Recently I had to quickly learn about a product from another expert as he was leaving the company. Through past experiences, there are two things to keep in mind when taking over a product on short notice. First, schedule several 30-minute sessions with the former expert as soon as you can, as their calendar often books up fast in their final weeks before going out the door, and invaluable ‘brain-dumping’ and knowledge sharing can be forgotten. I’d suggest spreading a couple sessions out over the final weeks or days so you have time to digest and research between each to get the most out of them.
Second, instead of focusing on the ‘what’ or ‘how’ of a product, focus on the ‘why.’ Many people in an organization know what a product does as they must sell or support it, or how it works because they’ve had to technically maintain it, but very few understand why it behaves that way. Knowing the ‘why’ relies on historic knowledge, of being there when something was built, and is thus easily lost when someone leaves the company. These reasons may be technical limitations, customer learning, or just features that had to be slimmed due to the time constraints. Others in the company may assume these product limitations are non-negotiable or are based on non-existent research and thus should not be changed. Only the former expert knows the real truth for why they’re that way, and how things that are considered sacred were initially due to temporary constraints.
One example in my recent knowledge transfer for why ‘why’ is important was around the product’s icon set. Some of the icons aren’t intuitive, and the reason why they’re that way is because the UX designer wasn’t available at the time they were added, so a Developer chose them. Without knowing the ‘why’ I might think the icons were based on customer feedback or discovery and thus should not be changed, but the truth is that I could easily correct them to something more intuitive.
When training a new Product Manager, the same focus on ‘why’ is important. Teaching the rationale behind existing features and prior decisions gives a framework for knowing the product, its history, and the customer context. And knowing the ‘why’ gives the new Product Manager confidence to make their own choices and decisions founded on prior research. They can also use this ‘why’ to show expertise in the product when working with stakeholders, quickly owning a mastery of the product by having the lesser known, but very important, ‘why’ behind features.
So whether it’s you learning about a product from an existing expert, or you’re teaching your expertise to another, focus on the ‘why’ for features to ensure you get the full story and know the real reason the product exists as it does.