and other specific "workspaces" and "wikis")
Customer feedback channels and account management (e.g., Intercom, CRM)
1.3 Focus Area: Learn Your Product
Learn from the basic materials:
Review onboarding wikis/videos
Review internal and public documentation
If possible, shadow a customer onboarding call
Use your product daily:
Understand core use cases and user flows; one technique is to help with testing
Identify at least 3 key insights or potential quick wins, share them with the team
1.4 Focus Area: Understand Your Business
Understand the strategic context:
Company vision
Market segments and their Jobs to be Done (aka "personas")
Value propositions for key segments: JTBD, pain points, features and capabilities, benefits, differentiators
Key business and customer metrics (e.g., revenue, churn, CSAT, North Star, etc.)
Identify your team objectives and how they align with product strategy
For highly regulated industries:
For some industries (finance, healthcare), understanding relevant regulations (GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA) and how they might affect the product is critical
1.5 Focus Area: Understand Your Customers
Review the existing product artifacts:
Product Backlog
Recent release notes
Feature requests
Product roadmap
Interview transcripts
Support chats and calls
Opportunity Solution Tree for your team
Join early discovery sessions:
Collaborate with Designers and Engineers to learn about the current opportunities, ideas, and assumptions
Talk to the users:
Conduct at least 4-8 exploratory customer interviews or visits
Consider shadowing interviews organized by other PMs
Document key user needs and pain points
In B2B, reach out to other decision-makers (buyers)
Track basic users’ activity:
Start using product analytics
Review events, session recordings, surveys (e.g., CES or CSAT) to spot basic patterns
2. Your Days 31-60 as a Product Manager: Deeper Understanding and Quick Wins
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In the second 30 days as a new Product Manager, I recommend deepening your understanding of your product area, strategy, and business model.
While you still keep learning, identify the first areas for improvement, work with the team to refine the first ideas (features), and achieve the first quick wins.
The generalized framework that has always worked best for me:
Let’s dive into the details.
2.1 Focus Area: Build Relationships and Establish Rapport
Mid-cycle review with your supervisor:
Share a self-assessment and key learnings
Get feedback
Plan and summarize the next steps
Your attitude: Talk to the supervisor, peers, and stakeholders and try to identify at least 2 areas for improvement
2.2 Focus Area: Learn the Ways of Working
Learn go-to-market practices:
How to collaborate with the Product Marketing Manager on GTM
How to create internal/external documentation
Are there any differences between major releases, small releases, and hot fixes?
Learn how to reach out to customers:
How can you publish a survey? Are there any restrictions?
How can you contact your customers, and where can you find their data? Are there any procedures, e.g., for engaging key accounts?
2.3 Focus Area: Learn Your Product
Understand your product area in depth:
Develop a deep understanding of your use cases and user flows
Ensure you understand the top use cases and user flows of other product teams
Identify dependencies with other product teams
2.4 Focus Area: Understand Your Business
Deepen understanding of the business:
Revenue streams
Sales and marketing channels
Conversion flows and AARRR metrics
High-level cost structure
Study your key competitors:
Start using at least 2-3 competitors' products
Understand their value propositions
Identify at least 3 key insights
Summarize strategy and business model:
If this information isn’t well documented, create a short summary of the strategy and business model and share it for feedback. It might be a quick win.
2.5 Focus Area: Understand Your Customers
Participate in Product Discovery:
Closely collaborate with Designers and Engineers (aka "Product Trio")
Aim to interview customers weekly to identify new opportunities
Structure your knowledge (e.g., Opportunity Solution Tree)
Ideate together, identify hidden assumptions, and test high-risk assumptions
Dive deeper into product analytics:
Dive deeper into the data to identify at least 3 significant user behavior trends or patterns (e.g., by date, cohort, market segment, or region)
Conduct stakeholder interviews:
Collect more insights on opportunities and challenges from at least 3 stakeholders
Start refining the Product Backlog:
Hold at least 2 product backlog refinement sessions (depending on the cadence)
Involve Engineers early and ask for their feedback
Start with refining existing product backlog items and defining minor improvements that can become quick wins
3. Your Days 61-90 as a Product Manager: Driving Impact
During your days 61-90 as a new Product Manager, I recommend you become the go-to person in your product area.
You should understand not just customers, products, strategy, and the business model but also competitors, key business metrics, and related trends.
This will enable you to formulate stronger hypotheses, propose better ideas, and communicate like a partner with stakeholders and supervisors.
The generalized framework that has always worked best for me:
Let’s dive into the details.
3.1 Focus Area: Build Relationships and Establish Rapport
90-day review with your supervisor:
Share a self-assessment and key learnings
Get feedback
Plan and summarize the next steps
Your attitude: Try to identify at least 2 areas for improvement (supervisor, peers, stakeholders)
3.2 Focus Area: Learn the Ways of Working
Suggest how to work more effectively:
Identify at least 1-2 process improvements with expected benefits
Get feedback from at least 3 team members
3.3 Focus Area: Learn Your Product
Become a go-to product person:
Become an expert in your product area (features, capabilities, user flows, roadmap)
Internalize exceptions and special conditions, not just the “happy path” - that’s where you can provide the most value
3.4 Focus Area: Understand Your Business
Deep dive into data analytics:
Analyze how key business metrics have evolved and how they differ by date, cohort, customer segment, or region
Identify at least 3 key insights
Shadow sales calls:
Shadow sales calls to refine your insights further
3.5 Focus Area: Understand Your Customers
Delve into Product Discovery:
Synthesize insights from user interviews, analytics, product artifacts, and stakeholder feedback
In B2B, shadow business review calls (Customer Success) for more insight
Identify, validate, and share at least 3-5 new ideas aligned with your objectives
Suggest future objectives for the team:
Think of 2-3 possible future objectives for the team
Explain how they are supported by your research and data, aligned with customer needs, and aligned with strategy
4. [Notion Template] Product Manager Onboarding Plan: First 30, 60, 90 Days
A ready-to-use premium Notion template to duplicate (and many others) is available for premium subscribers to The Product Compass newsletter.
It covers:
Product Manager first 30 days.
Product Manager first 60 days.
Product Manager first 90 days.
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