Day in the Life of a Technical Program Manager (TPM) 

One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked is, “Can you describe a day in the life of a TPM?”. This question is quite challenging because numerous factors are involved, and the answers may vary accordingly. The truth is, no two days are the same, and that’s what makes it both challenging and rewarding. I hope this post will give you a glimpse into a day in the life of a TPM to highlight the balance between strategic thinking, hands-on problem-solving, and relationship-building that defines the role. 

I will attempt to answer this question in two sections. The first section will focus on the various factors that likely impact a TPM’s role. I am guessing this would be quite interesting for new TPMs exploring the role and type of organization they would like to work with. The second section will focus on my attempt to compile a cumulative list of what a TPM would do in a week or over a month, concluding with a typical day in my life as a TPM.

What Impacts The Daily Life Of A TPM?

A Seat At The Table

One crucial aspect that plays an important role in a TPM’s life is the organization’s culture and how the TPM’s role is perceived. Is the TPM given a seat at the table when decisions are made? Are their opinions heard, valued, and acted upon? Is the TPM’s manager supportive by helping them fight battles beyond their sphere of influence?

Size of the Organization

The larger the organization, the more time it takes to resolve blockers due to the larger number of cross-functional teams you depend on. Smaller organizations may be less prone to complex processes and are likely more agile. As a TPM, the scope of your responsibilities might differ depending on the organization’s size.

Maturity of the Product in the Product Life Cycle

Think of Kindle vs. Alexa. Kindle was first released in 2007. 13 years later, it has possibly reached the pinnacle of its innovative evolution. However, Alexa was launched recently in 2014, and it still has a lot of scope in its evolution cycle. For example, Alexa recently got a re-vamp with Claude AI in October 2024, ten years after its initial launch.  As a TPM, you will be part of an organization that will either do a lot of feature work or more steady-state/operations-centric work, depending on your product’s positioning on its lifecycle.

Type of Organization: Startup vs. Established Organization

Startup TPMs wear multiple hats and are responsible for many things. In an established organization, your focus as a TPM is generally smaller in scope, and you might be expected to dive deep technically. An important note is that though the scope of work might differ across small vs large organizations, TPMs can be significantly impactful in either place.

Type of Product : B2B Product vs. B2C Product

In B2B organizations/products, TPMs generally build and release features in cycles. You have big events where multiple product teams demonstrate specific key features their enterprise users would be interested in. You would also prioritize features that might capture the attention of certain high-profile customers.

In B2C, the focus is on what your end customer wants. In a B2C organization, you generally look at anywhere between a few million customers and tens or hundreds of millions of customers. You will be required to do more customer testing, run more A/B tests, keep a close eye on the competition, etc. Because of all the tasks mentioned above, TPMs must be flexible in prioritizing operations.

TPM Role: Depth TPM vs. Breath TPM

I have discussed this in detail here. But in short, depth TPMs support a few feature /product teams, whereas breadth TPMs can own and drive large programs.

TPM Role: Customer Facing TPMs vs. Internal (In-Bound) TPMs 

In enterprise organizations (AWS, GCP, OCI, Splunk, Salesforce), TPMs may be responsible for interacting with external customers. Their responsibilities would include onboarding a customer onto their platform, owning the relationship with one or more high-profile strategic customers, or helping customers with certain types of operational problems. This role can be defined as a TAM (Technical Account Manager) or a TPM. Either way, the nature of your work would significantly vary. 

Of course, the above are generalizations and have broad strokes in their differences. Before joining a team, it’s always good to ask your hiring manager what your role’s makeup and nature will be. You might also see the organization evolve as you continue to work in a team for many years. 

As a TPM, most of what the organization asks of you will differ based on your environment. I am sure there is more that you can add to the above list of things that impact the role, and shape the daily duties/responsibilities of a TPM. 

A Typical Day In The Life of a TPM 

Now, moving on to the second section, we will look at the actual tasks a TPM might undertake in their day. I have categorized this into 4 major categories, and each category will contain a list of tasks a TPM would possibly need to perform in a day. 

The list below is by no means comprehensive. It’s meant to give you a taste of a typical day/week in the life of a TPM. 

