My advice for someone setting up onboarding for the first time is to have some sort of unified onboarding no matter what the functional area is. It's important that everyone understands the company vision and then also your organization's strategy. I used to do a session with every new hire that joined the growth team, regardless of the function... here was our strategy six months ago, here is our strategy for the next 6 months.

The other thing I used to do is every time we had team meetings, I would hold some quizzes, e.g. What does product led growth mean? What are the levers that we're using these days? What's the next priority? I would ask the new people to answer the questions as a method to reinforce the knowledge.

The role of an onboarding buddy can differ depending on the function, but ultimately, they are someone who can help a new person navigate their role and integrate into the team. For example, an onboarding buddy can be someone you can Slack every day to ask about unfamiliar acronyms or where to find certain things. This person can be particularly helpful if they are in the Growth organization because they can build relationships with the right people and have access to the same information as everyone else.

In the case of Productboard, which is split between North America and Europe, we wanted to bridge the gap for design and product by having an additional friend across the ocean who can help onboard this new person. This friend can provide some context on things like design systems or work of other teams in the organization. It's a lower touch onboarding buddy, but it helps with open communication.

Onboarding isn't just about other product, design, and engineering people. It's also about knowing who the sales reps or customer success coaches are that you'll be talking to every week. It's important to have channels to figure out the voice of the customer, because otherwise, you can get siloed and not actually talk to other people. By fostering a more casual and open environment, new hires can feel more comfortable asking questions and getting onboarded.

Remote onboarding can be particularly challenging, because it's harder to develop less superficial relationships. In-person interactions like going out for lunch or coffee can help with this, but remote onboarding requires more intentional effort to help the new person with water cooler conversations and other channels to connect with others. Ultimately, this helps the new person feel more integrated into the team and more comfortable in their new role.

Definitely always keep a good useful list of resources. This is a living document essentially, but start keeping that in mind early on, even if you don't have a role open. You may have a role open soon, and you may even get internal transfers or something. So always start that list of useful things and keep your team space organized because you could avoid a lot of slack questions if you just have a well organized structure to your documentation.

This template is shared across all roles joining the Growth team. My design manager partner and engineering manager partner also used it with slight adjustments. But overall, the introduction is pretty much the same no matter what function you are, as long as you're joining the Growth team. And then high level in terms of how we thought about onboarding a new person, we use the same 30, 60, 90 day framework.

By the time you get between days 60 and 90, you can be a little bit more vague depending on how quickly your new hire is ramping up. It depends on how much context this person has on growth in the first place. I hired someone who had done growth work before, so their mindset and the way of thinking was already aligned. But I had also hired people who hadn't done growth work before, and we changed how we thought about setting up those 30, 60, 90 day goals based on what that previous experience was.

I think it's fine to join live calls, but customers are very excited to talk to product people at ProductBoard because they think that if you're a PM here, you must know how to use the tool perfectly, and I can ask you all of my questions. And if you're new and you don't really know the answers to that question, it's not a very good look. So I would suggest for someone who's really new, or especially if you've never used the product before, to just listen to the recorded calls.

In Growth, I ask people to look at the commercial AE sales calls as opposed to the enterprise. And then for customer success, we have a low-touch coach segment. So I say, hey here are a few names of folks at the company in these functions, go look for them in Gong and their team and then go on the Peloton or do the dishes and just have this playlist running so that you're constantly understanding how is it that we pitch the product to people.

Learning what's working well? What's not working well? What are the confusing pieces? What are the aha moments or magic moments where customers' eyes really light up and build the intuition over time.

For more horizontal SaaS products, I think it's so much easier to ramp up because you can go through the product yourself and get the value right away because you're probably a part of the target persona. For example, at Dropbox, what do they sell? Cloud storage. And I'm a user in the world with cloud files, so I could use the product and I can understand the value. I could go to support, I could do a couple of tickets, I could read the research. But for vertical SaaS products that's not necessarily the case.

And you may be working at a company where you've never worked with that function before. So you have to really start from scratch understanding that persona. I think the best way to do it is listen to those people talk. Really good companies with amazing operations for onboarding will actually have pre-made playlists or snippets.

Customers are usually very excited to talk to product managers directly, because they think that if you're a PM here, you must know how to use the tool perfectly, and they can ask you all of their questions and give a litany of feature requests. However, if you're new and you don't really know the answers to most questions yet, it's not a very good look. So I suggest creating and reviewing playlists of sales and customer success calls.

In Growth specifically, I ask newcomers to concentrate on commercial AE sales calls (as opposed to Enterprise) and low-touch customer success calls. I provide a few relevant names of folks in those functions, make some introductions, and tell newcomers to search for "name X" in your company's call recording tool. I recommend multi-tasking (e.g. doing the dishes, running on a treadmill) so you can get a high volume of calls in.

What do I want them to learn... How do we pitch our product to people? What is (not) working well? What are confusing moments? What are the aha moments or magic moments where customers' eyes really light up? I want this newcomer to build intuition over time and be able to represent the voice of the customer.

Another challenge for onboarding new hires was that the product itself, ProductBoard, is a very complex product. When I started at Series B, no one knew what it was, and it takes a very long time to understand how to use it. When we were at Series D and I was hiring people, a lot of them had used the product before, so we were lucky new hires came in with more context.

What's important for a new hire to understand is the fundamental value of the product that we're offering. Use the product in a way where you're understanding how your customers are going use it and what pains they face.

