The daily life of a Product Manager involves a lot of communication. And I mean a lot. But what I’ve realized here at Zight (formerly CloudApp) is the intentionality and modality of that communication is key. Here are three ways I use Zight (formerly CloudApp) to make daily life easier.
1. Improve Ticket Resolution
I am a native French speaker, so English is not my first language. My team is from many different countries, on different time zones. It’s important for me to be clear whenever I submit a ticket to another team member, whether they’re in engineering or product design. For example, each and every user issue we write down. When I’m writing down a user issue that needs to be addressed, I need to make sure I’m relaying that information well. I usually craft multiple paragraphs. It’s a lot of text, but there can still be confusion. So I take one or two minutes to record myself going through what I’ve written to provide greater context to each and every ticket. This has helped resolve or address these tickets more quickly as a team. As a team we don’t waste a lot of time down the line because something wasn’t understand and we fix the wrong thing.
2. Deliver Demos & Walkthroughs
As a Product Manager, I conduct many demos for sales, product engineering and any other team that needs to understand our product and its roadmap. As a remote company with a team spread across the globe, availability is a big issue when scheduling these. Asynchronous walk throughs for me have been a game-changer. Everyone gets the same information relayed to them at a time that works for them. They can also digest the information at their own pace. If they need to re-watch a section, they can.
3. Make Change Happen, Correctly
My daily work life involves a lot of changes. We need to make changes to our product, and in the world of engineering, these changes are very specific. As I mentioned above, I use video often to give context, but there’s also a need to get into the nitty gritty, to point out exactly what needs changing. That’s where I use annotations.
Misinformation happens when people can’t see exactly what needs to be done.
I annotate images or screenshots of whatever product changes are needed and then pass them along to my team. I screenshot, add the annotation, arrows, etc., and then paste the screenshot in slack. I can also add it onto a ticket, or send it via email to any external parties. It has drastically reduced the amount of misinterpretation or misinformation among team members.
Conclusion
The special thing about Zight (formerly CloudApp) is its relevance to the small things during the workday. It has transformed tasks or meetings that I would often dread and turned them into items I can confidently check off my list at my own pace.
Don’t be shy. Connect with Phin on LinkedIn here.