Product Management

Delivers individual features within pre-defined focus areas on planned timelines. Contributes incremental value through execution of assigned work. Demonstrates awareness of competitive landscape when making feature-level decisions.

Ships small features independently and begins tackling larger features. Drives team toward timely, well-planned delivery of features. Identifies and acts on opportunities within defined product areas.

Leads squad-level product delivery alongside engineering teams. Envisions and explores new feature opportunities independently. Delivers well-planned product initiatives that move team forward on strategic objectives.

Sets strategy and prioritization across multiple squads with minimal oversight. Defines approach to move key business metrics and communicates realistic roadmaps. Makes and communicates tradeoff decisions affecting multiple teams to leadership.

Owns and delivers highest-impact strategic initiatives for the company. Sets strategy, defines success metrics, and achieves desired outcomes with little oversight. Influences broader product organization roadmap through role-modeling and execution in key areas.

Delivers small features on time with clear planning. Writes requirements for smaller features. Coordinates with team members to drive feature completion. Communicates status updates to immediate team.

Ships more complex features and projects within planned timelines. Makes explicit tradeoffs between competing features. Conducts hypothesis-based customer research. Demonstrates ability to launch features successfully with measurable outcomes.

Defines and publishes team roadmaps showing feature priorities. Assigns work to appropriate team members based on project needs. Runs customer research studies with cross-functional teams. Creates use cases for medium complexity initiatives.

Designs and executes multiple A/B tests across teams. Delivers regular written feedback on requirements to team members. Produces annual roadmaps for feature areas. Documents and shares product management best practices organization-wide.

Teaches requirement writing and customer research methods to others. Provides detailed written feedback on features and roadmaps. Creates multi-year roadmaps spanning multiple focus areas. Advises leadership on strategic product opportunities and tradeoffs.

Writes requirements and use cases for smaller features. Specifies possible feature outcomes. Identifies and tracks minor metrics to measure feature success. Applies basic methods to determine if features are performing as expected.

Writes requirements and use cases for medium-sized features. Develops hypothesis-based reasoning to justify feature decisions. Attends customer research sessions and extracts insights. Provides qualitative customer feedback to inform product direction.

Writes requirements and use cases for features of any size and manages projects to completion. Builds comprehensive hypothesis and reasoning structures for features. Conducts customer research independently or leads collaboration with research teams to validate assumptions.

Communicates priorities across multiple subject areas and teams. Presents product principles and rationale to senior leadership. Collaborates with executives and front-line employees to secure buy-in for key features and strategic focus areas.

Communicates and collaborates across diverse teams at all levels. Presents strategic initiatives to executive and senior leadership audiences. Partners with engineering and design leaders to shape long-term, large-scale initiatives. Recognized as a strategic leader within the product community.

Communicates feature requirements to immediate team members. Collaborates directly with engineering partners. Takes direction from leadership, focuses on assigned areas, and escalates issues when they arise.

Presents effectively to engineering management and product team stakeholders. Builds buy-in for individual features with senior colleagues. Facilitates discussions that lead to team commitment even when disagreement exists.

Presents key features and roadmaps to senior leadership across functions. Manages relationships with leadership, engineering, design, and QA. Drives decisions, secures buy-in from executives to front-line, and ensures execution on key features.

Communicates priorities across multiple teams and subject areas. Articulates product principles to senior leadership. Collaborates with all employee levels from executives to front-line to secure buy-in and alignment on focus areas.

Presents and collaborates at executive and cross-functional leadership levels. Designs long-term initiatives with engineering and design leaders. Communicates strategy broadly across organization. Explains executive decisions to feature teams and facilitates buy-in for execution.

Leads feature delivery for a small team across 2 releases. Demonstrates company values in daily work. Defines specific features and coordinates with engineering partners to ship on time.

Sets strategic direction for their product area and leads team in feature delivery. Acts as go-to person for their domain. Helps team prioritize features and models company values for others.

Owns squad roadmap and drives prioritization decisions. Confidently leads delivery without constant oversight. Models company values for the team and influences how work gets done across the squad.

Leads multiple squads with minimal senior input. Protects team from undue influence while securing buy-in from stakeholders. Runs squads independently, setting vision and strategy, and rapidly unblocking obstacles.

Leads company-wide strategic initiatives or multiple core areas. Builds cases, forms teams, and drives execution on high-priority topics. Presents roadmaps to leadership and influences organizational direction with minimal input.

Requires continuous guidance on all feature work. Demonstrates inability to independently shepherd features through to production. Relies on others to handle execution details and deployment processes without taking ownership.

Struggles to sequence team priorities effectively, causing work bottlenecks. Leans too heavily on either quantitative metrics or qualitative feedback, missing the balanced perspective needed for sound product decisions.

Presents plans that lack clarity or logical structure to the team. Shows difficulty adjusting course when circumstances change, maintaining original priorities even when new information suggests different direction is warranted.

Fails to negotiate tradeoffs between competing team priorities effectively. Excels at conceptual thinking and brainstorming but struggles to translate ideas into actionable execution plans with clear milestones and deliverables.

Acts without securing necessary executive alignment despite senior position. Pushes leadership directives onto teams without translation or context, or advocates for team needs without acknowledging organizational constraints, creating tension on both sides.