Latest Contributions by jill_es

Hello Esri YPN community!  I’m excited to have the opportunity to tell you a bit about product management and the path that led me here.   My name is Jill Edstrom-Shoemaker, and I lead the ArcGIS Enterprise and data management product management teams here at Esri.  Every day I work with incredible individuals across Esri, our distributors, and user community.  Before I get into the details of my role, let me take a step back to share how I ended up here in the first place.   At Esri headquarters in Redlands.   It all started with a map    I grew up loving maps and the outdoors.  My parents joke that I was influenced early on by a 7’ National Geographic map of California, my home state, that hung above my crib.  Family road trips across the country only reinforced that interest, as I traced our routes on the AAA maps we brought along.  At first glance, it’s no surprise I ultimately ended up in GIS.  That said, my path here is not what I would have expected 15 years ago.  When I started my undergraduate studies at California State University, Sacramento, I looked for classes that let me spend as much time outdoors as possible.  That is how I discovered physical geography and fell in love with how it connects people, land, weather, and more.  Geography really is the Science of Where.  After majoring in physical geography, I earned my master’s in geography education at Oregon State University.  Serving as a teaching assistant helped me realize that I enjoyed not only being outside but also helping others better understand the world around them.  Enjoying a graduate field class at Oregon's Steens Mountain.   After graduating, I applied to the Esri internship program.  In May 2014, I joined Esri as an intern in Support Services, where I focused on ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server and gained hands-on experience with the software.  My internship led to a full-time role as a support analyst supporting ArcGIS Server, and later ArcGIS Enterprise.  In Support Services I built a strong technical understanding of the platform – everything from how customers install and configure the software to how they actually use it day in and day out.  I also discovered how much I enjoyed helping customers succeed.  I continued building on this in roles as a readiness lead and product advocacy lead, focusing on enabling others to support customers effectively.  While I never would have predicted that my field courses would lead to helping others navigate technical concepts, I have stayed grounded in what first drew me to geography: understanding how everything is interconnected.  After six years in Support Services, I transitioned into Product Management where I had the opportunity to shift my focus from helping customers reactively to shaping the software proactively.  I have now been in this role for the past six years at Esri.    What is a product manager?    At its core, product management is about connecting customer needs with what we build and aligning that across teams.  But how that happens really depends, because every day is different.   My team and I are always striving to collect feedback from our customers – and customers come in many forms.   End users, distributors and business partners that support them, and fellow Esri staff all have valuable feedback.  This can be individual feedback through phone calls with demos, conference conversations, Ideas submitted via Esri Community, and more.  But it can also be broader trends provided by colleagues in professional services and sales industry leads.  My team takes this information and uses it when collaborating with our engineering team on plans for future releases.  Planning for a release isn’t a discrete event, but an ongoing process.   We also work closely with product marketers to stay in sync in order to ensure a coherent story across products.  This work helps ensure customer success with the software both today and in the future. There are a multitude of ways my team works to help ensure success with ArcGIS.  This comes in the form of release content, enablement for internal staff, messaging of timely events, new blogs to highlight potential gaps, planning out our product’s presence at upcoming conferences, and more. Enjoying dinner with members of the ArcGIS Enterprise product management and marketing team.   Skills that help drive success    Being a product manager is a role that varies from individual to individual, even if you’re members of the same team.  Throughout all of this, I would say that some of the most important skills include:  Communication and collaboration  Prioritization and decision-making  Technical understanding  Empathy and audience awareness  Product management enables these skills to come together in a variety of ways... I’ve been told that as product managers there are 1,000 things we could do, 100 things we should do, and 10 things we can do.  So, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work evaluating importance of each potential task.  This means not only having to balance time but also having to balance communicating continuously with different people.  As a product manager, we’re not a team of one – we’re simultaneously a member of multiple teams (technical, tactical, strategic, and more) across the company.  Though I represent both ArcGIS Enterprise and data management, I don’t work in a vacuum, just as our customers don’t use our products in a vacuum.  They’re using our products among many others software, such as Microsoft 365, Adobe, ServiceNow, etc.  One of the key aspects of my role is knowing my audience.  Some have never used ArcGIS Enterprise before; others have been working in GIS longer than I’ve been alive.  Every person deserves the same amount of attention but it’s important to recognize, and ask, about their background to understand this interaction.    In addition to soft skills, it’s important to have a strong technical foundation in my role.  This goes beyond familiarity with ArcGIS Enterprise and the overall ArcGIS platform and includes a high-level understanding cloud architecture, data storage, and system integration at a practical level.  While I can’t speak to every detail, I rely on these technical skills to understand concepts broadly and dig deeper as needed.   A glimpse into my workday    No two days are ever the same as a product manager, but on a typical day, my work might include:  Regular meetings with product managers and product marketers to stay in sync on ongoing projects  Coordination meetings with engineers Touch bases with colleagues in across the company to keep a pulse on feedback about ArcGIS Enterprise and Data Management Enablement creation for whatever is timely– awareness around an upcoming patch, a new release, timely conference materials, etc.  Throughout my day I may be in the weeds of the technology in one meeting and then have a bird’s eye view in a strategic meeting in the next.  I sometimes joke it can give you whiplash going back and forth, but I love how every day is different and how it can be up to me just how different it is.  One final thought on success    I’ve been lucky enough to have received many helpful tips from colleagues throughout the years.  Everyone at Esri knows something, a little nugget of information, that nobody else does.  But I’ll offer this one tip that has come up time and time again, no matter my role: there is so much power in being able to say, “I don’t know but…”  I don’t know the answer but let me look into it and I’ll follow up with you.  I don’t know the answer but do you have additional context for the question?  I don’t know the answer but my colleague does.  Let me get in touch with them so that you can get the answer.  It can be scary to say “I don’t know” but there is also so much power in it.  This one phrase can help build trust among your team, your colleagues, and more. Thank you for letting me share my professional journey with you all!  Everyone’s journey is unique, and there are many paths into product management and beyond.  If interested, please check out esri.com/careers. Please drop a comment here in this blog post if you have questions or want to get in touch.  Thank you for letting me share my journey with you! ... View more