The last 8 months have just flown by. Back in November I
started a new job at a company called Global Fitness Media. At the time, I had been an associate product manager at ThisNext and made a huge jump to being the Director of Product Management at my new company. Though I had clearly never done this before, my new boss Nick had the confidence that I would be up to the task.
At the time, I was the 4th employee of the company, after the CEO, Nick, his assistant and a graphic designer. Being the only product manager, I started out listening to Nick and
Jake (yes, that Jake) talk about what the general vision for the company would be.
Between brainstorming, researching the fitness industry and the target market, talking to potential partners and interviewing potential employees, it was insanely busy from the start. Having a hand in building the team was a great experience, especially when there were a few hiccups along the way. I've learned that you can get a general sense of how people will work and fit in from an interview, but you'll never really know until they're in the environment, slaving away with you for hours on end. Everyone has a different opinion about what "hard work" really means.
After deciding the initial feature set, I spent loooooooong hours over weeks and the first couple months defining the product, drawing interface wireframes, workflows, use cases and working with graphic designers, the development team, our copywriter and our CEO to come up with the ideal version 1.0.
One of the biggest challenges in being a product manager and what ends up taking most of my time are the questions and challenges. Weighing whether a certain feature should be implemented or not given the development complexity, user experience, and business and political requirements.
Through the weeks and months, we've built something that I'm truly proud of. Of course there are features that had to be sacrificed or delayed, but I think for the first version of our flagship product, we've done something really cool. With the help of the team, I have to say that this has been the biggest accomplishment of my professional career thus far.
Last minute things are quickly wrapping up over the weekend and the public launch of
FitOrbit happens on Monday. Stay tuned!
