Context
As a Staff Product Manager, my year was strategically committed to a 0-1 project to expand TAM beyond expecting parents.
But as the only PM on the registry itself, it was important to me not to neglect the core user experience.
Resources & Inspiration
The prior year, I had established the “Project Owner” program where I trained and supervised non-technical individual contributors in other departments to lead low-risk, low-complexity product work with engineers, designers, and data partners.
I needed a backlog of meaningful work that could be successfully executed by my team of three Project Owners and required no more than 4 hours of supervision per week.
Our CTO happened to slack me this twitter thread on the concept of a Complaint Storm.
Collaborative Exercise
I organized a complaint storm on 3 adjacent/competitor companies — Pinterest, Amazon, Zola — on every platform — iOS, Android, mobile web, desktop web — before having the team go through the same exercise on Babylist.
And by organized I mean:
- 1. set up miro boards
- 2. did a test run with a group of two PMs and an EM
- 3. made modifications to the format
- 4. recruited people across the company to participate
- 5. assigned people to different groups per platform
I synthesized the results of the complaint storm and created a backlog as well as a roadmap I called Cleaning House with this vision: Babylist is a joy to use. There is ease, delight, and a smooth sense of momentum.
Outcome
Project Owners led 9 highly impactful projects for both Registrants and Gift Givers including:
- decreased total CS ticket volume by 25% by improving the experience of transferring a baby registry from some other site to Babylist
- increased conversion rate from searching for a baby registry to viewing a registry by improving the Find A Baby Registry UX and search results & ranking
- built a CMS-driven homepage for the Babylist Shop, no longer requiring engineering to make every change (which included changing any images or copy)
Bonus
All three Project Owners continued their role in their departments while leading this work. The experience of owning product work helped them grow, and each was promoted that year.