Travel is a key part of a product managers job. Especially if you have worldwide responsibility for your product.
So why do we travel so much:
The biggest bucket is to meet with customers to
- Understand how they use the product, which is normally different from how you envisioned it 🙂
- Bounce of new product and feature ideas
- Idea discovery
The other bucket is office visits for
- Discussing and presenting product roadmaps
- Politicking or gathering support for your ideas
- Building relationships with folks with influence in the office
Final bucket is outward facing product management function that require you to travel to:
- Train sales team
- Ensure marketing messaging is consistent with product features
- Meet with press, bloggers and influencers
As much as I enjoy traveling, here’s how travel can get taxing. I spent almost 16/52 weeks outside India last year. I’ve already traveled almost once a month in the first quarter of 2013. Here is my travel calendar for the last 15 months and the coming 3
| Date | Country | Duration |
| Jan-12 | US & UK & Ireland | 2 weeks |
| Feb-12 | ||
| Mar-12 | NZ | 2 weeks |
| Apr-12 | US & Malaysia | 3 week |
| May-12 | UK & Germany | 1 week |
| Jun-12 | France & US | 2 weeks |
| Jul-12 | ||
| Aug-12 | US | 1 week |
| Sep-12 | US & Netherlands | 2 weeks |
| Oct-12 | ||
| Nov-12 | ||
| Dec-12 | US | 1 week |
| Jan-13 | Japan | 1 week |
| Feb-13 | ||
| Mar-13 | Thailand & Maldives | 10 days |
| Apr-13 | US | 1 week |
| May-13 | US | 1 week |
| Jun-13 | US | 1 week |