Meetings

• Check-in with the Go-to-market Team on Collaterals for the Product Launch
• Present bad news to team X, i.e., your team that you will not be able to work on that Feature ‘ABC’
• Check-in with Social Media Rep to monitor Product Blowback (since we deprecated a feature) 
• Host & capture action items for a senior leadership meeting with finance to review business KPIs, i.e., Spending & Revenue
• Present at Leadership Meeting > representing the four programs you own
• 1-1’s with fellow TPMs/Colleagues/Mentors/Mentees
• Internal Team Meetings
  • Scrum of Scrums – leads from multiple teams come together to provide updates
  • Attend but not own standups.
  • Many organizations have weekly ‘Operational Metrics Meetings’ where you might need to represent your program.
  • Present at Leadership Meeting > representing the programs you own.
  • Run change management and Re-Prioritization Meetings

Writing/Reviewing Documents (TPMs at some organizations spend 30% of their time authoring, contributing & reviewing documents)

• Design the Operational Metrics Dashboard on the cadence of the meetings for the five teams
• Prepare for the upcoming QBR 
• Writing or contributing to various documents on the following key topics:
  • Team Formation (Mission, Vision & Goals for the Year)
  • Design documents
  • API
  • Operational Plan 1 & Operational Plan 2
  • PR FAQs
  • Documents to analyze of specific problems
  • Headcount Planning
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Change Control Board (CAB)
  • Operational Reviews
  • Request for New Infrastructure, etc
  • Review, create, and adjust project plans
  • Architectural Design review doc for a new feature
  • Vision documents & Goals annual planning
  • UX Review
  • Deep Dive documents
  • Budgeting & Forecasting – Infra Spend and cost reduction
  • Escalation documents
  • Meeting notes and action summaries
  • Feedback documents for Engineers, Product Managers, and other resources

Reviewing & Mitigating Risks

• Carefully understanding the top risks in your programs
• Identify the owners of each risk item and their mitigation strategy
• If a risk is immanent then working on kicking off the mitigation strategy in place
• Communication of the risks in the weekly program report
  a. On what we are doing and the impact of our mitigation
  b. Help from the executive team if required to resolve the risk.

Program Management

• Tracking program progress against the schedule
• Reviewing program KPIs & metrics
• Communicating program updates with risks, date changes, challenges, & development milestones
• Implement process improvements & put in place mechanisms to increase efficiencies
• Help teams in milestone planning clarify requirements, understand roadblocks
• Coordinate Dependency Management among teams by making sure teams are ready for integration and that they are collaborating
• Drive escalations when need to ensure that there is no impact to the program
• Help team (A) with a milestone plan, so that the team can get back to the leadership with the Feature launch date
• Drop-in for the team retrospective
• Kick-off new initiatives with the leadership, development team, and PMs
• Re-Prioritization Meeting (Either for one of your teams or for the larger organization)
• Trade-off management, clean escalations, and pushing for decisions on this

Quarterly/Monthly Business Review( Includes Engineering Manager/TPM Owner)

QBR/MBR s are cadence business reviews that every team does. TPMs own these reviews along with Engineering and Product Managers. In these meetings, we review-

• Metrics
  • Operational metrics
  • Product KPIs
• People
  • Resource allocation – against programs/features & projects
  • Hiring Pipelines
  • Health of the team
• Features
  • Released last quarter
  • What is upcoming this quarter – Features vs Timelines
  • Resource Allocation by Program/Initiative
  • Feature utilization metrics
  • Misses from last quarter
  • Major Pain Points
  • Incidents, technical backlog, etc

Build Relationships & Proactively Handle Conflicts (Through 1-on-1s)

• Stakeholders & Product Managers
• Fellow TPMs/Colleagues/Mentors/Mentees
• Read, design, document & prep for a design review
• Project based 1on1s for key players in the program that might alert you to upcoming challenges or tensions.
• Ensure that you are recognizing team members for their contribution by crediting them in program updates.
• Celebrate success to maintain team morale.
• 1on1s with leaders to align on the current state or upcoming changes

Interviewing & Mentoring

• If your organization is on a hiring spree, then TPMs might spend a lot of time interviewing candidates
• You might participate in interview loops for engineers, engineering managers, Product Managers
• Coach and mentor junior or aspiring TPMs
• Meeting with your mentors for career advice or as a sounding board for ideas

Follow up on E-mail & Messenger like –  slack, teams

• You prioritize and respond to messages and emails throughout the day.
• Sending follow up emails and communications
• Answering questions for the team on messenger/slack/ internal tools
• Schedule invites for demos and other important milestones

Miscellaneous Tasks

• The day generally starts by looking at my meetings and re-prioritizing them if necessary.
• At least once a week, you will get something that is a high priority and needs your immediate attention
• You might be called on to represent your team or manager in meetings

Review personal task list for the Day & Week ahead

• Urgent & Important Tasks (Do immediately)
• Important but Not Urgent Tasks (Schedule for later)
• Urgent but Not Important Tasks (Delegate)
• Neither Urgent nor Important (Do last or not at all)
• Send out a “Health Check Survey” to the Organization  

A Day in My Life as a TPM

There you go !

Mario Gerard 

Note: Please add anything that I missed out in the comments section below.