Leader Spotlight: How project, program, and product management intertwine, with Anh Dao Pham

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Anh Dao Pham is Vice President, Product & Program Management at Edmunds, an online resource for automotive advice, news, reviews, and vehicle listings. She is also the author of Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams — a book describing the advantages of taking a balanced approach to project management and leadership.

Anh began her project management career at Ticketmaster, where she managed projects for the Ticketmaster online experience, before moving to Opower, a green-tech startup. She later transitioned to Edmunds, where she’s worked in various project and product leadership roles for more than a decade.

In our conversation, Anh shares how the skills she’s gained through her project and program management experience, such as cross-functional collaboration, managing the successful delivery of software projects, and tricks for improving team morale, have helped her succeed in product management. She discusses her product team’s critical role in giving customers the information they need in a rapidly changing automotive industry. Anh also shares how keeping a candy bowl at her desk has opened the door for strong relationships in the workplace.

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How project management informs product management

To start, you lead three different competencies: program management, UX design, and product management. How do these all work together?

Program management, UX design, and product management may seem unrelated, but they are actually fairly intertwined and complement each other well. Product teams conceive the products we want to build to support our business goals and solve big customer problems. Our UX design teams support our product teams by helping them create elegant, beautiful, usable experiences that perform well to deliver on business metrics. And program management is the underlying infrastructure that supports the efficient delivery of the products that the UX design and product teams want to build.

How have your previous program management roles informed what you do in your current role?

Project managers are assigned to deliver with one team or disparate teams, while program managers deliver interrelated projects across a portfolio or a set of teams. I see them as the same type of competency.

As a project or program manager, I augment and support a team, but I am not necessarily a hands-on individual contributor. I don’t write stories, do QA, or code, but I’m responsible for coordinating across the team to make sure that people are working well together and that the project delivers on time, ideally without burning out the team. You’re trying to thread the needle between team happiness and delivery at the same time.

In product management, I am a hands-on contributor whose responsibility it is to bring products to market that solve a unique customer problem. I’m responsible for the strategy and the execution. And my success hinges on my ability to deliver those products. That’s where having the skills to deliver and create cohesive teams comes in handy. I won’t be successful if I just have a vision, I also need to deliver on it — that is where project management and leadership skills become critical to my success.

Do you find that people often start out as project managers and later become product managers, or vice versa?

Project manager careers are often transitional. As people become more senior in their careers, they may move out of project management into product management because they’re good at working with a team to deliver something. But they realize that they want to be able to define what they are going to deliver, not just help with the delivery. Moving from project management into product management can be a natural career progression because you come in with all the tools you need to help a team deliver the thing you’re setting a vision for.

Ebbs and flows of the automotive industry

Can you talk about some of the specific initiatives you are currently working on at Edmunds?

Edmunds’ overall mission is to help customers buy and sell cars more easily. My product teams focus on the branch of customers who are interested in either selling or trading in their car — whether they’re going to sell it privately by themselves, to somebody who’s willing to put an offer outright, or if they’re thinking about trading it in as a part of another transaction.

During my tenure, Edmunds partnered with and was later acquired by CarMax. At that time, I was on the product development team working on an emerging product that would allow users to receive instant offers from CarMax online. Previously, you’d go to a CarMax store with your car and get it physically appraised by an employee. The product that I was working on digitized that whole process. We worked with CarMax to prove out their algorithm, put it in front of our audience, and now anybody visiting Edmunds.com who wants to sell their car can answer a few questions and get an offer in just a few minutes.

That’s been the basis for a lot of the product work that I’ve been doing to-date. Edmunds also has its own proprietary algorithm separate from CarMax, called Edmunds True Market Value, that is powered by transaction data from vehicles that have been sold in your area. Our statisticians use that data to calculate unbiased valuations for vehicles.

In the last few years since the pandemic, the used car prices have been really volatile. Before, a car was always a depreciating asset, but now it fluctuates. It’s strange, but the prices change due to macro-economic factors in the market. Now more than ever, it’s useful for a customer to be able to track the ebbs and flows of the market and understand if their car’s value is going up or down. We’re spending a lot of time educating our customers about that.

