Onboarding a new PM in a week, not a quarter
The ramp is long because context transfer is verbal. It does not have to be.
A new product manager is typically told to spend their first month in meetings. This is not a training programme; it is a context transfer protocol with a very low bit rate, and it consumes the time of everyone who already has context.
What the meetings are actually for
- Learning what was decided — recoverable from the archive
- Learning why — recoverable, if the archive is readable
- Learning who decides — partially recoverable
- Building the relationships — not recoverable, and the only part worth the calendar
Invert the order
Give the first two to reading. Spend the meetings on the last one. A new PM who arrives at their first conversation already knowing the decisions asks better questions, and the person opposite them spends thirty minutes instead of three hours.
The test of a good handover
Not whether the new person can describe the roadmap. Whether they can name two things the team disagrees about internally. That is the knowledge that actually takes a quarter to acquire.
Stop writing PRDs without understanding the product.
Anchor reads your interviews, tickets and docs first — then writes, citing every line.