This is why some of these action items are very tactical: do this in the product, do that in the product, go find this. A kind of a scavenger hunt type of approach... so new hires can feel the pain and the value.

I like the concept of scavenger hunts a lot. It forces people to go off on their own to find things. And oftentimes when they go off, they find other things that are interesting and relevant. You can gamify it and make it fun...

Go find this document in Notion and summarize it for me. Of go find information about this feature that was launched 10 months ago. Tell me about whether or not it was successful.

It forces them to use the product and use the internal knowledge space in a way that they may explore things, they may learn a little bit more. But that's fun, right?

The homework is some of the assignments listed above in the first 30-60 days. One is to conduct an expert review of a new user's trial experience - watch five session replays, do it yourself, write down your observations and learnings. Read some of the help center articles that are linked. Two is to go through specific areas of the product I want them to learn. Three is to reach out to an internal ops person to receive training on how we operationalize Productboard internally and then start actually processing notes. And fourth is to watch recordings of sales calls.

So the homework is all of the things that I've asked this new person to do to start understanding either how Productboard works, what are the values, what our customers say about us, and start getting better at our product.

Intuition should culminate into essentially a set of learnings for that person. "This is what I learn. This is what seems like we do really well. This is what it seems like are potential problem areas and opportunities." By three months, they should pick up on things that, frankly, we probably already know internally, but I want make sure that they're starting to develop the practice of using that intuition of muscle on a new product area or perhaps a new customer persona.

And this is all very casual. I'm not asking them to prepare a deck and present to all the leads on the team. This is just to start collaborating with the core people that you're gonna be working with and starting to show them that you're using that muscle.

Japna Sethi

My team uses this onboarding guide to help new Growth team hires ramp up quickly and have a successful first 60 days.

We are very excited that you have joined us and we cannot wait for you to hit the ground running BUT in order for that to happen you need to meet people, get access to systems, download tools, learn the lay of the land, etc. Hopefully, this onboarding document will help your onboarding process go smoothly and efficiently. If anything is unclear please don't hesitate to reach out.

Empower makers to deliver delightful digital products by providing a single platform that supports strategic product planning, prioritization, and execution.

To ensure our solutions intuitively communicate Productboard’s value at each step of the customer journey, ensuring prospects and customers can easily get up and running once they start using Productboard.

is your manager. She leads Product for the Growth tribe. Talk to her about the organization, Growth tribe strategy, HR stuff, and logistics. Anything you need, she can help you out with.

. S/he is currently a Product Manager for [TEAM NAME]! Talk to them about anything related to [TEAM NAME], how to collaborate and work effectively with cross-functional partners and engineering teams, and context/history on the [TEAM NAME].

@XX is our Engineering Manager. He leads the eng teams for the Growth tribe. Talk to him about the organization, Vancouver EPD, and delivery management. 

@XX is our Tech Lead for team XX. He has been in Productboard for a long time and has great context for each engineering team, so he will be a great resource. He has a ton of great insight and lots of energy so talk to him about his past experiences or engineering in general.

Don't be afraid to ask, we all encourage curiosity. Just remember there is plenty of information at hand, so try to do as much of your own digging as you can. You will learn 100 other things along the way.

Onboarding Guide: Welcome to Productboard!

Our main Growth wiki (where you should be able to find everything)

Growth Tribe + Team product development process

General Product Management onboarding tasks:

Get access to all the equipment and tools you need: 

Schedule 1:1s with the relevant people (see list below)

Get added to all the relevant calendar invites (see list below)

Get invited (or add yourself) to the relevant slack channels (see list below) Read the general guidelines for 

Ask @XX to add you to the private Slack channels

Ask @XX to add you to aliases in google & slack

Attend the HR and People Ops onboarding programs. Complete any required HR + security onboarding

Let us know if you have any issues getting access to benefits, etc

Attend the Company Product Training and Product Management specific onboarding programs. 

Read through the "Useful Documents" section of our wiki and watch videos of previous team meetings & sessions (start at the top, then go down)

Finish reading through the "Useful Documents" section of our wiki above (there's a LOT to go through, you won't finish it all in just 2 weeks)

Schedule 1:1s with Product Managers across the team to introduce yourself

to receive training on Insights and notes processing. Afterward, triage 10+ notes in our unassigned inbox.

Watch a few Sales and Customer Success calls in XX (demos, follow up prospect calls, onboarding success calls)

Discuss 60 and 90 day goals with your manager

Reach out to XX to become familiar with our data tools and how the product team uses data at PB

Understand your team’s domain ownership

Conduct an expert review of a new user's trial experience

Watch 5 session replays of new users in trial and write down your observations

Read the help center articles linked in our sample data and play around with the product, so you get a sense of how to use Productboard in a sample space

Training on Product Excellence at PB - learn how PMs here use Productboard at Productboard!

Learn where things are located in the Productboard hierarchy

Your manager should assign you some new notes. Become more intimately familiar with your team’s hierarchy by processing your first 5 notes

 and schedule time with XX for an overview (if needed)

Review your homework assignments with your manager and onboarding buddy

Take some time in general to explore documents in our wiki - there is a lot more information in there!

Schedule recurring 1:1s with the people on your team whom you’ll need to meet with frequently

Growth Team Onboarding Template at Productboard

Welcome {TEAM} New Hire, start here!

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