You mentioned how the automotive market has changed since the pandemic. What current challenges and trends do you see in the automotive industry, and how are they impacting Edmunds?

The automotive industry has been littered with all kinds of interesting events in the past few years. At the time of the pandemic, there was also a micro-chip shortage that caused a lot of pressure on manufacturing and reduced inventory availability significantly. Because of those shortages, customers have limited ability to choose which vehicles to purchase because there are so few available on the lot, and the vehicles they want are more expensive. That’s a huge problem for customers.

Interest rates are higher too, and that’s been causing affordability gaps because it is hard to get a reasonable loan.

There is also a shift in automotive toward electric vehicles (EVs). Some governments are mandating that a specific percentage of vehicles will be pure EV or zero emissions by a certain timeframe. However, driving an EV is significantly different from driving a regular gas guzzling vehicle, and not all customers are ready for the change.

All of these trends create confusion for people who are buying cars, and that’s why it’s an exciting time to be in this industry — there are so many changes. Working at Edmunds is great because our mission is to make car buying and selling easy. Now more than ever, we have a critical role to play because customers are seeking so much information. They need guidance. You don’t buy a car every day. Having a site to go to for impartial advice about how you should buy a car, when you should sell your car, the different ways to do that, and getting advice along the way is really special.

Finding a global story in the data

With all of these changes, how do you stay up-to-date and make sure that you’re prioritizing the right things?

It’s a conglomeration of many different things. When I started working at Edmunds, I knew nothing about automotive. I’ve learned a lot more about it over the course of my career. However, when I started in product management here, it was more about making sure that we were understanding our consumer needs rather than learning about cats.

We’ve adopted lean product development at Edmunds. As part of that, one of the things we’re always trying to do is talk with real customers to hear about their experiences using our products. Regardless of whether or not you know anything about automotive, there’s nothing like talking with customers to give you the insights. You might see something happening in the data that shows you how customers are behaving, but talking to customers helps you zero in on why it’s happening and gives you ideas on how to solve their problems.

I attended the NADA conference in Las Vegas, which was interesting because all of the people in the industry are available there — dealers, competitors, partners, etc. It helps you understand all of the players in the industry and how different tools work together to meet dealer needs. Many of our products are made to help both customers and dealers, and attending conferences like that helps me gain empathy for dealers.

I also read a lot. I read Automotive News, which is something I never thought that I would do, to stay up to date on news in the industry. I’m also an avid reader of books — business books and social psychology in particular. Right now, I’m reading Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini, who actually endorsed my book Glue and worked with me at Opower. His book is giving me inspiration and different ideas about how to use copy, design, and features to meet the needs of customers while encouraging them to use your features a certain way to improve product performance.

How do you then make decisions on what you’re going to do?

We’re a very data-driven product development company. We’re always looking at data — whether it’s empirical data or verbal feedback from customers. That data informs the different hypotheses that we’re going to test.

I tend to look for stories that make sense globally. The things that are most important are things that you can see across multiple sources. If you’re talking with dealers, customers, or the sales team and they’re all talking about the same problem, you know it’s important. If you’re looking at product performance data and see a trend that is corroborated by customer feedback, then you know it’s truly a problem. I aim to create a narrative using the data that makes sense to me. The problems that have the largest amounts of data to support them are the problems that are the most important to solve.

When a hypothesis feels obvious

Do you have an example of a time where you had to abandon an idea because the data actually proved your hypothesis wrong?

We run a lot of A/B tests at Edmunds when we’re developing products. Sometimes, we have a hypothesis that we believe has to work, and it feels obvious that it’s going to.

For example, if you come to Edmunds and go through the appraisal process, there are six steps, including entering your vehicle information, condition, mileage, colors, and options. My instinct was, “If we make this easier and faster, more people will convert through the funnel.” I was really bullish on that.

We ran an A/B test with a shorter funnel. It seemed obvious that the test would win, but we just wanted to know how much better this was going to make it. We did a couple of iterations of testing, because if you do one iteration and it fails, it doesn’t necessarily mean the idea is bad. But when you do a few and you’re seeing the same type of result, then likely it’s less about the execution and more about the hypothesis. To our surprise, none of our tests succeeded. So we had to abandon that idea.

