A 30-60-90 plan is an essential roadmap for any product manager entering a new role. It breaks down your first three months on the job into measurable goals and milestones that set you up for long-term impact.
In your first 30 days, it’s critical to ramp up quickly by learning your new product and team inside-out. The next 30 days are focused on aligning priorities across stakeholders while also plotting your own course. By day 90, you’ll be driving progress and results.
In this post we’ll cover building relationships, understanding the landscape, defining your vision, and driving quick wins. With the right Product Managers 30-60-90 plan, new product leaders can build influence and momentum.
First 30 Days
Hitting specific goals during your first month is key for ramping up effectively as a new Product Manager.
Build key stakeholder relationships
- Schedule at least 5 one-on-one meetings with leaders in engineering, design, marketing, and other critical functions. Come with questions to understand their roles, challenges, and goals.
- Identify the 3-4 most influential executives within your product organization and seek their guidance on priorities.
- Connect with leaders from allied internal teams like sales, services, and support to learn external customer needs.
Learn the product and technology inside-out
- Spend 20+ hours conducting user testing, going through app workflows, and trying integration points and APIs first-hand.
- Review technical documentation to map out architecture, infrastructure, security, and compliance landscape.
- Maintain an ongoing list of product questions and technical knowledge gaps to drive your learning.
Analyze metrics and pinpoint opportunities
- Audit dashboards, reports, and analytics to spot usage trends, churn signals, power users, etc.
- Identify 3 potential quick-win opportunities to improve metrics that align with business goals
- Catalog list of top challenges surfaced through stakeholder conversations and data review.
Define your 90-day priority framework
- With insights gathered, define 3-5 priority themes you’ll focus on over the next quarter
- Outline project areas aligned to priorities balanced across all stakeholders
- Create a list of questions and learning milestones needed to drive clarity as you execute
Tracking progress
- >5 stakeholder 1:1s complete
- 20+ hours spent hands-on with the product
- Audit of metrics/dashboards complete
- Draft 90-day priority framework
Next 30 Days (Days 31-60)
With key learning and relationships built, Months 2-3 are about aligning your team and beginning execution.
Set team OKRs
- Distill the 90-day priority framework into a measurable rallying cry for your product team and key stakeholders through objective and key results (OKRs)
- Connect OKRs directly to business goals around growth, engagement, quality or other metrics
- Socialize OKRs with both leadership and stakeholders to ensure alignment
Define requirements for priority projects
- Based on early learnings, map out high-level user stories and success metrics for your #1 priority project
- Outline must-have features vs nice-to-haves to support scoping
- Document remaining open questions and assumptions that still need validating
Begin execution
- Stand up initial project squad drawing from engineering, design, and analytics and set consistent meeting cadence
- Break down user stories into sprintable development tasks
- Build project plan spanning research, design collaboration, prototyping, user testing, release, measurement
Identify early wins
- Audit existing product experience for 1-2 quick fix opportunities based on user feedback
- Scope out minimum effort / maximum impact improvements
- Align leadership on proposed changes and secure resources
Tracking Progress
- Team OKRs finalized and communicated
- Requirements and success metrics for Priority #1 locked
- Project stood up, plan defined
- 1-2 early product wins scoped for the next 30 days:
Final 30 Days (Days 61-90)
By your third month, you should be driving real progress while also broadening your vision beyond initial priorities.
Evaluate progress on OKRs
- Review analytics dashboards and reports to track progress toward objectives
- Capture feedback through 1:1s with stakeholders as well as your own user testing
- Course correct execution on any priority projects that are flagging
Plan roadmap for next quarter
- Analyze learnings from the initial months to identify new opportunity areas or challenges
- Plot 2-3 major themes or big bets for your team to drive over the next 3-6 months
- Identify an initial set of 3-4 projects or milestones aligned to the roadmap
Reflect on key learnings
- Catalog what’s worked well so far in how you’ve onboarded, built relationships, or driven progress
- Outline any changes you would make in communication, collaboration or other areas.
- Identify areas where you still need to grow experience and knowledge
Report progress and next steps
- Schedule time with key executives and stakeholders
- Celebrate early wins and demonstrate progress against goals
- Socialize high-level roadmap and get buy-in on direction
- Set a plan to continue providing value to leadership
Tracking Progress
- Evaluated OKR progress against metrics
- Drafted next quarter’s roadmap
- Completed written reflection on key learnings
Shared accomplishments and next steps with leaders
Conclusion
With an effective Product Managers 30-60-90 plan framework in place, new product managers can build confidence, credibility, and critical thinking to create long-term vision and impact.
The most successful PMs balance the ability to learn quickly, build relationships, rally their teams, and drive real outcomes for customers early on. Adaptability is also key — no 30-60-90 plan survives contact with reality.
By setting your sights on the right milestones in your first days, weeks, and months, you’ll set yourself up to add increasing value over time.