Product management is about the WHO and the WHAT, not the HOW and WHEN. Most of all, product management is about the WHY and WHY SHOULD WE?
Product management and product marketing have been in the news lately with hundreds of posts about product roles and their overlap with design, development, sales, marketing, and other roles.
Product managers should NOT be doing design; product managers SHOULD be doing design; product managers are ALSO project managers; product managers are NEVER project managers; product managers SHOULD assign tasks; product managers should NEVER assign tasks; product managers should be doing something else, and hey, maybe product managers should be called something else.
The Mind of a Product Manager
One post profiled the "mind" of a product manager, describing the four basic aspects of "product management" as Design, Engineering, Communication, and Business Acumen.
Not so fast, my friend! Clearly, the author views a product manager as a technical administrator and not a business leader; a technical administrator who spends most of their time doing non-product management work.
Design. Design isn't product management. That's what the UX/CX team is for. I talk to a lot of UX/CX people who wonder why product managers are venturing into their jobs. (Don't product managers already have enough to do?) A product manager is about the who and the what and the why. Product managers prioritize (from a business perspective) the problems to solve for which personas. Design teams use research to better understand product users and they prototype and validate possible solutions.
Engineering. Engineering management isn't product management. That's what tech leads are for. Product managers collaborate with them, yes, but should not be running scrums, assigning tasks, or translating into developer lingo.
Communication. Some define "communication" as "keeping the entire team on track." Alas, that's proJECT management. Others expect a product manager to be a "smooth talker" for keeping management (i.e., "higher ups") informed. Okay, sure. There's certainly a bunch of stakeholder management in the typical product manager's day.
Business Acumen. Ah, finally. Something that is actually product management.
Business Acumen defined
Yes, business acumen is a key element of a product manager's role. Business acumen is defined as managing the business of the product. Determining product strategy. Understanding the customer and market. Defining which market segments to serve (and which to ignore). Discovering market problems, understanding value profiles, roadmapping and prioritizing, and identifying strategic options.
Now, I realize there is a lot of variety in what people claim as product management responsibilities or what a product manager does. Sadly, in many cases, the product manager does what no one else wants to do.
Some remarks on the role of product management seem more aligned with start-ups, where the decisions are made by senior leadership and the product manager role is merely "typing," making sure everything is documented in Jira. In these scenarios, the "product manager" often takes on roles that are under-staffed or under-skilled, such as design or project management. But that ain't product management either.
Many product managers are so busy doing other people's work, they have failed to do their own: driving the business of the product.
In the classic definition, product management is about the who and the what and the why, not the how and when. That means prioritizing the right problems to solve for the right personas and market segments.
A product manager should provide context to all the teams—leadership, design, development, marketing, sales, service, and support—with insights on segments, personas, stories, and priorities. A product manager empowers these teams with the CONTEXT of markets and their problems.
This empowers the experts in design and development to solve those problems with their brilliance. Helping designers and developers to better understand the problems we have prioritized. Providing context of the personas and market segments. Enabling stakeholders in customer success, customer support, marketing, and sales to ensure our go-to-market efforts are focused and in support of our value proposition and strategic positioning.
I break the business of product management down this way:
20% market engagement
20% business acumen
20% product team collaboration
20% stakeholder communication
20% product analytics
If you want to learn more about this view of the business role of product management, check out "The Business Role of Product Management."
