Work as an APM
I have been working as an APM in a B2B startup for 12 months now; 5 months internship and 7 months as FTE after graduation.
My work revolves around gathering requirements for features by talking to experts and conducting research, conducting impact analysis; getting initial themes and liaising with Designers to get the final UX, leading the implementation phase with Developers and QA and then getting the release and feature documentation.
Other tasks involve liaising with people from Marketing, Client Partner and Sales to acquaint them with the new features, conducting internal demos, and also looking after client requests/ bugs and getting them fixed.
One issue that I feel however is that my PRDs need revision by my senior. I don't think they are bad, given I include all the things that I feel (based on my experience with the Development pod) come in necessary usually. It might be the case as well that my senior likes to put the requirements documented in a way he likes.
Want suggestions, is this the correct amount and type of work, or something else that I must be picking up too at this stage of career, and how the career shapes ahead in general, in this domain?
Optimise for what's best for your stakeholders and ask for feedback not only from your manager but also other people who read your PRDs. There's no perfect template.
Things engineers hate:
- Too many words
- Missing context
- Back and forth on unclear pointers
- No answers to questions that affect architecture -- how do you want to visualise data, what will future features look like, how many users do you expect
- No impact estimate -- what will they put on their resume?