It turns out that psychologically, if people get a vehicle appraisal, they want to know that it’s accurate. They’re not going to feel like it’s accurate unless they’ve provided you with a certain amount of information. So if you reduce the time for that and make it too easy for them, then they don’t believe that the result is correct.

It’s similar to going to see a doctor. Having a fast appointment isn’t always the best if you don’t feel like you’ve given the doctor enough information to make an accurate diagnosis.

What metrics do you prioritize to inform these challenging decisions?

It really depends on the phase the product is in and what you’re trying to move.

I find that people who are in data-driven product development environments can start feeling very handicapped early on when developing a brand new product. There aren’t any sessions or users, so they’re like, “How can I learn anything about how the funnel is converting?” In those early phases, I never abandon that data, instead I augment it with customer interviews to understand the associated customer sentiments.

You also have to have a belief in your long-term hypothesis. You’re heading in that direction and using the information that you’re gleaning from small amounts of data to triangulate different trends and move in the right direction. In those early stages, it’s really important to have both your gut, as well as feedback about what is happening, to marry to the data.

Once you start to have enough traffic, then you can start to create KPIs that help you understand the health of your product. I like to look for upstream indicators first — metrics you believe can be predictive of downstream actions but give you a faster result. For example, if a lot of customers interact with a page that shows an appraisal, that’s a good indicator that they are serious. I use those metrics for quick learning and then loop back and measure downstream metrics like actual transactions to make sure that the full story still makes sense before drawing a final conclusion.

How a candy bowl symbolizes reciprocity

You’re the author of Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams. What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve had the opportunity to work with lots of different teams with lots of different personalities, and in doing so I’ve realized that it’s important to make sure that they’re all happy and understand what you’re trying to achieve.

Glue is a culmination of all of the best advice that I have for anybody who’s trying to lead a project team to deliver something meaningful. It’s written for people who I’ve designated as project leaders — those who’ve stepped up to lead a project. I wanted to share the knowledge that I’ve learned on delivering these projects and creating really strong team morale. That’s why it’s called Glue — it’s about creating cohesive teams that are both happy and high performing.

You’re also known for your famous candy bowl at work. What is the candy bowl and why do you always have it out?

Ever since working at Ticketmaster, I’ve had a candy bowl at my desk. Even though there aren’t as many people in the office nowadays, I still have it. It originally started as a reason for coworkers to approach me and have a conversation. In both project and product management, you’re trying to work with teams. Having strong relationships is the most important thing, so making yourself approachable is really valuable. If you have a candy bowl at your desk, you’re beckoning people to come by and say hi.

One thing I later learned about that I didn’t realize when I first put out the candy bowl is the “principle of reciprocity.” Robert Cialdini’s book Influence says that if you do something for somebody, they’ll want to return the favor to you over time. A candy bowl establishes you as somebody who’s giving you something without asking you for anything in return. Later on, if you ask the people who have taken some candy for a favor, they’re going to be more receptive to that request because they remember your candy bowl. Whether that holds a lot of weight with somebody or not, it greases the wheel for the conversation.

Sometimes, people take candy from the bowl, and I won’t even know it until later on. I’ll ask them, “Hey, can you help me with this?” And they’ll say, “I take candy from your candy bowl. Sure!” It’s not intended that way, but it really helps in an environment where you have to work with people, and, in particular, when you have to work with people who you have no authority over. If you come to my desk, the bowl is always filled and people still take candy, even when I’m not there.

Do you have a virtual version of a candy bowl, especially since many teams are hybrid or remote-friendly?

This is the number one question I actually receive about the book. And the best equivalent I can offer folks is to give a “morsel of attention.” In a virtual world, there’s nothing more valuable than genuine connection, and that is the most difficult thing to establish if you’re not intentional about it. It is a gift for people to feel acknowledged and I think a small amount of extra attention can really go a long way. You can simply ask somebody how their day was, or, if you notice that they don’t seem happy, how things are going. Sometimes I still send food and treats for birthdays, but in the absence of a physical gift, making a genuine connection and giving your attention can go a long way.