How to: Coexist with your predecessor’s work
When the ghost of products past won’t stop haunting you.
You’ve just joined an organization and while at first, you were excited about the cool products and features you were going to get to work on, you’ve now realized there’s a lot swept under the rug that needs to be dealt with. You’re frustrated about the state of things and overwhelmed by how much is now in your hands to wrangle.
It is tempting when facing this situation to enter a victim mindset and blame any problems that come up on the poor decisions of your predecessor or the organization at large. This guide has the goal of helping you find a more productive, healthier relationship with the work that was done before you so that you can ultimately be more effective in your role.
Empathize, empathize, empathize
Understanding your predecessor’s work can help you significantly fast-track your insight into the business, products, and organization. Your predecessor was not a moron. The chances are that your predecessor was quite bright and impactful but worked in a limiting environment. Respect their work and their capabilities.
Try to understand, In detail, the decision-making processes of your predecessor. Specifically, try to understand the following:
How did they approach their work?
Why did they approach their work in that way?
What were they prone to doing/missing as a result?
What did they excel at?
The moment you become dismissive of someone else’s work you’ll become myopic and fail to see the value and patterns they have created which can slow down your rate of progress.
Understand the products you’re inheriting, and fight the urge to burn it all down
Some PMs immediately move to “rebuild” mode. Rebuilding is often a massive mistake as it is resource-consuming, requires a lot of organizational equity, and, if done too early, will likely kill value inadvertently.
If you approach your inheritance as if you were starting at -100%, you’ll end up spending all your time getting to 0%. Think about your inheritance in terms of starting with an advantage that can be built upon. In most cases, fine-tuning, optimization, tweaks, and simplification can help you supercharge what you already have. Strive to be fair but opinionated as you develop your understanding of the work and ask yourself:
What works well?
What doesn’t work well?
What is close to working well but needs a few changes?
What do customers love?
What features do customers use the most?
What is the team most passionate about?
What strikes you as the most compelling?
Give yourself the time to understand your products. Don’t knock down a structural pillar out of spite, and don’t take shots in the dark out of frustration.
Understand the decision-making environment at the time
It is essential to understand the decision-making environment to effectively understand why a feature exists in the way it does. If you don’t understand why a decision was made at the time, it’ll be much harder to make a new decision on the feature now.
To better understand the decision-making environment at the time, ask yourself questions like:
What was the process like when these features were built?
At the time, was there enough talent or domain expertise on the team to solve this problem?
Were there internal or external pressures when these decisions were made?
Has the business significantly changed around this feature?
What would have happened with my process if deployed at that time in the organization?
If you don’t understand the company’s culture and its progression, you’ll eventually find it working against you and your goals. Most of the time, you’ll find that bad historical outcomes were a result of poor processes, low skill, or pressures from leadership, investors, or high-profile customers. Outside of those factors, you’ll find that some features might have just overstayed their welcome and that the business has changed since they were originally launched.
Work to define what your version of the role will be like
When inheriting a product and roadmap, it is key to establish your version of the job and build alignment with stakeholders.
In many cases, there will be give and take, it’s hard for people to dramatically shift expectations on a role, but you can work on this expactation over time. While this type of expectation can initially be set during interviewing, in many cases, expectation setting is an ongoing part of working within an organization.
Take the time as you build a working relationship with your manager and team to talk through what you believe is most essential in the role, what you expect of yourself and of others, and what will happen if you’re capable of pursuing the role in this way. Having these kinds of conversations can be essential for you to carve out the version of the role you believe in while understanding what areas you’ll need to address and support so that your team continues to operate effectively.